My Passport is from the UK, though it lapsed five years ago. My birth place is in England. My mother was Norwegian, though naturalised in the UK before she died. My father was born to a Welsh lady - though she was as Herefordian English as you could imagine in reality, and my [UK] grandfather was a Herefordian [born, worked and died in the county] though with many Welsh ancestors. So I am more Norwegian than Welsh, and more Welsh than English, at least concerning ancestors.
What am I? British is the simple answer. Born here, brought up here, and worked all my life here. If offered the UK variant I am happy to go with that. If only offered the English variant I am still content. But the truth is that I am a white North-western European, and for what it is worth I am like many Norwegians in having a hefty dose of scepticism about the direction of travel seen over the last four decades of UK membership of the EEC/EU.
One admirable thing about Norwegian nationalism is that it is mainstream, and not a political statement or exclusive to any specific political angle, at least since 1905 when Norway separated from the Swedish nation. They fly flags at almost any excuse. The Norwegian National Day - seventeenth of May - is celebrated by school children holding parades all over the country rather than what most would do and hold military parades. You might think the Norwegian Army would struggle to hold simultaneous parades in many places at once!
Mainstream nationalism in the UK is rather muted. Perhaps this is because most people are so sure of the nation that outward showing of it is spare. I don't know, but politically it seems associated with the right to the embarrassment of non-right wing people.
I don't post about Brexit as a rule, because my view would possibly be incendiary for many here, and I deplored both the campaigns for Brexit and Remain as being typically devoid of truth or actual reasoned debate, but there is a rational argument for a relationship such as Norway has developed with the EU without membership. As with any trading relationship with the EU, Norway has its grumbles about rules and restrictions placed on it by the EU to facilitate trade, but that is always the case in any given trading relationship. In the UK we shall face many challenges over time in seeking to build a stable trading relationship with the EU, as we shall in developing trade with the USA and and other trading nations and trading blocks. Each will bring some restrictions on the Law and sovereignty to facilitate economic prosperity.
My views on the EU were formed in the early nineteen-eighties and concerned, initially, the Common Agricultural Policy, and the way that was run to the very considerable disadvantage of the UK agricultural industry as it then existed. I have seen nothing to indicate my early apprehensions nearly four decades ago were unfounded across many aspects of trade far beyond agriculture, and so I look at Norway, and I think that somehow - and in spite of a very real "project fear campaign" by the EU joiners when Norway last voted on EU membership - they have steered a very sensible course in relation to the EU without becoming a member state.
The UK has a lot of catching up to do now as no doubt that damage - serious damage - has been done in respect of how other EU electorates now view us. The result of Brexit will do quite serious economic damage in the short term, but how successful the UK [or if the Union breaks up the constituent nations] is economically, depends on so many factors, including the virus, measures to combat global climate change, and also how industrious and inventive we show ourselves over the coming years.
One argument for EU membership was that it allows the UK to punch above its weight. I have always deplored that idea. Why would any nation want to punch above its weight? Only to satisfy some pseudo-nationalist notion that it deserves to because of innate superiority would be my thought on that. Clearly the UK and its colonies and dominions were the sole allies for a period in the Second World War fighting Nazism. That is the last time the UK [with her allies across the globe] could feel rightfully proud of herself in what was a true leadership role. Since then we have muddled along making pragmatic policy decisions that often were very far from anything we should be proud of. The toppling of Iran's Mossadec regime in a coup, and the Suez affair are two major examples in the nineteen-fifties, and each decade brought similar - still wanting to punch above our weight - exemplary of imperial echoes.
That has to stop. No interference with other sovereign nations for national self-interest. We may bring economic sanctions to bear such as restricting the cotton trade with China over forced labour and so on, but certainly that costs us as much as China. Not warfare over what are matters of other nations' own affairs.
The line may well be drawn in terms of aggressive warfare on an ally, but conventional war is now all but impossible in the nuclear age. The real war is on terrorism and as we are all too acutely aware, terrorism can be home grown.
If the UK needs to do anything urgently, then we need to clean house with regard to our own system of elections, and constitution. The Lords needs to go, and first past the post MP elections. We probably do need a second chamber to replace the Lords, as a stay on the power of any political party in government, and this should be constituted with staggered annual of biennial elections of a portion of the second house and also a time limit of service for members ...
With PR for MPs we would get away from the gridlock of a two party system that does nothing for continuity and allows for both the left and right to dominate in turns, even on a significantly minority popular vote. If a multi-party system emerged the new elected second house would then gradual centre over time on a stabilising counter to any potential threat to proper elections being held.
Probably more than a penny's worth but not more than tuppence! Best wishes from George
