Little England Learns Its Place In The World

As the deadline looms for any extension to Britain's transition to lonely outcast in 2021, it is only fitting that Boris "Brexidiot" Johnson should seal that fate by following through on his promise to renege on the UK's Withdrawal Agreement which he only just won an election by promising to sign. No doubt Johnson is fully aware that the Little English have long been infamous in Europe for such acts of duplicity, which was the hallmark of his own stint there as an unreliable journalist. Indeed, the Lyin' King has shown the same duplicity in the course of trade talks with the US. He really is Little England personified.

Duplicitous England has never really been accepted as part of Europe, other than by accident of equally duplicitous geography: a mere 34 kilometres has prevented the frequency of invasions suffered by contintental nations, as has its meagre size and supply of natural resources. After the ignominy of losing the parts of France from which the Normans had successfully invaded, Little England has only thrived as part of a pirate state, from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Elizabeth, enriched only by what it could steal or leech from others by boat and financial alchemy. Even the decision to join the EEC was motivated by greed and envy, rather than any great desire to lead:

Britain joined what was then the European Economic Community in 1973 as the sick man of Europe. By the late 1960s, France, West Germany and Italy — the three founder members closest in size to the UK — produced more per person than it did and the gap grew larger every year. Between 1958, when the EEC was set up, and Britain’s entry in 1973, gross domestic product per head rose 95 per cent in these three countries compared with only 50 per cent in Britain.

After becoming an EEC member, Britain slowly began to catch up. Gross domestic product per person has grown faster than Italy, Germany and France in the more than 40 years since. By 2013, Britain became more prosperous than the average of the three other large European economies for the first time since 1965.

But that status, too, slipped from Little England's grasp, even before the impact of Johnson's appalling mismanagement of the response to the COVID19 pandemic. Since the chart below was compiled, estimates are that Britain will be saddled with more debt than after World War II (which it only finally repaid on 31 December 2006), its citizens no longer able to live, work and trade freely in the world's largest trade bloc amid soaring unemployment.

Source: Institute for Fiscal Studies

There have been endless warnings of Little England's impending, impoverished isolation. Like the Brexit warnings dismissed as "Project Fear", all have gone unheeded, and an Empire on which the sun never set has dwindled to a fractious gang of dependent 'Home Nations' squabbling over their share of the shrinking public purse. 

It's taken ten years for the "Tory faithful" to make the nostalgic fantasy-lined coffin in which their Little England will be lowered to its final resting place.

The end of Brexit transition is the lid.