The Vassal State

Subject: A vassal state.

As Boris Johnson retorted angrily yesterday suggesting that Britain would become a "vessel state" on reading an abridged Brexit proposal from the Prime Minister, Teresa May, regarding Britain remaining in the European Customs Union, one has to question, what a vessel state means.
According to the dictionary a vessel state is a state that is subordinate to another.
Apart from the USA, China, the European Union and perhaps because of its military strength Russia, virtually every country has become a vessel state during the process of globalisation. The interlinking reliance of one nation with another has grown in proportion to global trade and the fact that goods and services are now fragmented across the world, in search of cheap labour has become a fact of economic life. 

Even within the EU, whilst some nations are stronger than others, a collective will is required to get things done.
Having just emerged from Downing St with the news that her Cabinet are in agreement with a proposition, (which still has to be passed by the European Commission as well as the remaining 27 States), that we leave much of the EU but, for economic reasons, we would like to remain in the Customs Union to allow the so called friction less trade to continue across our borders and in particular the thorny issue of Irish boarder, between the North and the South of Ireland. 

The danger is that whilst we have committed ourself to leaving (sic) we are still saddled with costs and the rules which govern the goods and their manufacture but over which we have no say.
To my mind, although having an informed input into the rules under which we are in part governed would normally be regarded essential this might not be such a bad thing since we are known for our parsimony when it comes to making decisions for the general good and not just the good of a few. The EU has provided us with a guiding hand over many thing in which we were failing to spend money, environmental standards for one We have a tendency to be more like our American cousins where the rich look after the rich and the rest fend for themselves, as best they can.
My own reason for wishing to leave the EU was largely emotional and tied to Germany's treatment of Greece and also its manipulation of the rules to further its own interests. Also the desire to further Federalise Europe struck a deep cord with the concept of our independence from Europe as an off shore island, separated from the continent, less ingrained with internecine conflicts between the nations which make up a large part of the continent.

 It was only when we learned of the complexity of our economic  entanglement with Europe that we started to have second thoughts but even then, the thought that we could start again with a clean slate to trade, where and with whom was attractive. 

Most nations of the world lie outside the EU and manage to survive quite well, why couldn't we. There would be some adjusting to do and some would loose out from not having the cosy cartel which has flourished over the last 40 years to trade with. But  that didn't seem to me to be unreasonable if the alternative was an ever closer dependence on France and Germany.
 Initially there was the question of open boarders and the effect that unfettered EU immigration had on jobs, school places and NHS resources as well as housing and the general advantage many of the people who come here had on our diminishing social construct.

Norway style EFTA or Canadian-plus were confusing correlations to the European mix and underplaying this was the feeling that France and Germany would make us pay for rocking their constructional boat.

Would we sink or swim, would our industries and our intellectual input find a way to promote us as a nation. Had we become too flabby having such an easy market on our boarder or would we rediscover our old trading skills and find new markets in other parts of the world. Just because the proximity of the EU is convenient it shouldn't rule out the fact that other nations seem to prosper without having an economic cartel on their doorstep.

Like the teenager leaving home it's part of growing up. Stay put and you begin to look like your parents, prematurely grey and set in their ways.  Not a healthy proposition for any nation which made up of creative, industrious people. 

Of course this presupposes that description fits us anymore ?