It could be quite exciting. I mean the idea of an independent Great Britain. A new experiment for the British people. Something they have never tried before.
Oh, they’ve been a sovereign nation before…and they’ve wielded sovereignty over many other nations quite cheerfully. Taking food and fibre, oils and minerals, gold, silver, iron and timber from them to supply the things that the British isles cannot grow or mine. They’ve used them as sources of slaves, when that was fashionable…and indentured labourers when the fashion changed. They’ve used them as receptacles for the unwanted poor or religiously inconvenient. Other nations have been jolly useful – even when you have to been forced to trade with them instead of looting them.
But that doesn’t make you independent. Quite the opposite – like Japan, Singapore, the various Arabies, and any number of quasi colonies…if Great Britain cannot do without those other outlying sources of goods and food, they are in a position of strategic dependency. That’s the most frightening one of all, as Japan discovered when the submarine campaign against them ramped up in the mid-forties. Isolated and independent is fine when you are stocked up but you go hungry and cold pretty quick as the pantry clears out.
Still, the British have been hungry before – the Second World War comes to mind. They got thinner and had less tooth decay, so maybe a period of austerity will be good for the people as a whole. Give them three decades and they might well have balanced their population with their arable land ( Mind you, you can only increase the latter by so much before you have to trim the former. The withdrawal of the National Health Scheme should do that. ).
I think they can do themselves a lot of good by trimming the overseas fat off their budget. Not just the EU contributions but the money that is put out to maintain the show of overseas political rule. Haul down the Union Jack from the places where it is a symbol of the 18th century…Canada, New Zealand, Australia, etc. and sell off the residences of the various governors that prance and prate therein. Stop pretending to be Queen or King of Someplace Else and concentrate on being Q. or K. of the UK. Let the former colonies elect or appoint their own parasites as heads of state. Then they’ll have to entertain the Q. or K. of the UK when they visit at thethe expense of their own nation.
Or do they do that now…?