[objectivistbrit]

Downvote wasn't mine. I upvoted you to cancel it out. But thanks for dishonestly implying I'm racist (thereby proving my point), when my entire comment was on economic issues.

By integration I mean political integration. I think very large states have scale problems, large democracies in particular. (Look at India or the US). You either end up with populist parties who need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of hundreds of millions of people, or technocratic elites who ignore the people. The EU has 500 million citizens from 27 ancient nations, with wildly different cultures and economies. There's no way you can fuse them into one giant country, and the inevitable outcome is fuelling nationalism and populism centred around anti-EU resentment.

[ghaff]

Yes. It's certainly the case that many Brexiter voters voted that way for reasons that bordered on or went over the line to be racist--not that a desire to place controls on immigration is inherently racist.

That said, if I had been voting (I'm a US citizen) I would almost certainly have voted remain in part because pulling out of the existing union is going to be a mess. And because the UK is already outside of important parts of EU-related structure such as the Euro. But I would have done so in spite of many of the aspirations to create a European super-state that many in Brussels share.

[madaxe_again]

Sorry, it just pissed me off almightily that I got downmodded for asking a question, so went for plan b: bait.

Those "ancient nations" are mostly less than a century old. Europe has been a superstate several times previously, although it admittedly hasn't lasted under political or religious hegemony.

[pjc50]

The age of nations is quite a key difference in how things are seen from the UK (300 years old, with England claiming 800 years of constitutional monarchy with only one interruption) vs the rest of Europe, much of which wasn't in its current form or system of government in 1950.

To Europe, the EU represents stability. To the UK, it represents change.

[madaxe_again]

Only one interruption? I assume you refer to the interregnum - but there were plenty of violent successions, imports of royalty from overseas to continue the crown, and changes in governance so fundamental it's hard to view it as the same state.

I mean, you don't consider yourself French, do you? If you view yourself as being a member of that "continuous" state, you should, for by that measure we are Normans.

[pjc50]

It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it's tradition :) This kind of objection is like pointing out that the Royal family are German in origin and Prince Philip is an immigrant by marriage; it's true, but not in any way relevant to the kind of people who regard the monarchy as important.

All nations have a chunk of mythos holding them together. Brexit seems to be popular among people who think that Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples is good history.