55BC-409
Becoming Europeans
Julius Caesar’s offer for Britain to join Europe under the terms of the Roman Republic is patriotically rejected. But the treacherous British elites have sniffed out Rome’s international lifestyle and are soon going there to deliver a small percentage of tribal GDP as capitol offers. At 43, they understand the modern financial vehicles known as coins and are worth attaching them for the European superstate of Emperor Claudius. Boadicea (although it probably does not exist) tries to regain control, but the wheels get out of his carriage and, for the next 350 years, the British are ruled by a restlessly toga-ed continental elite and their collaborators.
409-443
Brexit # 1
The legions leave Britain, to fight each other where it matters. Tired of taxes without defense, the British cry out for freedom and go it alone. But they are unable to obtain mutually acceptable bilateral trade agreements with the Picts and Scots, who insist on their right to attack in coracles. So the British beg the Romans to let them return. The Romans are too busy trying to keep Hungarians newly adhering to European standards of behavior, so desperate Britons turn to some obscure Germans called Englishmen, who take the approach as follows: AD 443 This year he sent the Welsh Britons to Rome and they offered assistance against the Picts, but they gave them none, so they fought with Attila, king of the Huns, and then sent them to the English.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The British agree to fight in exchange for residence rights in the southeast. But they soon call their dependents, flood the British and impose their own culture.
793-1042
Scandinavian Efta
In 790, New England is closely aligned with Charlemagne’s Europe. Then, freedom-loving Scandinavians flooded the north and east, and finally made it possible for Cnut to make England part of his Danish empire. Three Danish kings are followed by Eduardo, the Confessor (half Norman) and Harold Godwinson (a half Danish Wessex warlord, hated by everyone north of the Thames). It is difficult to understand what English sovereignty means.
1066
Reunion with europe
Guilherme, the Conqueror, creates a new single market with the north of France. Being English now means taking care of pigs, sheep and cows so that the French-speaking elite can delight in pork, lamb and beef. For the next 900 years, any monoglot English is not quite like me faut. And if you don’t understand that, well, it just shows.
1533
Brexit # 2
Henry VIII wants a divorce, very, very much; a supposed new elite wants to disorganize the Catholic Church. They use the most advanced German social media technology – printing – to make up fake news: if England breaks with Rome, there will be a financial dividend for everyone and a boost for Tudor NHS.
‘Then these great old exactions will cease … So we will have enough and more will suffice us, whatever the best hospital that has ever been founded for us. ‘
Supplycacion for the Beggars (1528/9)
1689
Back to Europe
Brexit # 2 plunges the British Isles into fierce wars. Finally, desperate Englishmen invite the Dutch to invade and settle things. Thus, England gains a Dutch king who barely speaks English, and ceases to exist in 1707, when a new thing called Great Britain gains a German king who barely speaks English. But that’s okay because the two kings, like the entire English elite, can speak French.
1815
Brexit # 3
At Waterloo, the new United Kingdom welcomes 28,000 men, more than half of them Irish or Scots, and defeats Napoleon thanks to another 90,000 European soldiers. But being European is hard work, so let’s go. Our exit strategy is brilliant: handing over the rich industrial region of the Rhineland to militaristic Prussia – thus condemning the Danes, Poles, Austrians, French and practically everyone for the next 130 years.
1880
Brexit # 4
Under Disraeli, the United Kingdom plays the game in Europe, becoming a referee for the continent. But the first major populist, Gladstone, escapes unnecessary complications in Europe. For 20 years, everyone knows that France and Russia vs. Austria and Germany are coming, but we insist that we have no skin in the game. When it is too late to stop the flood, we finally support France and the horrible dictatorship that is Tsarist Russia.
1914-75
Two world wars and 1 are Act
Having won at a terrible cost, we again pretend to be non-Europeans, until we have to join France and the horrible dictatorship that is Stalinist Russia to do it all again 20 years later. But we cannot tell the difference between “we resisted bravely until the bigger players turned the tables” (true) and “we won world war two” (false), although Americans now clearly rule the world and we clearly no longer have an empire .
Bravely facing this national illusion, Edward Heath, supported by Margaret Thatcher, just overcomes Labor and the Powellites (‘weakling) and takes us to Europe again. In 1975, we agreed by a large majority to remain there.
2021
Ourselves, alone
Thatcher is expelled from her own party for becoming an American libertarian. His army of continuity, “like a demented Marxist sect” (Douglas Hurd), unleashes a cultural war against Europe because he hates maternity leave. The burly John Major says goodbye to the “bastards” (his word), but the coward David Cameron allows the “spinning-eyed loons” (his words) to have his referendum. Encouraged by tax exile news owners, crazy Trotskyists and the moving overconfidence of pro-Europeans in our collective sanity, the English National Party, led by the popular comedy that became Boris “Merrie Monarch” Johnson, narrowly wins, then affirms that a -all tie (1975 v 2016) represents the eternal will of the English people, so the rest of us are traitors.
Next
The United Kingdom dies and the British are finally alone. Happy New Year.
James Hawes’ most recent book is The Shortest History of England