Up until about 2004 when I emigrated to Africa – first to Kenya and then South Africa, I had lived in London all my life.
From Greek heritage I always considered myself English growing up. A born and bred Londoner.
Even when people would retort, “yes, but where are you actually from?” puzzling over my generic dark, Mediterranean physical features, I would brush the slight aside and proudly declare allegiance to Blighty – water off a duck’s back as the old British saying goes.
Moving abroad, that sense of nationhood only deepened. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that – A proverb probably borne out of the intense passion of a thousand long-distance relationships fueled by well-engineered love letters in well-crafted English as described in the best traditions of 19th century British romance novels of the Jane Austen persuasion.
But all that changed with the Brexit vote on 23rd June 2016.
Continue reading “The broken social contract and the paradox at the heart of Brexit”
George Philipas 