Widdicombe On Being English: Regina mortuus est. Vivat rex.

We are an island the size of Oregon. We had an Empire once—the largest the world has ever seen. On it— as they liked once to say—the sun never set.

So what?

We educated and we organized, we conquered and we annihilated, we raped and we pillaged through landscape after landscape across the earth. One much like another: always powerless enough, sometimes trusting enough, to take the yoke. The White Man’s Burden was the Natives’ Curse.

And now?

Now we have become, lord bless us, an empire again—of one: severed from Europe by hubris, sundered from America by the chilling seas. We will be a small land of unhappy people with three friends only: lost grandeur; false hope; sour nostalgia.

And why?

Because we are frightened of otherness, because we want to be great again, because politicians are whores and pimps.

But—yes—the English will be very English on our own.

And a decade from now?

Money will have drained away like water down a gutter till the last drop falls with a noiseless “plunk.”

Poverty will stalk the land like a hungry lion. Anger will strike down from on high like a plummeting eagle. Despair will clutch at throats grown thin and raspy.

But—yes—the English will be very English on our own.

Richard Widerkehr