[Rich]

This was a brilliant move by Cameron, and his party has reaped the reward, under First Past the Post the side that splits loses, Remember Thatcher won her big 1983 landslide on a reduced vote share. May lost her majority in 2017 on an increased vote share because the left in England solidified behind Corbyn.

Its fantastic to see the pathetic whinings of Farage and friends. UKIP lost the 2017 election big time. Its fantastic to see the way the way the Tory leadership has suckered these losers. UKIP is no longer a threat so they can be discarded.

[Nonsense]

Boris JOHNSON has made a reasonable speech at JCB as part of his 'rehabilitation' with the Tory backbenchers in anticipation of being hopeful of success in the impending Tory leadership race to succeed Theresa MAY.

He said that the 'backstop' should be removed, which, as I have said before, is a 'red herring'.

Instead, he would like a customs arrangement, which, obviously includes N, Ireland & would last until a new deal is agreed with the E.U.

The 'problem' with that idea is that the 'backstop' would simply be encompassed within that customs agreement, the duration of, which would last for a limited period(transition)until the 'new' deal takes effect.

It 'neutralises' the 'backstop' because N. Ireland would be included within that temporary customs arrangement & that it would apply equally across the whole of the U.K which is a DUP demand for acceptability.

That 'new' deal cannot include any of the E.U's 'Four Freedoms', because that is what the E.U is, to do otherwise would be, both a betrayal of E.U founding principles & of the 'LEAVE' referendum vote.

Putting everything aside, it really is worth listening to what Boris does say, NOT what he sounds like.

I think that such a deal mentioned above, with a legal period for when it would come into force, would be acceptable to 'LEAVERS', IF it was for a short period of 2 years ONLY, enforceable without parliamentary process being able to thwart it, by having the new Treaty approved in principle before negotiations commenced & backed by the current referendum result instruction to the government.

An 'alternative' way would be to negotiate a new deal post 'LEAVE' on 29 March, having a fixed period of current access,tarrif free, but no 'free movement' to non-resident U.K- E.U citizens, in order to make & enact that new deal within that 2 year fixed period.

[Nonsense]

I make ONLY one 'concession' to 'REMAINERS, in respect of Nigel FARAGE,he WAS the beer-in-the-glass at one time, NOW, he is just the FROTH on the top of an empty beer glass, his intellectual depth of thought, is the FROTH on the beer glass, SHALLOW, TASTELESS & COMPLETELY USELESS.

Further to that is the whole discourse on the referendum result as displayed in Westminster, the BBC, the rest of the media & the people at large in this country.

It reinforces my opinion of this country, that it is IGNORANT in the EXTREME, DISHONEST & DYSFUNCTIONAL.

That there are few in this country who can speak openly, or honestly on the topic of our leaving the E.U WITHOUT prejudice or influence from media sources is deeply depressing to say the least.

When the public are asked questions by the media on europe, they invariably echo verbatim, the views they have heard expressed before in that media.

I simply ask the question that I, as a young man did some sixty + years ago, "What do I think-NOT- what does everyone else think" .

I strongly believe in individuality, I NEVER copy or clone ideas,fashions or whatever from what I observe around me.

I have only sought to emulate the brilliant, though often simplistic minds of the great scientist, engineers or thinkers of any period in time.

To me, they illustrate human progress, how we use our knowledge is what makes intelligence, those who lack these two assets are the type of people most likely to have zero thought,slavish thoughts, or adopt them from current media.

The low ratio of younger people voting in the referendum underlines how people become 'reactionary', dishonest & hypocritical they are.

I suppose for recent generations, their extreme sense of 'entitlement' being at 'royal' levels, is not surprising that they are so vocal on the issue now that it is nearly 'settled', considering so few actually expressed themselves in that referendum.

That they want a 'second' one is pathetically ridiculous, not only is it the cry of a baby that has had the dummy removed from it's mouth by it's mother, it is in denial & wants another go at it by it 'REMAINING' in it's mouth.

The above is exactly what 'REMAINERS' want, to still be 'suckled' at the teat of the E.U...GET OVER IT & GROW UP WITH MATURITY.

[Rich]

It reinforces my opinion of this country, that it is IGNORANT in the EXTREME, DISHONEST & DYSFUNCTIONAL.

Hang on I thought the whole idea of Brexit was that Britain is educated, moderate, honest and functional and must escape from all those ignorant, extreme, dishonest, dysfunctional Europeans.

[B0ycey]

This was a brilliant move by Cameron,

So brilliant that he was out of a job in under a year.

and his party has reaped the reward, under First Past the Post the side that splits loses, Remember Thatcher won her big 1983 landslide on a reduced vote share. May lost her majority in 2017 on an increased vote share because the left in England solidified behind Corbyn.

If I remember correctly, it was a shock that the Tories won a majority in 2015. And I doubt it had anything to do with a referendum pledge and more to do with Miliband being his opponent - as no one trusted him/Labour back then with the economy which allowed Cameron to take the undecided electorate.

And if I recall, May won well against Labour in the local elections and she only lost her majority in the general election a month or so later due to being far too complacent and believing she could tax pensioners and homeowners. Perhaps the worse manifesto in history that nearly backfired on her. So it wasn't so much about the "Left" solidifying behind Corbyn as he has always had a loyal but minor support base - but more that he offered the public hope and May offered austerity.

Its fantastic to see the pathetic whinings of Farage and friends. UKIP lost the 2017 election big time. Its fantastic to see the way the way the Tory leadership has suckered these losers. UKIP is no longer a threat so they can be discarded.

UKIP has never been a threat in a general election. I believe they have had one MP in parliament ever and he moved sides. Cameron offered a referendum because he got outfoxed on the tele debates after being challenged. He then did the stupid and organised the referendum at the height of the refugee crisis and even then got 51% for leave. He was an idiot and nobody should forget who got the UK in this mess.

Nonetheless May should also take responsibility as things stand unless she is willing to take the only option she can take to get us out of Camerons shitshow. She has spoken to all opposition leaders (for advice) who are willing to speak to her and all would have asked for article 50 to be extended and another referendum. Also Corbyn would not object to another referendum as that is what the Labour members want if it was ever put forward to parliament. So I suspect the numbers for a referendum are there. Is she brave enough to take it? Or is she still clinging on the promise to fulfil the result despite the Leavers dying off and the public swaying to remain. We will find out in March I suspect.

[Nonsense]

Hang on I thought the whole idea of Brexit was that Britain is educated, moderate, honest and functional and must escape from all those ignorant, extreme, dishonest, dysfunctional Europeans.

Nonsense -

Standing truth on it's head doesn't make things right Rich, that's just what Theresa MAY has been engaged in, telling the country that we are 'LEAVING', but fashoning a dead 'deal' that would have us half-IN-half OUT of the E.U & then saying that it's delivering on the referendum result.

If that's not taking the proverbials out of those Brits that do have a modicum of intelligence, then I don't know what it is.

I tell you one thing, she can't pull-the-wool-over-'LEAVER's' eyes & she is not equipped with the brains to fashion a successful deal for this country.

IMHO, she is 'cruising' in her job, taking the Queen's coin, not earning it & taking the country into the abyss.

She is an abomination to rationality, her record in whatever political job she has had is abyssmal,costly & extremely incompetent.

In earlier times, her head would have been , 'on-the-block', well before the damage she has done by now.

[Beren]

Good news is that Cameron doesn't regret calling the referendum, he only regrets the results and the consequences. He looks good, by the way, tanned and fit, even his hairdo is perfect. I guess he advised May to call parliamentary leaders together.

[Heisenberg]

It's really hard to overstate how much of a clown David Cameron is. I suppose his one saving grace is that he's had the decency to piss off and mostly keep his head down after leaving office, unlike Tony Blair, the Hero of Basra.

[Beren]

It's really hard to overstate how much of a clown David Cameron is. I suppose his one saving grace is that he's had the decency to piss off and mostly keep his head down after leaving office, unlike Tony Blair, the Hero of Basra.

Tony Blair is not Corbyn's adviser at least. Besides being the Hero of Basra, his government also opted out of possible restrictions on the free movement of workers in the EU.

Restrictions on the free movement of workers may apply to workers from EU member countries for a transitional period of up to 7 years after they join the EU.

Although Blair and Cameron, or rather their governments, created all this mess, the blame will be on the EU finally, of course.

[JohnRawls]

Tony Blair is not Corbyn's adviser at least. Besides being the Hero of Basra, his government also opted out of possible restrictions on the free movement of workers in the EU.


Although Blair and Cameron, or rather their governments, created all this mess, the blame will be on the EU finally, of course.

Isn't that the gist of it. It is easier to sell "Big Bad EU Forced us to take those migrants to improve our economy" instead of "Sorry guys, we fucked up, we are at fault here for decreasing the relative standard of living and taking immigrants at the same time".

[Beren]

Isn't that the gist of it. It is easier to sell "Big Bad EU Forced us to take those migrants to improve our economy" instead of "Sorry guys, we fucked up, we are at fault here for decreasing the relative standard of living and taking immigrants at the same time".

It may be easier to sell the Big Bad EU thing in Britain because they're not anti-EU only but anti-Continental too, which is non-existent in the Continent itself, of course.

[Heisenberg]

The "leave" vote was much a statement against the pro-EU British political class as it was against the EU.

Pointing out that Blair and Cameron were keen advocates of EU expansion and reducing restrictions on migrants from new members isn't quite the hammer blow you both appear to think it is.

[Beren]

The "leave" vote was much a statement against the pro-EU British political class as it was against the EU.

Pointing out that Blair and Cameron were keen advocates of EU expansion and reducing restrictions on migrants from new members isn't quite the hammer blow you both appear to think it is.

They are just political architects indeed, but every bit of contribution mattered and they both contributed a lot as prime ministers. I'd personally believe Leavers hate the Continent as much as their political class or the EU, that's how it looks like in the news and on PoFo as well.

[Londonbiker]

The "leave" vote was much a statement against the pro-EU British political class as it was against the EU.

Pointing out that Blair and Cameron were keen advocates of EU expansion and reducing restrictions on migrants from new members isn't quite the hammer blow you both appear to think it is.

Valid point in part, to some, leave was backlash against consecutive failed governments ignoring the electorate combined with the EU interfering with UK in specific areas.

Cameron was fobbed off by Brussels because the EU were convinced the UK (under Cameron & previous PM's) it would be a lifetime member.

Blair always wanted to be an EU President or commissioner, get the UK to join the Euro etc. Thankfully none of that materilised so he's truly hacked off so funding (along with Rudd) the people's vote & "advising the EU by proxy" on how to punish/negotiate with HMG*

*this maybe unfactual but plenty of conspiracy theories trending.

[Potemkin]

They are just political architects indeed, but every bit of contribution mattered and they both contributed a lot as prime ministers. I'd personally believe Leavers hate the Continent as much as their political class or the EU, that's how it looks like in the news and on PoFo as well.

In Britain, we've always had a saying: "The wogs begin at Calais." Make of that what you will.

[Ter]

EU loves British money more than it loves democracy

Neil Clark
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. He has written for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and other countries including The Guardian, Morning Star, Daily and Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Spectator, The Week, and The American Conservative. He is a regular pundit on RT and has also appeared on BBC TV and radio, Sky News, Press TV and the Voice of Russia. He is the co-founder of the Campaign For Public Ownership @PublicOwnership. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

The EU's antagonistic stance towards Brexit, which was on show again this week, is not motivated by lofty, internationalist ideals, but by financial factors. Self-interest comes before respecting democratic decisions.

If we don't get the result we want, vote again. Or else we just ignore it.

Anyone who still believes the EU supports 'democracy' should reflect on this week's events.

On Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May's so-called 'Withdrawal Agreement' was heavily defeated in the House of Commons, with a large number of Brexiteers voting against it.

On the same day, European Council President Donald Tusk, a former Prime Minister of Poland, tweeted: "If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?".

The message, was retweeted by, among others, Michel Barnier, the chief EU Brexit negotiator.

We all know, by a process of elimination, what Tusk means by the "only positive solution." That's Britain staying in the EU and sticking two fingers up at the 17.4m people, many of them from the most deprived parts of the country, who voted to Leave.

EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker meanwhile urged the UK to "clarify its intentions as soon as possible", warning that "time is almost up."

It's hard to escape the conclusion that the EU offered Britain such a bad deal because they knew it wouldn't be passed. Then, maximum pressure could be exerted on the UK to reconsider its decision to leave, or at least kick Brexit into the long grass, which is what having a second referendum would do.

Right on cue, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, leader of the CDU, and the front-runner to become Germany's next chancellor after Angela Merkel, has made an '11th hour' plea for Britain to stay in the EU. The emotional plea, which lauds "the legendary British black humour" among other things, comes, appropriately enough, in a letter to the neocon propaganda organ the Times, which supported 'Remain.'

The European establishment is desperate for Britain to reconsider Brexit. Internationalist ideals about 'preserving European unity', don't come in to it, this is all about protecting income streams.

Consider a few facts. If Britain does leave without a deal, then the EU as an institution would be considerably worse off. The UK has consistently been one of the top three countries that puts most into the EU budget (after Germany and France).

It is one of ten countries that puts more into the EU than it gets out. In 2017, the UK's net contribution was £9bn.

If Britain leaves, the EU faces a financial shortfall. In 2016, 16 countries were net receivers, including Donald Tusk's Poland. Little wonder that he regards Britain staying as "the only positive solution".

The very generous financial remuneration packages of EU officials might also be threatened by British withdrawal.

In December, it was reported that the EU's top civil servants would be paid over €20,000 a month for the first time, and that Tusk and Juncker would see their packages rise to €32,700 a month. Austerity? Not in Brussels, mon ami!

The EU is a fabulous gravy train once you are on board. But the gravy train relies on its richest members not leaving, otherwise who's going to foot the bill?

If Britain leaves with 'No Deal', it's not just the EU budget which will take a hit. In 2017, EU countries sold around £67 billion more in goods and services to the UK, than the UK sold to them. Europe needs full and unfettered access to British markets, much more than Britain needs full and unfettered access to European markets.

That's not being 'nationalistic', but simply stating the economic reality. The country that would lose out the most with Brexit is Germany. Britain's trade deficit with Germany is higher than with any other country, even higher than China, whose products are everywhere in our shops! In 2016, the year of the EU referendum, Britain imported around £26 billion more from Germany than it exported.

It's no great surprise therefore to see the president of the Federation of German Industries as one of the signatories of the letter to the Times, pleading for Britain to stay!

Repeat after me: "We would miss Britain as part of the European Union. We would miss Britain as part of the European Union".

We also have to discuss fishing. The other EU countries do extremely well out of the Common Fisheries Policy, which provides them with access to UK waters.

Belgian fleets get around half their catch from British waters! As reported in the Independent, the Common Fisheries Quota has for the past 34 years given 84% of the cod in the English Channel to France and just 9% to the UK. Overall, EU vessels take out around four times as much fish out of UK waters as British vessels take out of EU waters.

Again, you don't have to be Albert Einstein to work out why the EU doesn't want Britain to leave.

If the EU's commitment to democracy was genuine, they would have done everything they could to make sure the referendum result of June 2016 was implemented. But the financial hit of Britain leaving is too high. So, instead they have done everything possible to subvert the democratic will of the people, while at the same time boasting about their commitment to 'democracy.'

Of course, the EU is not the only party to blame. The British government, led by a Remainer, and with Remainers holding prominent positions in the Cabinet, has been pusillanimous.

Theresa May has shown she is desperate for a 'deal' whereas in fact, the ones who really need an agreement to provide continued unfettered access to lucrative UK markets, are the EU. If the UK government had called Brussels' bluff and announced that Britain would just leave, you can be sure Tusk, Barnier, Juncker and co would have come running with a much better offer.

Their (very high) salaries, and the profits of European businesses, depend on it.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/449133-uk-brex ... -eu-money/

Always good to know.
Follow the money...

[snapdragon]

How nasty of the EU, not allowing us to cherry pick the bits we want to keep from our membership and just looking out for themselves.
Actually, whoever said the problem is mostly we're arguing about what we want amongst ourselves and not with the EU is bang on the money.

I see Theresa May is assuring her hardliners another referendum is not on the table, so I'm still living in hope.

On another note, a group of elderly people were arguing on the bus about remoaners trying to put the kibosh on the land of milk and honey waiting at the end of the rainbow.

They agreed it'll be hard for a while, but we can roll our sleeves up, pull our socks up and make a success of it. Britain would one day be great again and we'll go back to being to how we used to be at an unspecified time.

Not sure exactly when that time that was. It could have been well before theirs, because they talked of how they fought off Hitler during the war, but as none of them looked anywhere near their century, or even 90, it coudn't have been them doing it.
Probably the time just before the Windrush set sail seems more likely, judging by some of their remarks.

Anyway, I pointed out that although I didn't agree, I admired them very much for sticking to their principles to the point they were willing to take a cut in their state pensions ,pay for their prescriptions, and all that sort of thing. No more free bus rides or TV licences....

They looked horrified. What they meant by "we" was other people.

[Seeker8]

It may be easier to sell the Big Bad EU thing in Britain because they're not anti-EU only but anti-Continental too, which is non-existent in the Continent itself, of course.

In Britain or England? I've always noticed that in England there seems be some sort of dislike or distrust of the French and Germans that isn't present in Scotland. I've never really understood it.

Polls in Scotland are showing the remain in EU vote is now at over 70%.

This is an interesting opinion on the reasons for England's E.U vote.

The problem with the English: England doesn’t want to be just another member of a team

There is a great lie peddled about the referendum: that it expressed the will of the British people. The pattern of voting showed up a colossal divergence between England, with its Welsh appendage, on the one hand, and Scotland and Northern Ireland on the other.

This was far more significant than any division between ‘metropolitan elites’ and ‘those left behind by globalisation’. Are there no elites in Edinburgh or Belfast? Is no one left behind in the Scottish or Irish hinterlands? Even if such a division is present across the UK, and indeed the whole of the Western world, and it plainly is, why only in England did it express itself as so powerful a revulsion from the EU?

To explain the referendum result as a ‘howl of pain at austerity’ is a pious flight from reality. It is to ignore, to cover over again, the wound, festering below the threshold of public consciousness for two generations, which the referendum opened up to the air.

Those who voted Leave in the referendum were not voting about globalisation or stagnating living standards or austerity and declining welfare payments, they were voting about the EU, and it is condescension to pretend otherwise. But they were not being asked by the Leave campaign to express a preference for a particular rationally argued and practically feasible economic and political alternative to membership of the EU – that is evident, for none was offered before the referendum and none has emerged since. They were being asked to express an emotion about membership, and the English, but not the Irish or Scots, felt so urgent a need to express it that they threw reason and practicality to the winds.

The emotion central to the Leave campaign was the fear of what is alien, and this trumped the Remainers’ Project Fear-of-wholly-foreseeable-damage. The true Project Fear was the Leave party’s unrelenting presentation of the EU as a lethal threat to national identity, indeed as the stranger and enemy who had already stolen it: give us back our country, they said, our sovereignty, our £350m a week, let us control our borders, let our population not be swamped by immigrants or our high streets by Polish shops – and to vote against the EU was to vote to recover what we had lost. The voting pattern, however, revealed that appeal to that emotion, and that vision of the EU, worked only in England.

Europhobia was shown by the referendum to be a specifically English psychosis, the narcissistic outcome of a specifically English crisis of identity. That crisis has had two phases, roughly two centuries apart.

In the first phase, in the eighteenth century, the English gave up their Englishness in order to become British, the rulers of the British Empire; in the second phase, in the middle of the twentieth century, they lost even that surrogate for identity and have been wandering ever since through the imperial debris that litters their homeland, unable to say who they are.

England sank its identity in the unions with Scotland, in 1707, and with Ireland, in 1800, which gave rise respectively to Britain and to the United Kingdom. From then on the English had no need of a separate identity, for as metropolitans, first of the United Kingdom and then of the British empire, they dealt with no one on equal terms. They were characterless, because they never met anybody who could impose a character on them: they were masters of the seas, they could travel round the world without setting foot outside imperial territory, and economically the empire was, potentially at least, self-sufficient.

While Ireland, Wales, and Scotland became, for the English, slightly comic regions of ‘Britain’, ‘England’ became for them the sentimental ideal of ‘home’, the image of the green and pleasant mother-country that concealed the brutal realities of empire from its agents and possessed nothing so sordid as distinct political or economic interests of its own.

The destruction by the USA of the British empire, after its finest hour in 1940, was a traumatic blow to the psyche of two English generations, from which they have never recovered, largely because they have never recognised it.

The psychoanalysts, Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, famously attributed various collective psychological traits of post-war Germany to an ‘inability to mourn’, an inability to recognize how much emotion they had invested in the love of their führer, to mourn his passing, and so to escape from his influence.

Similarly, we could say the English have been unable to recognise how much of their society and its norms was constructed during the imperial period and in order to sustain empire, and have therefore been unable to mourn the empire’s passing or to escape from the compulsion to recreate it.

Over three centuries the needs of empire shaped England’s systems of government, national and local, its Church, its schools and universities, the traditions of its armed and police forces, its youth movements, its sports, its BBC, its literature, and its cuisine.

The end of empire meant the end of all this. And because England has been unable to acknowledge that loss, it has also been unable to acknowledge the end of English exceptionalism, the end of the characterlessness the English had enjoyed as rulers of the world – with no need of distinct features to mark them off from their equals since they had no equals, embodying, as they did, the decency, reasonableness and good sense by which they assumed the rest of the world privately measured its lesser achievements and to which they assumed it aspired.

The trauma of lost exceptionalism, the psychic legacy of empire, haunts the English to the present day, in the illusion that their country needs to find itself a global role. Of course it is an illusion: do roughly comparable countries such as Germany or Italy or Japan have such a need?

Putin’s Russia does, but Russia suffers from the same trauma of imperial amputation, and there are traces of it too in the French defence of worldwide francophonie. The traumatic loss is all but explicitly acknowledged in the repeated demand that around the world ‘Britain’ should ‘punch above its weight’ – why not be content with your size and weight, live within your means, and cultivate your garden, rather than make yourself ridiculous like little Vladimir fanatically developing his biceps in the corner of the gym?

The psychosis, the willed triumph of illusion over reality revealed by the referendum result, is most damagingly still at work in the determination of the English to cling on to their old exceptional status as anonymous masters of the United Kingdom and of the other nations with which they have to share the Atlantic Archipelago.

For the English, the United Kingdom occupies the psychic space once filled by the empire: it is the last guarantor of their characterlessness, it is the phantom which in the English mind substitutes for the England which the English will not acknowledge is their only home. They will not acknowledge it lest they become just another nation like everybody else, with a specific, limited identity, a specific history, neither specially honourable nor specially dishonourable, with limited weight, limited resources, and limited importance in the world now that their empire is no more.

That is the terrifying truth that membership of the EU presents to the English and from which for centuries the empire insulated them: that they have to live in the world on an equal footing with other people. From that truth they seek shelter in the thought that really they belong not to England at all but to something more imposing, or at least different: the UK, or, less accurately, ‘Britain’, within which they can cocoon the non-identity they took on in 1707 as the imperial adventure was beginning.

Hence the paradox that the political party that exists to express fear of the EU represents itself as an Independence Party for the United Kingdom, but its entire affective vocabulary, its cultural, historical, and mythical points of reference are English, and it has virtually no following in Scotland or Northern Ireland: in the 2015 general election UKIP won 14% of the vote in England, but only 2.6% in Northern Ireland and 1.6% in Scotland.

Like the Conservatives under Theresa May’s Leaver administration, UKIP is a party of English nationalism that dare not speak its name. To acknowledge that it exists to minister to a specifically English anxiety would be to break England out of the UK on which the English depend to protect themselves from reality – the reality that a nation with three-quarters of one per cent of the world’s population cannot claim significant, let alone exceptional, global status, and cannot survive on its own.

The Scots and the Irish are ‘divisive nationalists’, according to May, for wanting a say in negotiations with the EU, but she does not notice the English nationalism in her claim to speak for the Scots and Irish against their will, or in her imposition of the English nationalists’ vision of the EU on the Scots and Irish, whom the voting pattern in the referendum showed not to share it. (Wales, much earlier and more completely subjugated by England, and never a kingdom in its own right, has always ultimately been willing to accept the role of the afterthought that follows the conjunction in ‘England-and-Wales’.)

In Ireland, the EU, the essential framework for the Good Friday agreement of 1998, appears as the guardian of nationhood, the guarantor of the peaceful coexistence of the island’s two fractions: in Tyrone, Fermanagh, or Armagh, when you cross into the Republic at the end of your lane, it is the EU, not London, that tells you you are still in Ireland.

Similarly, in Scotland, to vote for the EU was to vote for the distinctness of Scotland as a legitimate fellow-occupant of the island of Great Britain and for its equality with England as a fellow-member, alongside Germany and Malta, France and Cyprus, of a larger union than that centred on London.

Only the English could not see the EU in these terms: as the protector of the identity of relatively small nations in a world of conflicting giants. Because only the English could not see themselves as a nation at all.

Hag-ridden by their unassimilated imperial past, by their failure of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the English refuse to think of themselves as a nation in the same sense as Scotland or Ireland and have constructed a constitution for their United Kingdom which denies the obvious. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have their variously titled national assemblies, but England has none – not out of self-effacing modesty nor out of an altruistic desire to spare taxpayers the cost of supporting another stratum of politicians, but in order to claim for itself the exceptional position of anonymous master of its now diminutive empire.

The absence of a separate English parliament reduces the nations granted devolved assemblies to the marginal status the English gave them in the days of glory, as those slightly comical regional variations on a Britishness of which England – invisible and characterless in itself – was therefore alone representative. The decision of June 23, then, was not a decision taken by ‘the British people’ because ‘the British people’ do not exist: ‘the people’ is not a meaningful political concept and ‘Britain’ is a figment invented by the English to disguise their oppressive, indeed colonial, relation to the other nations inhabiting Great Britain and Ireland.

But because the English are still wedded to the lack of identity they enjoyed in the imperial era, and so, like other psychotics, have no sense of equality with others, or responsibility towards them, the most important issue of all was not raised in the campaign that preceded the vote: did the UK have a duty to remain? Did voters have a duty to consider the effect of their actions on their neighbours, as they might if they were deciding to plant a hedge of leylandii on their boundary or to stop contributing to the maintenance of a shared access road?

Like other small and medium-sized actors on the world stage, the European states are not sovereign independent agents. Their attempts to define themselves as such have, in the era before the EU, always led to violence and war.

By their submission to jointly authorised supranational institutions they have found a way of growing together which has given them peace and prosperity and has been an example to the world. The European project is not complete and is not intended to be: the union is only to be ‘ever closer’; there is no specified political or institutional goal, let alone a conspiracy to set up a ‘super-state’. (As a proportion of GDP, the European budget would have to be nearly 50 times larger than it is for the Union to qualify as a state in the same sense as its members.)

England has never wanted to join in the process of growing together, not because it rejects the goal of a ‘super-state’, which exists only in England’s fearful imagination, but because it rejects the idea of collaborating with equals – it doesn’t want to be just another member of a team, for then it would have to recognise that it has after all an identity of its own.

The referendum vote does not deserve to be respected because, as an outgrowth of English narcissism, it is itself disrespectful of others, of our allies, partners, neighbours, friends, and, in many cases, even relatives. Like resentful ruffians uprooting the new trees in the park and trashing the new play area, millions of English, the lager louts of Europe, voted for Brexit in an act of geopolitical vandalism.

Two pillars of the unwritten British constitution collapsed on June 23. The sovereignty of the Westminster parliament was seriously challenged, and possibly overturned, by a referendum that should never have been called. And the attempt of the Unions of 1707 and 1800 to create a single British nation to rule a global empire was finally shown up as a self-deceptive device by the English to deny the Scots and the Irish a will of their own.

Any recovery from this collective mental breakdown will involve treating both these symptoms, in the light of their deep historical causes. Specifically, the role of parliaments in the United Kingdom will have to be reconstructed so as to give England at last the distinctive adult political identity it has shunned for 300 years.

The slogan ‘English votes for English laws’ was a first sign that resurgent Scottish self-confidence was provoking the English to emerge from narcissism into a recognition that the world – indeed, the island of Great Britain – contains people other than themselves. However, not until there is a separate English Parliament, giving expression to that separate English identity, will the delusions that led England to Brexit finally be dissipated by contact with reality. And perhaps then, with their psychosis healed, the English will apply to rejoin the EU.

Nicholas Boyle is Emeritus Schröder Professor of German, University of Cambridge, and author of Who are we now? (1998: University of Notre Dame Press)

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/the-problem-with-the-english-england-doesn-t-want-to-be-just-another-member-of-a-team-1-4851882

[Rich]

So brilliant that he was out of a job in under a year.

The referendum was announced in January 2013. That's three and a half years before he resigned. Cameron chose to resign. He was clearly already losing his will to go and on before the 2015 election.

If I remember correctly, it was a shock that the Tories won a majority in 2015. And I doubt it had anything to do with a referendum pledge and more to do with Miliband being his opponent - as no one trusted him/Labour back then with the economy which allowed Cameron to take the undecided electorate.

And if I recall, May won well against Labour in the local elections and she only lost her majority in the general election a month or so later due to being far too complacent and believing she could tax pensioners and homeowners. Perhaps the worse manifesto in history that nearly backfired on her. So it wasn't so much about the "Left" solidifying behind Corbyn as he has always had a loyal but minor support base - but more that he offered the public hope and May offered austerity.

UKIP has never been a threat in a general election. I believe they have had one MP in parliament ever and he moved sides. Cameron offered a referendum because he got outfoxed on the tele debates after being challenged. He then did the stupid and organised the referendum at the height of the refugee crisis and even then got 51% for leave. He was an idiot and nobody should forget who got the UK in this mess.

Don't be absurd, of course UKIP was a threat, if about 1% (I haven't checked the cross over constituency for an effective majority without Sinn Fein and the Speakers.) more of Conservative voters had gone to UKIP in 2015 it would have probably have not got an overall majority. Long term parties of government across Europe have become rumps in remarkably short periods of time. Look what happened to Labour in Scotland. UKIP didn't need to win many seats to split the Conservative vote.

The referendum promise also drew votes from Labour and even the Liberal Democrats, but cost very few votes. Who refused to vote Conservative in 2015 because of the referendum promise? The Tories have survived as the party of government for the best part of 200 years because their leaders learned the lessons of the Corn Laws abolition:

Never put country before party!

[B0ycey]

The referendum was announced in January 2013.

REALLY!!!

Half way through the coalition, the most prominent European party in the UK agreed and announced the referendum???

The EU referendum was a Tory pledge in their manifesto. And the reason it was put in there was because Cameron got outfoxed live on TV.

Cameron chose to resign. He was clearly already losing his will to go and on before the 2015 election.

Cameron resigned because he didn't want to activate Article 50. He knew it would be a mistake. If someone was stupid enough to do it, he didn't want the blame. Unfortunately May was stupid enough to do it. And so we have the shitshow.

Don't be absurd, of course UKIP was a threat, if about 1% (I haven't checked the cross over constituency for an effective majority without Sinn Fein and the Speakers.) more of Conservative voters had gone to UKIP in 2015 it would have probably have not got an overall majority. Long term parties of government across Europe have become rumps in remarkably short periods of time. Look what happened to Labour in Scotland. UKIP didn't need to win many seats to split the Conservative vote.

The referendum promise also drew votes from Labour and even the Liberal Democrats, but cost very few votes. Who refused to vote Conservative in 2015 because of the referendum promise? The Tories have survived as the party of government for the best part of 200 years because their leaders learned the lessons of the Corn Laws abolition:

Never put country before party!

UKIP has never had a chance in a general election. At best they perhaps might spilt the Tory vote. Big woop.