Islands in the Land
The cynical view here in London is that the current incumbent of No. 10 Downing Street—Her Majesty’s Prime Minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson—is a man without principles, either personal or political. How well Johnson emerges from the coronavirus pandemic crisis will be what defines his political career, since he ascended to this, the highest elected office in our resurgently green (as a function of the pandemic) yet increasingly unpleasant land, only in July of last year. But it’s worth considering what Johnson’s vision for a Britain liberated from the shackles of the European Union looks like, since it runs so contrary to the usual one you Americans have of our scepter’d isle.
What I wish to suggest is that Johnson and his team have a separatist’s image of Britain as the California to the E.U.’s United States. Moreover, it’s not a vision much at variance with the reality; after all, there’s a big disjunction between the self-conception of any given nation—or state, for that matter—and its reality. Californians
