Firstly let me say that if this offended you in any way please let me unreservedly apologise.
Many of my best friends are European and if my wife would let me I would be using a civil partnership with one of them to retain EU citizenship. Frankly, the best thing English (and the British) has is the quality of its neighbours.
To understand why I made the comparison though it makes sense you look into the English psyche…
Churchill is seen as the ‘greatest ever Englishman’ by many and that’s been proven in general popularity votes. It’s not universal and many, particularly on the left would point out of many of his failings for example the Indian famine. The mainstream ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’ though wouldn’t even be aware.
There is a wide view of English society that loves to think about WWII as some golden uplands of coming together and standing alone. I think that is fairly common and comes from media, film and education. It’s also seen as being the British that did this.
You’d be pushed to take anybody away from a view that the Blitz was all sing songs in the shelter and doing the Lambeth walk. You’d not be able to point out that the death, destruction and the criminal run black markets that the people were forced to suffer.
Unfortunately, there’s also a view that ‘we did it alone’. ‘The Yanks were late’ and it was all down to us. Understanding of any other countries involvement, of the Indian army, Caribbean soldiers, the free french, Poles etc. is usually not there.
I’ll give an example…The first is that understanding around the Battle of Britain. There were around 15 nationalities that weren’t British involved. As a kid I used to go into the mess of the polish pilots that flew in WWII that settled here. The standard English understanding would be that they were mostly from the home counties with a few Scots possibly.
I should also say that they’ll also invoke Bletchly Park but not understand the debt owed to the polish originally capturing an Engima machine and cracking the code.
All of this nonsense has been invoked as part of Brexit. It has been pulled on to say it will be marvellous. It’s been invoked by people that weren’t alive during WWII and sold to people none of whom were adults during WWII.
Boris is trying to invoke Churchill (with minor echoes of WWII) to play to this. I was making a point that he’s not and Chamberlain. is just somebody who would be seen as a failure in that context.
I’m sure there’s a few frothing at the mouth idiots that would invoke Nazis when mentioning the EU but that’s because they are morons and racists. They loose immediately due to Godwins law.
The main focus here is the British (and particularly the English). The Brexiters have fallen for their own untrue fables. Nobody else matters to them. and WWII is a point it time.
The British as are like some drunk past it jock at the end of the bar in an American movie who lives for the rest of their life through winning the state championship in High School. It’s the last time they felt important and comfortable and they constantly hark back to it.
Meanwhile, the nerd has gone out and made friends and moved on to more successes and doesn’t haven’t to look backwards.
I so wish we a nerd of a country like the most of Europe.
