The most imbecilic thing (speaking as a native Brit who gained French nationality through marriage) is I can attest to the obvious truism that our near neighbours are VASTLY more similar to us than they are different. Indeed, you'll find more differences between villagers in Yorkshire (a famously self-contained county) than you will between the UK and France
Given our very different histories, not only have we ended up with very similar societies - characterised only be differences in degree - we have ended up with very similar challenges, and a very similar range of opposition politicians espousing a very similar range of solutions.
What Europe (and the UK, and Yorkshire) need is a lot more focus on the similarities and a lot less 19th century thinking in the 21st century.
Expecting to be called a traitor, rootless and all the usual claptrap. Bring it on, it's better we know who you are.
It is sad and depressing the same things could have been said, and were said, decades ago (eg Dean Acheson to the effect of GB losing an empire but not yet found a role, in 1962). Mrs Thatcher got closest to finding a possible role in pushing the European single market, which remains an unfinished project. America’s retreat will force all Western European nations to work together, and not just to repel Russia. This should be the basis of Britain’s foreign policy: a single market in every sense of the word, and a foreign policy independent of the US and China.
Perhaps it is life on a large island that shapes the English understanding of Europe. England is, in a sense, separated from the continent, even if only by a narrow strip of water.
It is comparable to the way many Americans view the world around them: the USA is so vast that all other countries must surely be insignificant.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb explained the perspective of Finland—a country far removed from Central Europe—by telling a Finnish joke.
An American, a Frenchman, a German, and a Finn are asked to say something about elephants.
The American presents a few business ideas, the Frenchman wants to write a cookbook featuring elephant dishes, the German dreams of a three-volume encyclopedia containing everything there is to know about elephants, and the Finn wonders what elephants think of Finland.
The most imbecilic thing (speaking as a native Brit who gained French nationality through marriage) is I can attest to the obvious truism that our near neighbours are VASTLY more similar to us than they are different. Indeed, you'll find more differences between villagers in Yorkshire (a famously self-contained county) than you will between the UK and France
Given our very different histories, not only have we ended up with very similar societies - characterised only be differences in degree - we have ended up with very similar challenges, and a very similar range of opposition politicians espousing a very similar range of solutions.
What Europe (and the UK, and Yorkshire) need is a lot more focus on the similarities and a lot less 19th century thinking in the 21st century.
Expecting to be called a traitor, rootless and all the usual claptrap. Bring it on, it's better we know who you are.
It is sad and depressing the same things could have been said, and were said, decades ago (eg Dean Acheson to the effect of GB losing an empire but not yet found a role, in 1962). Mrs Thatcher got closest to finding a possible role in pushing the European single market, which remains an unfinished project. America’s retreat will force all Western European nations to work together, and not just to repel Russia. This should be the basis of Britain’s foreign policy: a single market in every sense of the word, and a foreign policy independent of the US and China.
Congrqtulations for having avoided the tired old cliché'd Burns quotation.
I prefer the mythical headline “Fog in Channel, Continent cut off”
Geography influences one's own perception.
Perhaps it is life on a large island that shapes the English understanding of Europe. England is, in a sense, separated from the continent, even if only by a narrow strip of water.
It is comparable to the way many Americans view the world around them: the USA is so vast that all other countries must surely be insignificant.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb explained the perspective of Finland—a country far removed from Central Europe—by telling a Finnish joke.
An American, a Frenchman, a German, and a Finn are asked to say something about elephants.
The American presents a few business ideas, the Frenchman wants to write a cookbook featuring elephant dishes, the German dreams of a three-volume encyclopedia containing everything there is to know about elephants, and the Finn wonders what elephants think of Finland.