Obviously the Brexit vote is a disaster in any way you cut it, and there is no clever "cunning of history" way to recuperate that vote. The future that the UK is in the act of choosing is unpredictable, but none of the possible futures this move open up are creative. The alliance that made this vote possible is just terrifying.
When we do stop rending our garments, then what? There is a temptation to leap to a second Scottish independence referendum as an exit, but I think that may not be the best option. There is a UDI option of course, but that is really risky, but if Scotland doesn't do that we will be in trench warfare with Westminster just to get another referendum approved, and who knows what the outcome of an ugly row with revived English nationalism would be?
The more creative move is for Edinburgh, Dublin and Belfast to take the high road. Those administrations represent people who today are European citizens and have expressed the wish to remain so (obviously the same is true of London). As governments and devolved administrations with recognized international standing they have an interest, and in my view a right, to voice in any negotiations for an English exit. England may leave the EU, Ireland isn't even thinking of doing so, Northern Ireland and Scotland have a right to represent their citizens.
Moreover this would be as British a move as cricket. There is a near millennium long British jurisprudence and political theory on complex and hybrid political entities, confederations, empires and partitions. There are already entities like the Isle of Man that are attached to the Crown of England, not part of the United Kingdom and so not part of the EU. Scotland and Northern Ireland could remain attached to the crown, leave the UK, but remain part of the EU. Scotland and the two Irelands could form a new confederation on the Swiss model. There are all sorts of politically practical, constitutionally responsible models that allow the English vote to be respected, without the rest of us having to be dragged into the disastrous romance of identity that they have embraced. We could even work out a settlement in Britain akin to the Irish settlement, where anyone born anywhere on the British Isles could claim either the English or European passport (in its Scots and Irish forms), and then the Londoners could stay European too. There are resources in our shared histories that can help us avoid the worst.
For any of this to work the Republic has to be flexible and accommodating. I think that the Irish population, North and South, are constitutionally sophisticated and the Scots are obviously politically mobilized and creative. We are all European citizens this morning and have a right to retain that citizenship. It is up to our politicians to defend our acquired citizens' rights.
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Sadly him the days of 'complex and hybrid' political solutions are dead. Welcome to neo-politics brutalism, where there is only one acceptable answer to a question. No ifs, no buts, no subtleties. And dear god don't try to be 'clever'. Britain is now a simple please that does not countenance difference. We worship monarchy, money and homogeneity. We exist in a simple historical narrative of lost greatness - stolen from us by people and cultures smaller than our own. We want a time when we won warts because we were right and brave than the opposition. Nuance is gone, self-reflection is gone, myth has been restored. We are changed utterly...
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