The future is bright

What is interesting as the EU Commission makes its statement regarding the exit of the UK from Europe is the breadth of the nationalities which make up the teams who represent and negotiate for Europe. 

What is often lost on people in Britain where we have always remained separate in our analysis of the condition of the separate nations which make up the European Union. We see the German as German the French as French and so on and whilst this view is reflected amongst large swathes of the representative population, the bureaucracy which runs Europe and the bureaucracy which governs the nation states in Europe, is more Federal than national.
Given that The Project has grown from the Iron and Steel Community, an agreement between five very similar nations regarding basic trade to the complex arrangements that have grown, like blood vessels supplying the nutrients needed for life to continue in a human body.
Nations in Europe have known the disaster of political conflict in a way we have never had to deal with. Invading army's terrorising the local population and the weight of a dictatorial authoritarian government has never thankfully been our lot.
Since the end of the last world war we have seen an unprecedented series of social changes, most of them positive. The Channel insulates us from other nations and has a tendency to make us insular. Insularity is not a particularly attractive feature since it isolates us from the growth we normally obtain when we get to know someone new, when our modus operandi goes into overdrive as we come into contact with someone or something quite different as we try to learn from the experience and evaluate it with our own.
The trick of course is to feel that this is a collaboration and not a loss of influence.
Influence in Europe is always a trade off. There are 27 nations and theoretically each is  the equal of the other.  As the Union widened its boarders it has to consider opinion from a wide range of cultures very different from the cosy relationship that existed when the Union was more a western seaboard thing and much more problematic.
Living with our past as a Empire builder and the continental democratic backstop when other great nations traded their democracy for dictatorship we have always been mildly suspicious of Johnny Foreigner. In our island home be have built up this concept of pedigree and unashamedly placed ourselves on top. Now as reality hits home have we the nerve to set out again and prove we are as good as everyone else.