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Luke P
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Not welcome at the English ClubThis made me laugh. This is a quote from an English nationalist forum that I got today.
"The rubric for this forum reads, "Anglocentric news views and campaigns". In my view, and I can only talk for myself, a 'Britocentric' poster has no place here."
Nice. I will admit no-one on this site has been quite so blatantly censorial, yet.
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Luke P
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Sound familiar?:
english_republic wrote:Destroying the UK would mean that England would have to re-negotiate with the EU (i.e it would be a chance to leave or heavily reform it). If we stayed in the EU as England, at least there would be a nation called "England". We'd have our own voice within the EU.
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babykitten
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Re: Not welcome at the English Club | Luke P wrote: | This made me laugh. This is a quote from an English nationalist forum that I got today.
"The rubric for this forum reads, "Anglocentric news views and campaigns". In my view, and I can only talk for myself, a 'Britocentric' poster has no place here."
Nice. I will admit no-one on this site has been quite so blatantly censorial, yet. |
See Luke, the thing is with English Nationalism is that the UK government ALREADY speaks mainly for England, or at least the south east of England. This is no surprise given that, a) the major population centre is there and b) government is there.
The history of the UK parliament is that in theory both the parliaments of Scotland and England were abolished and replaced by a UK parliament. However, in reality, the UK parliament was simply a reconvening of an enlarged English parliament. It was in the same building, using ALL the conventions, rules and regulations, 'constitution', pomp and ceremony of the old English parliament. Everything that was different with the Scottish parliament was simply discarded. At first there was not even Scottish consituencies. The Scottish MPs all represented a single "Scotland" constituency.
It's no wonder that the union was simply seen as a takeover in London. Arguably, with devolution this view that the UK parliament is for England has got worse, because we often hear "You Scots have got your own parliament". So the UK parliament is EVEN MORE regarded as speaking for England only.
I have no problem with genuine English Nationalism, even though I don't really see it as all that necessary given the huge bias towards the, by far, largest part of the UK.
However, a lot of it does seem to stem from the kind of things that Scottish Nationalists are often accused of, even though they are a tiny minority of Scots supporting Scottish independence. English Nationalism is far more likely to talk about Scots in negative ways, and to thtow up old myths about Scotland not paying her way and new myths like there being a Labour Scottish Raj running the UK, and Scottish MPs blocking English reforms or Scottish MPs deciding the government that England gets.
True, Scots seem to be 'over-represented' (if that even makes sense in a UK context) in the UK government at the moment, but this has not always been the case. In fact it was often the exact opposite.
As for Scottish MPs deciding the UK government, are people actually aware of just how few Scottish MPs there are? 59, in total. London alone returned more Labour MPs than the whole of Scotland at the last general election. But we never hear complaints from south east Tories about London voters forcing us to have a Labour government again and again.
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babykitten
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| Luke P wrote: | Sound familiar?:
english_republic wrote:Destroying the UK would mean that England would have to re-negotiate with the EU (i.e it would be a chance to leave or heavily reform it). If we stayed in the EU as England, at least there would be a nation called "England". We'd have our own voice within the EU. |
It doesn't really sound familiar to be honest.
Plenty of unionists have claimed that Scottish independence would result in an AUTOMATIC DISMISSAL of Scotland from the EU, however, here, an independent England would simply result in having to renegotiate.
Nobody really knows for sure what would happen to Scotland with regards the EU, but I can't really see Scotland being expelled, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the EU is all about enlargement and if you believe UKIP, about creating an EU superstate. So why would they expel current members just because they achieved independence from a larger state?
Secondly, I don't think the EU would expel one of the largest suppliers of oil and the country with arguably the largest renewable resources in the whole of Europe.
Thirdly, there are precedents like Greenland, who, although not achieving full independence, were required to specially apply to leave the EU upon self-government.
Clearly, if England ever achieved independence (from itself?!?! LOL) then I don't think England would be expelled either.
This is very different from "having to renegotiate with the EU". I think the quote you give above is correct. An independent Scotland and an independent England would both have to renegotiate with the EU. But that is not the same as expulsion and having to apply to re-enter.
Incidentally, if Scotland became independent then clearly the remaining UK would also have to renegotiate with the EU as the population would change meaning that the financials would need renegotiated, the representation would need renegotiated and so on.
But neither would be automatically expelled and have to apply to rejoin. This is just fantasy land in my opinion.
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Holebender
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For the hard of thinking, the reason the current Labour government is dominated by MPs from the fringes of the UK is pretty simple; During the 1980s and most of the '90s the UK had large numbers of Tory MPs and pretty much the only Labour MPs elected represented constituencies in Scotland, Wales, and the north of England. These MPs, naturally, reached the most senior positions in their party hierarchy and, when Labour gained enough MPs to form a government, their senior members were put into the highest government offices.
It's an accident of history. Will any of these great democrats object so vocally when the next UK government has nothing but Old Etonians in it?
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