windmiller wrote:All the countries in the UK except England can talk freely about the rights of themselves as a nation state without being branded bigoted nationalists.
The EU ticks most of the boxes of being an Empire. It conquests by economic proxy. The Scottish Nationalists in particular see membership or brexit as a double sided golden ticket out of the UK. This I believe will happen because of an awareness of the lack of democracy in a London centric led UK. This awareness has awakened a sense of dormant patriotism in England which is most often sneered at by the left as right wing hatred of other nations or even fascism. This only angers the majority and empowers their will to break free from the bureaucratic tyranny that is the EU.
It would have been good if we'd had an honest discussion about the nation state and the meaning of sovereignty, before the referendum. Then we could have all voted on that basis, aware of the inevitable trade-offs.
Unfortunately, however, the media campaign, conducted over decades, was built on a toxic mixture of made up stories and ignorance of how the world works. Johnson's stories in the Telegraph - when he was their Brussels correspondent - weren't intended to help the reader understand the relationship between the EU and the nation state. Rather the opposite; they were meant to mislead. 'Sovereignty' was a word thrown about glibly, but it was never discussed properly. If sovereignty is an absolute, then where does that leave international treaties and obligations, for example.
After the referendum, the reason why these weren't discussed became clear. The people who had spent their whole careers complaining about the EU - they hadn't a clue about how the EU, or international law and trade in general, worked. Every day since, their ignorance is revealed, about the WTO, GATT, the EU, the Swiss border, and more. All of the supposed brains of Brexit (how did we ever think this?): Hannan, Raab, Rees-Mogg, were revealed to know nothing.
Or there's another possibility: they
did know. and Murdoch, Rothermere and the Barclays knew. All those fancy sounding institutes knew. But they carried on lying anyway, making up stories, and comparing the EU with the Third Reich. The reason? Because they knew that an honest discussion about nationhood, trade, globalisation, poverty, fishing, the environment... ...would never have gained traction. The population would have looked at the pros and cons and decided it was better to stay.
Lies were the only route to success for the Leave campaign, so they lied. Now, most of the liars can hardly remember what lies they told or what they thought they wanted. For that reason alone, Brexit can never be a success. Even through the eyes of Brexiters -
especially through the eyes of Brexiters - Brexit can never be a success.