I have to sadly admit that I am a baby boomer, born just after the Second World War, and grew up surrounded by echoes of empire. Indeed we still ruled over India at the time. Schooldays were spent in classrooms with world maps showing Britain at the centre and our territories and dominions coloured pink. There was an awful lot of pink.
And we were taught that the people over whom we ruled were grateful for it!
We would listen to Two Way Family Favourites on Sunday afternoon as British military bases around the world in Cyprus or Singapore were connected to friends and relations back home in blighty. How natural it all seemed.
But continental Europe remained a blank. They spoke different languages and might have well been on another planet as far as the BBC was concerned. We only ever heard them speaking through the whining and crackling on the old mahogany radio as we tuned from the BBC Light programme to the BBC Home service. And not understanding a word of it, we turned the dial quickly on.
So, it is perhaps not altogether surprising that the older generation have a certain world view and articles like this one HERE can be written and hit the nail bang on the head.
Realising our changed position in the world is a process that is still going on for many Britons but Brexit will perhaps help to make clear we are a mid sized European nation with no special claim to be treated differently to any other. The Germans and the French (and most other nations) realised a long time ago that individually no European country has the economic or diplomatic weight to allow it to influence world affairs. And yet Europe needs to make its collective voice heard and the EU, or something very like it was, and always will be, inevitable.
Post Brexit this will become ever clearer. We will learn to dance to the tunes of other more powerful nations, until we take our place again in the European ensemble.
