What does it mean to you to be British today?
I find it hard to answer this question. A necessary legal technicality? One step up from statelessness? Resentment? Anger? Shame? Horror?
The UKIP/Brexiter/Tory attempt to assert Britishness has so mangled, impoverished and destroyed the notion that it only conjures up negative emotions. And having lost our moorings in the EU, a small shift of opinion in Scotland is all it will take and - RIP Britain (1707- 202?).
I don’t think you need an emotional attachment to the state of which you are a citizen. You need the state to be rational, protect your rights and provide opportunities. On all these counts the British state 2016-20 has failed its citizens dramatically.
Since the 2016 coup d’état, the resort to emotional patriotism by those in power, and their attempt to base their policies on dividing the population into conflicting groups, has been no more than charlatanism, not government.
This “official” substitution of emotion for reason is pernicious. Please peeps keep your wits about you. Love your family, friends, your pets ... don’t love government ministers!
And on these same counts - rationality, protection of rights, provision of opportunities - the 🇪🇺is a model of achievement that leaves the 🇬🇧 far behind.
