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England never dealt with the pain, loss & anger caused by the humiliatingly rapid collapse of empire. Instead the pain was buried under the lie that the retreat from empire was voluntary. It has now erupted in the seething, angry, irrational form of the toxic Brexit Hulk.
Older baby-boomers grew up when we could feel ourselves to be the master race, the rulers of the world's greatest ever empire. No matter how humble you were, you had that over any foreigner. In 25 years we went from that to being the sick-man of Europe begging to enter the EEC.
England's post-imperial identity is built on the lie that we withdrew from empire voluntarily and gracefully. No country voluntarily abandons the world's biggest empire in 25 years. We were rejected, defeated and humiliated. But that painful truth was buried under a lie.
If England is to be a normal nation it has to abandon that lie and acknowledge that the loss of empire was a humiliating, painful and humiliating defeat, not a graceful withdrawal. Only by working through the pain will we be able to accept our reduced status in the world.
