Patriotism and Brexit

 It's been very easy for Brexiteers to claim that Pro-Europeans are un-patriotic or even traitorous.

Who wouldn't want to "break free" of a "foreign power" and make our own way in the world?

This is very disingenuous. By entering in the EEC/EU the UK agreed to be in partnership with other countries and share rules.  So it wasn't a case of "them ruling us and we can say nothing", and if it was wished to be simplistically stated, then it would "them ruling us, and us ruling them back"... "however much Germany [or insert other country] is ruling us, we are ruling them back in equal measure".

I recently watch a documentary on YouTube about the Windscale disaster.  Click the YouTube video that is set to the part in the film where it is recounted.


In 1946 the Americans' policy on nuclear secrets changed.  Britain was no longer allowed to share or participate in what the USA was doing in terms of nuclear weapons.

This came as a heavy blow, to what seems to be the pride of a few British Politicians at the time.  The foreign secretary's ego was bruised by a conversation he has with the American secretary of state at the time.

Britain was, after the war, completely broke, and under an obligation to give self-determination to all it's colonies.  With the loss of Empire there was no way a small rainy, windswept archipelago of islands off the north west of Europe was ever, ever going to compete with the continental sized new Superpowers of Russian and the US.

For some politicians, and no doubt a lot of the British public, this was an embarrassment.  It is not an understandable reaction, and I don't blame the post-war population for it.

What I don't understand is why 70 years later Brexiteers appear to be thinking in exactly the same way, surely it is time to move on?

I suspect that a lot of the elderly Brexiteers who were alive during the years immediately post-war, and lived during the days of independence of the countries of the Empire and feel sad, and ashamed of the decline clout of Britain.

As a result, as can be seen in the video, the British political class managed, by a make-do-and-mend mentality to scrape together enough plutonium to make a bomb.  This has no-doubt been a common mindset and policy for many years.

Think the QE2 aircraft carriers or bases East of Eden - posturings of a tiny country barking like a small poodle at dobermans.  Why are British politicians doing this?  It makes them seem more important than they are, and specifically at their home voters.

Who thinks what Russia, or China care a jot about what our Foreign Secretaries have to say?

It makes me cringe when I hear people like Raab and Patel threatening other countries.   Not because of the threats, per se, but that the UK has absolutely no way of influencing anyone in the way they are portraying it.

If "being patriotic" is continuing to try and bluff and pretend to be powerful at the top table of world countries, then I'll give it a miss, thanks all the same.

Remainers, re-joiners are realistic, observant and can accept our place in the world order.  This does NOT make us "unpatriotic".   I'm immensely proud of what my British family has done in the world, to make it a fairer and law-abiding place.  

I'm patriotic in that I want the world to know how we established legal systems for trade and parliamentary system all over the world.  That we were there at the start of the industrial revolution, and yes, beat back the tyranny of the Nazis (with help from Russia and the US).

To summarise:  Brexiteers want to continue to bullshit that the UK is equal in potency to the Russians, the US, the EU and China.   In order to do this they must continue the charade started by Attlee, Churchill and Eden, and pretend.

I want re-joiners to continuously point out that Brexiteers are deluded and can't see what's plainly the case:  The UK is a middle-ranking power today.  And that being honest and aware of this is probably more "patriotic" than they are.

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