I doubt that you will find a better summation of the delusions still gripping the Brexit movement in the United Kingdom than this piece written for the Reaction by the Irish-born journalist and author Walter Ellis. As the unionist-raised columnist explains, many leading Brexiteers in the UK are convinced that the country’s negotiations with the European Union would have taken a very different path if the British had insisted from day one that they:
…wanted out of the Single Market and the Customs Union at the earliest possible moment, with no transition period, no divorce bill, no compromise on British fishing rights and Absolutely-No-Freedom-of- Movement.
The talks would have been wrapped up by Christmas. The EU, impressed by our bulldog spirit, would have put the relevant machinery in place, and come next spring Liam Fox could have embarked on a round-the-world cruise aboard HMS Global Britain, loading up on trade agreements with the U.S, China, India, Japan, South Korea and – once they had recovered from their humiliation – a grateful European Union.
…tariff-free, frictionless trade with Europe would have been put in place within 12 months of Brexit, allowing sales of BMWs and Prosecco to resume within, oh, a matter of weeks, or even days. In the meantime, by way of simple give and take, there would be no massive build-up of lorries at Dover and Calais. Drivers would roll on and roll off exactly as they do now. Airline schedules would be unaffected. British travellers, brandishing their shiny blue passports, would step off aircraft in Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Ibiza secure in the knowledge that they would be admitted “without let or hindrance” by the relevant authorities.
Hurrah!
But it would not be a one-way street. As proof of our magnanimity in victory, Britain would have offered to take over the management of European security, possibly by way of a European Security Agency, based in London, while further benefiting our friends caught on the wrong side of the Channel by generously maintaining our participation in Europol, the European Space Agency, Euratom, Erasmus and Galileo.
Within five years, the revitalised, Bojovian economy would be growing at a rate not known since … well, since we joined the European Union. Our navy would patrol the world’s oceans, the Prince of Wales would re-energise the Commonwealth and the people of Scotland and Northern Ireland would rejoice in their continued membership of a truly United Kingdom.
Parp-parp!
That really is it. An entire political movement built upon an unassailable belief in British exceptionalism, and the inevitability of a resurgent Greater England coupled to a mercantile Empire 2.0 that the nations of the Earth would flock to. Which explains, at least in part, the reluctance of so many ardent Brexiteers to countenance the loss of any mastery over their colonial outpost on the island of Ireland when revanchism, the retaking of lost territories, lies at the heart of their ideological project. Which gives a rather different meaning to the Leave campaign slogan, “We want our country back”.
Talking of the Six County parastate, the Democratic Unionist Party continues with its madcap plan to secure the “union” with Britain by establishing a bridge between this island and our wayward neighbour to the east. Here’s the DUP MP Paul Girvan in PoliticsHome at least being honest about his party’s monumental insecurity complex:
As a unionist there will always be an attraction in seeing a physical connection between Northern Ireland and Great Britain…
I’m just waiting for the next suggestion – filling in the Irish Sea?
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Filling in the Irish Sea, or the channel at least … now there’s an idea, but where to get the materials. Of course! Dig out a wide and deep canal all along the land border … Perfect!! 😉
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Please. To Southern Ireland from Wales. Then some of us Welsh will have a means of escape! My great great great grandfather (Coleman) came from Co Sligo. Be great if I could claim Irish Nationality!
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But the Welsh (diolch yn fawr!) voted for Brexit along with the English, so you rather made your own bed. Ireland will be united sooner or later, probably sooner, and Scotland will leave the UK, leaving you alone to become some sort of Westanglia. Your choice! 😦
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My Father new Lloyd George
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Are you sure your father wasn’t old Lloyd George?
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I am disgusted by the anti Welsh racism here!!
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Also possibly of interest :
http://www.thenational.scot/news/16989865.this-is-why-westminsters-choice-is-between-brexit-and-the-union/?ref=mr&lp=2
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Build a bridge to Scotland that more than lightly will get independence and the Tories would send troops back to the North if Boris £ Shop Churchill was in charge and make no mistake about that.
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I agree but Scotland will be independent before a bridge gets underway, too many top priority projects to be done first, to benefit all of the UK you understand, vis renovate Westminster Palace, another cross London tunnel, HS2. The article by Kemp in the National that Macronatrix gives the link to highlights the low level of fore thought, or any thought, given to brexit. It does not look good.
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Except that many Brexiters want a littler England. As I’ve said, their slogan could be “Ourselves alone” if someone else hadn’t got it first: an autarkic state, with protected agriculture and industries and a foreign policy that .Edo Japan would have regarded as excessively insular.
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I think you might be onto something, Wee Jim. While I certainly can’t read their minds, what you are saying would be at bare minimum, far more consistent with their actions than the read that says they want “The Good Old Days” back.
Astute to mention Japan’s Edo Period. After all, Japan did an amphetamine fast about-face from The Tokugawa Shogunate to Imperial Japan. There’s nothing far fetched about many English people jonesing for an inverse 180 turn in the direction of their society. Especially those who are far removed-and may even wish to define themselves apart from-London and other places that were and are more “plugged-in”.
After all, Britain was on the edge of starvation during much of WWII as a result of their unprotected globalized Empire. That may nothing compared to what went down in many, many of The Colonies throughout the British Empire, but it’s entirely plausible
It’s still an ill-conceived plan certainly. But it’s not hard to imagine why many Britons-even those from problematic factions-may have profoundly different desires and wishes than the Old School British Imperialists.
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Sorry folks, the end of the third paragraph should read “Entirely plausible motivating factor”.
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Lincolnshire constituency boundary changes, new name is Poland West.
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