Jenuall wrote:Moggy wrote:Quantum Name wrote:Whilst I am 100% pro remain, I am now thinking of the long term good that might come out of Brexit (straw clutching I know). Perhaps it's for the best that our stupid nation takes a good kicking in international terms. The last remnants of our ill-gotten empire - I'm thinking northern Ireland and Gibraltar at this point given that no one lived on the Falklands when the English showed up - will go back into rightful possession and morons like the Tories will no longer be able to trot out nonsense to a brainwashed nation unjustifiably convinced of their global superiority. The way the government have dealt with Ireland during this process has made being British a universal embarrassment.
No chance with Gibraltar, they are massively pro Britain.
I could see Northern Ireland rejoining the Republic though and possibly Scottish independence.
Yeah self determination is a pretty big deal. If the people of Gibraltar (and anywhere similar like the Falklands) want to remain British then under what right and/or mechanism are they to "go back into rightful possession"?
I agree to an extent. Gibraltar is part of Spain though. I mean, it literally is. It's connected to the landmass that constitutes Spain. Were it not for the fact that we decided it was ours, and we were the toughest bully on the playground back in an era where it was still considered progressive to free your slaves when you died, then the fact that Gibraltar is in Spain would not be contested.
Self determination is interesting though because when we're using it to settle disputes that are centuries old it's worth considering the context of those centuries. Yes, the people living in Gibraltar now want to remain as part of the overall British empirical hangover. But they are people we've put there, because we've had the power to do that, and that's a power that we've gained but not necessarily through justifiable means for a justifiable reason. The Falklands are different, because there was no one there to displace and they are a seperate geographical entity disconnected from any other inhabited landmass.
Russia has done similar things for centuries - it deliberately moved citizens to areas it wanted to claim as its own, which now gives itself a legitimate justification to claim control over those areas. China has done the same and continues to do so. It's essentially long term political engineering. We've done it in Northern Ireland so as to eventually justify our continued uninvited occupation of the northernmost part of the island of Ireland. And now we have Unionists who've grown up from the families of British citizens deliberately placed in the north by Britain for that very purpose.