The United Kingdom; The European Union; NATO: which is the primary sense of identity?

[Furunculus]

the difference between the net balance of imports and exports?

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.g...importers.html

[Husar]

the difference between the net balance of imports and exports?

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.g...importers.html

The what? Sounds like the trade balance: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/natio...anceofpayments

In your link the closest I find to the mentioned figures is:

The latest statistics from the Annual Business Survey (ABS) reveal that 15.2%, a total of 310,800 businesses in the Non-Financial Business Economy in Great Britain (GB) engaged in international trade in 2014.

But engaging in international trade would refer to both imports and exports and it does not say anything about trade volume or percentage of economy, but businesses regardless of size and trade volume it would seem.

[Furunculus]

good catch, you're right. circa 15% of businesses rather than 15% of GDP by value.

https://data.oecd.org/trade/trade-in...ndicator-chart

in more detail (pages 4&5):

https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...or-support.pdf

export of services ~11%

[Idaho]

Identity is an interesting thing. It's a fabrication, but one based on actual experience. For some, identity is a declaration of how they want the world to be. See for example those Muslims who identify themselves as primarily Muslim and overlook the huge differences within this category. Also see British. It's a declaration that Scottish islanders and residents of Croydon are one united people.

As well as ambition and intent, identity describes people's feelings of commonality. Who they feel culturally comfortable with. See above for examples.

Personally I have cultural ambitions that lead me to enthuse about our global commonality. While at the same time I'm suspicious of local macro commonality such as Britain, the German-speaking-people, Eastern European, etc.

I identify as English, not British. The Scots and Welsh are a little bit different. I'm a southerner too (whose family were northerners... Part of which makes me recognise my southerness).