"The days are for great empires and not for little states." So said Joseph Chamberlain, Britain's then-colonial secretary in 1902. He reckoned the world's populations would be much better off being managed by rational, orderly, perhaps even rules-based supranational organisations. He might have been right but the little states in question didn't agree with him for long enough to find out. This is a story that has played out several times in the past and is doing so again now. Here's an unnamed EU official, quoted in the FT this week: "There is no such thing as a sovereign country any more. It is an illusion the Brits are all chasing, but it has gone."
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