I won’t defend the Union anymore. Neither should you | Unionists need to get off the defensive and start celebrating the UK.
I won’t defend the Union anymore. Neither should you | Unionists need to get off the defensive and start celebrating the UK.
4 comments
No, no, no! We should still be in the EU and facing gas shortages like Germany are. I will not be happy until we are back in the EU. Those evil boomer brexiteers have ruined everything for me. Reeeeeeeeee!!
Hey, I think the main problem here is that there is a significant amount of people in NI, Scotland and Wales that wish to break away and the more the unionist parties stick their fingers in their ears and shout “lalalala I can’t hear you” the less people have faith in the union.
If you are a Unionist, Id be asking myself why the Unionists parties are not prioritising reform to the union before its too late.
> a political system in which national unity and solidarity are central values
Sure, “solidarity”. That’s a nice word. But apart from some Labour votes in Wales there are no extant left wing unionist parties outside England.
So literally the opposite of solidarity. The union has really just become a bunch of Thatcher voting ‘member-berries like the author. Who want to force people to “start celebrating the UK” rather than “make the UK worth celebrating”.
Polls are clear, there *is* a shared national identity amongst young people in the UK already. It’s just the opposite of the author’s “wallowing in post-imperial guilt, lingering in the shadow of the EU”. Why should Scottish/Northern Irish youth not have it if Westminister is so set on denying it.
I’ve always called myself British. I think of England Scotland and Wales as just different regions of “My homeland”.
This bloke however, is a dickhead. It’s amazing that any rando can start a substack blog and get so much attention on this subreddit.
End of the day national unity isn’t coming from the history, the institutions, or the piddling land. It’s going to come from the people feeling unified with each other, as people. Our country is tiny compared to others that manage national unity just fine. The underlying issue is that people in this country only feel a very weak connection with each other, even when they’re really short distances away.
A part of me blames the transport network. There’s famously little by way of motorways headed up north and into Scotland. Newcastle to Edinburgh on the train takes an hour and a half, insane for what (in a unified country) would be considered neighbouring cities. Then of course there’s the outrageous rail fares from anywhere to anywhere else.