Citizen of a reunified country and a divided Kingdom

The United Kingdom behaves like an island. The rant of Brexit was to take back control. The Good Friday agreement was the last chance. With it the border of the Irish partition became a ghost of the past, and with this the last barrier on the island of Ireland to reunification was lifted. Peace was locked in. Brexit divides Ireland with trade barriers, and with it the United Kingdom reaches out to become Great Britain again. Barnier saw from the beginning that starting from an irreversible agreement which forbade a border, the negotiation of any agreement which would be predicated on a border was likely to be more than an administrational inconvenience. Arguably, it was no longer possible to take a United Kingdom out of Europe after the Good Friday agreement had been signed.???

In the world fashioned by the men in grey suits women were left to deliver their deeds, Thatcher to negotiate entry conditions and discount, May to disaggregate Major’s ever-closer union, and Truss to do what no prime minister since Churchill had done and witness the succession of the monarch.

Elizabeth I of England was child of a broken marriage and Queen of half an island. At the end of the reign that had ignited the Empire her crown fell to Scotland, and in the English Restoration fell again. The English forget that it is the Scottish Bible that James VI gifted to their English church, and that Scotland has moved on from the English church’s pragmatism of Catholicism within Protestantism.

Levelling up through granting titles and lands was long practiced as pacification of the Scots and to bolster unionist heartlands since before Robert the Bruce. In England today, Scotland is a chastening voice in Westminster, a poignant reminder of the seizure and unequal temper of power. Not just because of the West Lothian question but as a dissenting conscience. It is however more than Scapa Flow, Faslane, or picturesque universities offering enlightenment for those who lack the academic gift and financial grunt to go to Oxford. Scotland’s oil was burnt paying off the IMF loan that was the foreseeable fate of the Final Term. Just as Sturgeon's nationalists can look back on more than a decade in power that has taken Scotland to the very brink of ruin and discontent, the Conservatives can do the same.??

Bismarck understood that uniting the Prussian held northern region, the city states, and the middle fiefdoms into Germany would only be possible with Bavaria as a robust ally on the southern border. The willingness of the Kingdom of Bavaria to join that union tempered it with remaining a free state within the union. Hitler defiled the Munich beer cellars using them to propagate hate speech and propaganda, adopting the skills of alpine deer stalkers to protect his border and the traditional Sunday dress of the alpine parishes in the Bavarian heartlands as national costume for his master race. Bavaria anchors before that sacrilege, echoed in Laptop und Lederhosen, embracing a future without losing the worthy past.

Germany offers an insight into the process of division and reunification. The partition of Germany arguably originated in the earlier implementation by USA in the rebuilding of Germany from Zero Hour. Russia’s offering was less attractive, slower and less effective in implementation. In the end the German people decided for themselves to seek a voluntary and peaceful union. Thatcher was sceptical that reunification without rearmament was realistic in the paradigm shift that followed.

When the wall fell, they called it Die Wende, changing tack. Unhurried and methodically Germany has levelled up East and West in infrastructure, wages, pensions. In little more than a generation the German taxpayers through the Solidarit?tszuschlag (solidarity surcharge) have made reunification their today.

Brexit gave British citizens the option to have dual nationality of the UK and EU. Arguably, this is one of the few tangible benefits of Britannia Unchained. The focus of the naturalisation test for Germany is the differentiation of state from religion, the epochs of German history, the mechanisms of democracy, and that Germans belong first to their state then to national union. The language test is unavoidable for those who have not been schooled in Germany, even for those who have lived, professionally qualified and worked in Germany for most of their lives. The rules require CEFR B1 for naturalisation at which general vocabulary is insufficient for higher education or work in the health sector, and conversation is too stilted to flow with any ease. The Goethe reading list for CEFR C2 gives an insight into modern German literature and is the pathway to study at a German university.

That reading list for 2023 draws from the family carers of a Jewish patriarch, and the rebirth of a marionette theatre where der Kasper slept a thousand years to outlive the horrors of an Empire. A later day sequel of North and South remains unwritten as Britain has no vision for its inner reignition. The rediscovery of Great Britain is to be solved by rekindling of the industrial backbone of northern England in Green Revolution, reappraisal of technical education, and not in denial of Europe’s values.?It will be crowned on the Stone of Destiny.?

The dual citizens of UK and EU are left with a more personal happy end of always being a returning national at the borders between their chosen homes. For those that have UK-German identity, they question how those featuring in Chums had not learnt the lessons from Aftermath. For those with Scottish-Bavarian identity, they question their lot through the tides of history in a voluntary union.

Born in Scotland Iain Aitchison became a dual-citizen of UK-Germany in Bavaria in 2022.