@montie It’s called a RECIPROCAL RIGHT. We get the right to live, work, study, retire in 30 other countries. A right we don’t have with “old allies”. However we have been to war with, or against, sometimes both with every member of the EU over the past few hundred years.
@montie So it’s total garbage to say we have little historical connection with EU countries.
@montie After Brexit, the only EU citizens to lose the right to live, work, study, retire in 30 countries are BRITISH CITIZENS. Do you really think 17.4m voters all knowingly voted for that?
@montie The historical connections between Iberia, France, the Low Countries is 10,000 years old. Trade, migration have gone on that long. Italy for over 2000 years. Germany and Denmark for 1600 yrs, Scandinavia 1300 yrs etc. French monarchs ruled England until the 15th Century.
@montie The trade links between Britain, Greece, Italy go back to the Bronze Age. The word Britain is derived from Greek. Trade with the Eastern Baltic went on in the Middle Ages via the Hanseatic League.
@montie The Royal houses of Europe inter married from Charlemagne and Alfred the Great onwards, including with Poland, Bohemia, Hungary. When newly independent countries emerged in the 19C (eg Romania, Greece) grandchildren of Queen Victoria were usually chosen as monarch.
@montie During the 19C Britain provided refuge for refugees from Poland and other East European states subject to Tsarist rule. Especially in later 19C Jewish refugees escaping pogroms in these countries.
@montie As the Ottoman Empire collapsed after 1850, Britain played a key enabling role for newly freed states (Serbia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria). One of Gladstone’s most famous speeches was defending the rights of Bulgarians from Turkish atrocities.
@montie And of course Malta and Cyprus were parts of the British Empire. Even before WW1 (Britain entered to defend Belgian neutrality) and WW2 (Britain declared war to defend Poland), we had strong historical connections with every current EU member.
@montie I guess you skipped this bit in your geography curriculum, but glad to help set the record straight.
@montie If you’d been a member of the British 18C “elite”, you’d have gone on a Grand Tour of Europe to inculcate you in the “historical connections” with these countries. As a 1970s student, I went on InterRail instead for the same reason as did many of my Remainer elite contemporaries
@montie Oh, and I grew up and went to school in the 1960s with the children of Polish, Czech, Ukrainian immigrants who arrived during or immediately after WW2.
