Thursday, August 11, 2016

''England, Secede! '' Glen Newey

''One way round the legal problems posed by Brexit might be to mould it on the EU’s current relationship with the Channel Islands and Isle of Man. I grew up in, or on, Jersey (more on the preposition soon). It’s an odd place, for which the term ‘insular’, if anything, understates its inverted-telescope worldview. Jersey people can tell if someone comes from elsewhere in Britain in two ways. One is that they say ‘on’ rather than ‘in’ Jersey, which irks locals because it suggests, accurately enough, that the place is a windblasted reef jutting from the surf. The other is that they refer to Britain as ‘the mainland’ – because, for Jersey people, the mainland is Jersey. This helps make Jersey a microcosm of the attitudes that ‘Fog in Channel: Continent Isolated’ Englanders hold towards Albion, and a propitious model for its constitutional future..''

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