A Federal Destiny

Abstract

Not surprisingly, UK nationalism has not died quietly. The transition from a polity based upon the eighteenth-century nation-state to one more suited to a European role in the twenty-first century has been less than smooth. The history of the post-Second World War era has been one of illusions interspersed occasionally with bouts of realism. Even in the 1990s the illusion of British independence (and English exceptionalism) continues to infuse policy. As part of a dogged refusal to accept British absorption into the European Union some nationalists were still toying with the fanciful image of Britain as an independent off-shore global player: a northern hemisphere ‘Asian Tiger’ — like South Korea or Singapore. Yet, the story was not wholly one of delusions of grandeur, for at the same time as these continuing conceits, the realistic strain in the country had secured Britain’s membership of the European Community in 1973 and had signed the Single European Act in 1987.