55BC-409
Become Europeans
Julius Caesar’s offer for Britain to join Rome under the terms of the Republic is rejected patriotically. But the treacherous British elite sniffed the international lifestyle of Rome and soon went there to hand over a small percentage of the tribe’s GDP as offers to the Capitol. By 43, they understood modern financial vehicles known as coins and were worth annexing by Emperor Claudius’ European superstate. Boadicea tries (though probably does not exist) to take control again, but the wheels come off her chariot, and the British are ruled for the next 350 years by a funny continental elite and their collaborators.
409-443
Brexit # 1
The legions leave Britannia to fight each other where it matters. Tired of taxes without defense, the British cry for freedom and go it alone. But they cannot mutually accept bilateral trade agreements with the Picts and the Scots, insisting on their right to attack in corals. So the British begged the Romans to let them in again. The Romans were too busy keeping the newly arrived Hungarians to European standards of conduct, and so the desperate British turned to some dark Germans called the English, who took the approach as follows: AD443 This year the British Welsh send to Rome and help them against the Picts, but they give them nothing, for that they fight with Attila, the King of the Huns, and then send them to the English.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The English agree to wage the struggle in exchange for right of abode in the southeast. But they soon call their dependents, engulf the British and impose their own culture.
793-1042
Scandinavian Efta
By 790, the new England was now in line with the Europe of Charlemagne. Then freedom-loving Scandinavians dominate the north and east and finally enable Cnut to make England part of his Danish empire. Three Danish kings are followed by Edward the Confessor (half-Norman) and Harold Godwinson (a half-Danish Wessex warlord, hated by all north of the Thames). It is difficult to find out what English sovereignty means.
1066
Reunion with europe
William the Conqueror creates a new single market with Northern France. Being English now means caring for pigs, sheep and cows so that the French-speaking elite can indulge in pig, sheep and cattle. For the next 900 years, any English English man is not completely like the fault. And if you do not understand it, then just show it.
1533
Brexit # 2
Henry VIII really, really wants to go bad; a new elite wants to disrupt the Catholic Church. They use leading German social media technology – printing – to invent fake news: if England breaks with Rome, there will be a financial dividend for everyone, and a boost for the Tudor NHS.
‘Then these great earlier executions will cease … Then will we have enough, and more then it will suffice for us, it is the best host ever established for us. ‘
Supply of beggars (1528/9)
1689
Back in Europe
Brexit # 2 plunges the British Isles into fierce wars. Finally, the desperate English invite the Dutch to invade and sort things out. England thus gets a Dutch king who can barely speak English and then ceases to exist in 1707 when a new thing called Great Britain gets a German king who can barely speak English. But that’s fine, because both kings, like the entire English elite, can speak French.
1815
Brexit # 3
In Waterloo, the new United Kingdom employs 28,000 men, more than half of them Irish or Scots, and beats Napoleon thanks to another 90,000 European soldiers. But being European is hard work, so we go out. Our exit strategy is brilliant: hand over the rich industrial Rhineland to the militaristic Prussia – and thus the Danes, Poles, Austrians, French and almost all disappear for the next 130 years.
1880
Brexit # 4
Under Disraeli, the United Kingdom plays the game in Europe and becomes arbitrator of the continent. But the first major populist, Gladstone, is withdrawing from unnecessary developments in Europe. For 20 years everyone knows that France and Russia are going to come against Austria and Germany, but we insist that we have no skin in the game. If it is too late to stop the flood, we are finally fluffing for France and the horrific dictatorship that is tsarist Russia.
1914-75
Two world wars and one sensible deed
After winning at an abominable price, we again pretend to be non-Europeans, until 20 years later we have to rejoin France and the horrific dictatorship, Stalinist Russia. But we can not tell the difference between ‘we kept courage until the bigger players turned the game around’ (true) and ‘we won World War II’ (false), even though the Americans now clearly manage the world and we have clearly no longer an empire.
Edward Heath, supported by Margaret Thatcher, was boldly faced with this national delusion, but only Labor and the Powellites (‘fraid so’) and let us re-enter Europe. In 1975, we agreed with a very large majority to stay there.
2021
Ourselves, alone
Thatcher is being kicked out by her own party for becoming an American libertarian. Her continuity army, “like some demented Marxist sect” (Douglas Hurd), unleashes cultural warfare against Europe because they hate maternity leave. The tough John Major dismisses the “bastards” (his word), but the spineless David Cameron lets the “twisting eye lungs” (his words) hold their referendum. The English National Party, led by the popular comedy-turned Boris “Merrie Monarch” Johnson, is fascinated by the new owners of tax-exile, Trotskyite-users, and the touching excess of pro-Europeans in our common sense -all draw (1975 v 2016) represents the eternal will of the English people, so the rest of us are traitors.
Following
The UK dies and the English are finally alone again. Happy New Year.
James Hawes’ latest book is The Shortest History of England