How about this abstract?Dallow Spicer wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 3:28 pm
I am and always will be a European. That is part of being British.
I’m not a Tory. I’m politically centrist small c conservative.
You’re more intelligent than this silly post suggests Miggles.
That was written in 2001. Since that time, has Britain deepened its European identity, or become more Eurosceptic and politically and culturally pulled away?To ask `Is Britain European?' is to engage in a particularly difficult area of the always elusive business of Identity Studies. The very nature and future viability of Britain have recently been subject to extensive questioning. Meanwhile, one can distinguish at least six politically relevant senses of the term `European'. Britain was never as exceptional as was suggested by the traditional story of British exceptionalism told by the `Island Story' school of historians. Moreover, it has become much less insular over the past sixty years. The question is whether the process has been Europeanization, Americanization or simply globalization. There is considerable evidence that the country's ties to what Churchill called `the English-speaking peoples' are still as strong as those to continental Europe. In fact, both sets of ties have become stronger. But these identities are not exclusive. Britain has always been a place of multiple over-lapping identities: English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish, as well as British, European and transoceanic. That Britain's European identity is bound to remain only a partial identity does not mean it has to be a shallow one. If Britain is to be a full and effective participant in Europe it has to deepen its European identity, to develop something of the normative, idealistic sense of being European which is second nature to most continental Europeans engaged in these debates.
Is it not common within Great Britain to refer to continental Europe simply as "Europe"? Such as in this BBC article from 2011? ("After 50 years in which Britain has struggled to define or resolve its confused, ambivalent, troubled relationship with Europe, the events currently being played out in this eurozone crisis look ever more likely to achieve that, while Britain remains largely passive about it.")
Just because you feel one way, doesn't mean every person that resides in Great Britain feels British, let alone European. Go to Northern Ireland or Scotland and tell me everyone there "is and always will be British".
You speaking in absolutes (and not even taking my comment as the joke that it was) in your silly post makes you sound less intelligent than you are.