Great Britain is not an Island

[JR-]

I am not talking about the EU. If there was not an EU at all, I would have made the exact same post above.

I think that a British national identity based on the idea 'singular and unique, owing to being an island' dates from the nineteenth century. Well before any EU.
Splendid Isolation is a political, strategical impulse that lives on in another guise. In the national conciousness as a part of national identity, and simoultanously as an explanation for this identity.


As for the EU, the UK is of course completely free to make up its own mind about whether it either should be in the EU or whether it shouldn't remain apart from the EU.

as Bopa said; "then what is the point of this thread?"

it sprang directly from the - is it time for Britain to enter the euro thread, where i spent a great deal of time pointing out that economic union must lead to greater political union, and given that we didn't want or need political union and there was no economic net benefit to economic union, then in fact Britain was better off outside of both.

so what you say you are argueing is:
a) that we are in fact europeans - guess what, nobody has disagreed and certainly not me.
b) our past strategic policy has left the British mindset insular - perhaps so but i would say that it leaves us well conditioned to cope with the realities of Britain's strategic position today.

but we didn't really have an argument about european'ness did we, you were trying to build a construct to justify your view that Britain is perverse in not loving the EU project, aren't you?