With or without EU

Jorge González-Gallarza | Issue 6 | Brussels, Magazine, Uncategorised

From the Archive

19th June 1973: Gertrude Shilling's Royal Ascot 'Common Market' outfit which was designed by her milliner son David. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Did post-imperial syndrome cause Britain to join and then leave the EU?

“The future of Europe and its people now worries me more than that of Britain,” declares Robert Tombs here, perhaps surprisingly. Shouldn’t Tombs, a Euro-hater, be rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of the continent’s demise? In fact, This Sovereign Isle freely admits that Brexit may spell trouble for Britain, and that the EU may one day overcome its divisions. The likelier scenario, though, is that the case for Brexit will be substantiated by the bloc’s further engorging of its political superstructure. Tombs believes that joining the European Economic Community (EEC) was done spontaneously and erroneously. This scepticism demarcates Tombs from fellow Brexiters who initially supported EU membership, on the condition that the bloc remained a free-trade area instead of a supranational entity. This is a hope Tombs dismisses as utterly naïve. Tombs sees the incompatibility of the different rationales for European unity made on each side of the Channel as a cause of inevitable rup...

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