Peter Hitchens- Why England should leave the UK instead of persuading the others to stay and embrace a golden future
What are we waiting for? All the other nations of the UK are set on tearing themselves away from England. I have given up trying to persuade them to stay. Let us leave them instead. Have a referendum if you must, but I reckon that any party that puts an English secession from the UK in its general election manifesto will win a smashing majority. You could not call this ‘independence’ since England has never depended on the other countries in these islands. I would call it the Restoration of England, in recollection of that other great moment in our history when Oliver Cromwell’s nightmare republican junta crumbled in 1660 and we returned with relief to our ancient laws and liberties.
A fine example of this:
// The Tory Leave mentality that precipitated Brexit drew on the long-standing tradition of English exceptionalism. The best description I know of this mentality, Fintan O’Toole’s Heroic Failure, characterises it as ‘the transformation of a screw-up into a demonstration of character’.
Examples include the Charge of the Light Brigade, Sir John Franklin’s doomed attempt to find the Northwest Passage in the 1840s, and Dunkirk. In each case, the British character is seen to rise above self-inflicted disaster through studied indifference, and thereby to manifest its inner superiority. //
The Mass Psychology of Brexit Eli Zaretsky
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/march/the-mass-psychology-of-brexit
Would this be the same exceptionalism that marked England’s height over all other nations in the nineteenth century?
The “God is an Englishman” lot are all dead.
The book quoted is:
Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain Fintan O’Toole 2018
To give you an idea:
Ch 1 THE PLEASURES OF SELF-PITY
// Self-pity thus combines two things that may seem incompatible: a deep sense of grievance and a high sense of superiority. It is this doubleness that makes it so important to the understanding of Brexit, a political phenomenon that is driven by ideas that would not otherwise combine. //
Self-pity, huh?
It looks more like sour grapes from people who could not compete.
Yeah and in North America a new sovereign territory should form too.
Picture a freedom, low energy, non opec affiliated loving patriot populace forming together with Alaska, Yukon, NYT with Alberta, Saskatchewan heartland all the way down grabbing the solid red states including Texas eastward to Florida.
Let the coasts starve in the Dark.
Exactly my thinking too. With AZ across to Republican SoCal from Dana Pt to San Diego.
Comment from a BC resident. I noticed you avoided including BC-wise decision.
What Hitchens is proposing is quite different, to your proposal. He wishes to shake off two ingrate territories that are always threatening independence, that should be fairly easy to achieve. The Northern Ireland territory recently voted in Sinn Fein whose prime motive is to conjoin NI and Eire. So once again the proposal should be acceptable.
Your proposal would require a great deal of negotiation to amalgamate potential members which would be very difficult, I cannot envision that the US states would welcome a bunch of socialists wedded to a third-world health system to their new country. Also Yukon is firmly affixed to Ottawas teat and would likely not enjoy attempting to be independent of canaduhs largesse.
Interesting concept-I definitely support a canaduh “the west wants OUT” idea. I just cannot see that the canaduh west is a desirable partner for this proposed new country.
The idea and genesis would be from the US first of course, Canadian territories asking to join might take a while, if accepted at all…a dominion break up would first need to happen.
Who is John Galt?
The old dominion is already broken, and it is not worth fixing.
Heh.
England is the only nation in the world that doesn’t have its own legislature…
I would prefer to go in the opposite direction: Repeal all of the stupid devolution legislation, shut down the regional legislatures, laws return to the English version. Remind them that they all lost wars hundreds of years ago. Their “countries” ceased to exist at that point, they are now regions of England. If they don’t like it, the Irish sea or the Channel are that way.
Just so you know, Kate.
GAB is reproducing this.
Ever since Blair created the local governments for Scotland and Wales there has been a push for independence. Do these people understand the logical outcome of this desire ? Pushing England into abandoning the Union would leave the outliers to live with consequences of small nations existing at the whim of larger ones. Their faith in the EU solving problems they doubted the UK could achieve is not the wise choice in my view.
If they succeed surely we could at least help Quebec with their dreaded independence. Imagine Quebec without the rest of the deranged dominion to shake down. And as a bonus, they’d have to take the Spawn-Fuhrer with them.
Nicely articulated (as usual for Hitchens). Can be flipped to the Canadian West.
But let’s face it the gormless gitts and socialist control freak babies will never allow it. The gravy train can’t be upended.
Everywhere the boot approaches our face for infinity.
Quebec could make it on its own as an independent nation if it had’nt covered its resources with water to generate power. In the age of nuclear power its the dumbest thing they have done,only exceeded by Manitoba. No resources and polluting the water in the holding lake by melting the perma frost and ruining the fishing industry as well.
“Quebec could make it on its own as an independent nation”- never in a million years, their economy is dependent on never-ending equalization grants from canaduh, and grifter companies like SNC Lavalin and Bombardier harvesting canaduh tax dollars.
And that’s the bad news, because I would surely love to be rid of them.
Hitchens’ idea has the same zero chance of occurring as western separation…and for the same reason: too many mushy urbanites in the respective electorates.
If Canada had a referendum on keeping Quebec in the union, would they survive?
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This is something that has bemused me somewhat over the years.
We get the grumpy Scots moaning about being oppressed and calling for Scottish independence, yet James I anyway?
Following the death of Elizebeth there was a succession issue. Who did they offer the crown to? James VI, King of SCOTLAND.
The Union came from Scotland, not the other way around. It is England who should be asking for independence. Scotland can only ask for England to be expelled.
Probably.
I’m a Crab, not a constitutional lawyer 😀
The Union came from Scotland going bankrupt and needing England to take them over. And this was after England had run out of Scottish royalty and had to import Germans to sit on the throne.