The Last Country Occupied by the British Empire

I have come to the conclusion that the British Empire still lives, and is attempting to remake what still remains in the image it remembers from former eras of imperial glory. 

There appears to be a residual desire to have the peoples of the world live beneath the imperial crown, so that the King and his government might bask in the echoes of the faded glow of the twentieth century. 

Britain has influence! Britain is important! Britain is a world power! 

It seems that the imperial bureaucracy of the East India Company is alive and well in Westminster: which seeks to create a miniature diorama of its previous time in the sun, lest it finally set on the Empire. The State of Britain, as different from the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, seems to long for foreign people to rule over and tend.

Apparently, the soul of Imperial Britain possesses a desire to bring together the peoples of the world and organise them neatly, ensure their voices and concerns are heard, and preserve the native customs and norms of each culture. It probably doesn’t know what else to do with itself. The bleeding ego of the defeated imperial power probably won’t allow it to consider anything else. 

But that time is over. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, all of Africa, the Orient, the Americas; none of these need Britain any more. They are vast and populous independent nations—as they should be—and we should consider them as such. I view myself a Westphalian in such matters; what they do is their business, and what we do is our business. 

Of course, world-spanning powers like the British Empire do not accept that there should be limits to anything. Why should the reach of imperium be limited to merely a fifth of the globe? Why shouldn’t any place be available for the Empire to use as it sees fit? Even if it means cannibalising the original power base from which it sprung, what difference does it make? 

Why should the British State not simply consider itself detached from its original cultural origins, and view the organic matter that birthed it as a series of fungible units which can be directed and replaced at will? 

The Imperial State naturally despises such a parochial view, yet lacks the power to exert itself significantly beyond its borders. And so, as a coping mechanism, it seems that the rump imperial government in London contents itself by importing those remnants of Empire which are foolish enough to come here, so they might play-act the part of an imperial power. 

Britain’s immigration policy seems to consist of bringing as many Commonwealth immigrants into its territory as possible, for the purposes of “economic growth”—regardless of the costs this imposes upon the native population. 

In the process allowing millions of ex-imperial subjects to form their own ethnic enclaves, a great deal of damage has been done to the seat of the Empire. It may well happen that, one day, the new immigrant enclaves will end up with de jure self-governing dominion status, rather than the de facto self-governance they have now. A similar circumstance, perhaps, that the Welsh and Scots enjoy with their devolved parliaments that consistently return ultra-nationalist parties to rule over their provinces. 

But what of England, then? What are its concerns? Where, in public life, is the voice of the English community represented at all? It seems that there is no one who can claim to speak for England and the English—as if they are unworthy of having a voice in the public discourse, or disallowed from complaining about the continued colonial expansion of the British Empire in their native land. 

There will not be an English devolved parliament. There will not be a special interest group that represents the English community. There will be the ever-expanding British imperial government which represents minoritarian interests, which are the only legitimate interests it recognises. 

It will occupy any English institution and fill it with the administrative class of Empire, as the ascent of Rishi Sunak (the descendant of imperial bureaucrats in Africa) has shown. It will feed on English labour until it no longer needs it, when imported foreign labour acts as a sufficient replacement. 

England will remain as the last country occupied by the British Empire, until an anti-colonial movement in the English community begins to gain consciousness and realise what is happening—by which time it may be too late.