Thread by @MattCarr55

I really can’t see how, after the last four and half years, the breakup of the UK can be avoided. What a historical irony that a Brexit intended to make Britain ‘great again’ actually brings about the demise of ‘Great’ Britain.

I actually don’t see this as a bad thing. After all, the aggressive chauvinistic nationalism, hubris, and exceptionalism that made Brexit possible is predominantly an English phenomenon. Part of the historical paradox whereby Englishness expresses itself through Britishness,

without explicitly recognising that this nationalism is primarily embedded in England rather than the Celtic periphery. A United Ireland is long overdue. Scotland - regardless of the debates about the economic viability of independence- has reached the point when a decisive

breach now seems inevitable. If this happens, Wales may well follow. Then, finally, England will have to decide what it wants to be, and look at the flaws and failings - political, economic, and constitutional - that it has put off dealing with, or blamed on others

Not arguing that Brexit was therefore a progressive development btw - far from it - but a country that was willing to do something so fundamentally harmful, and so stupid, and which allowed itself to be taken over by political forces of the kind we’ve seen, is an ill country

A reactionary, resentful, spoilt country whose delusions of grandeur aren’t matched by a realistic understanding of its place in the world. We need self-knowledge - and humility-to take us to a better place. That won’t happen with the residue of empire clogging up our thinking

With a corrupt, reactionary, and incompetent Tory Party choking the life out the country - a Tory Party that is overwhelmingly English. So let the house of cards come down at last. Let the parting of the ways take place without violence. And let England finally reinvent itself

And develop a new identity based on its best traditions rather than its worst. And let it take is place among other nations, as an ordinary country, not the ‘best’ - and certainly not the worst. Then, perhaps, we might take our place in Europe and the world as equals once again

Led by a younger generation to whom Little England nationalism offers nothing - a younger generation that has shaken off the stale phobias, hatred, and prejudices off their elders and finally begins to build Jerusalem from the moral ruins of Brexitania