There is an old maxim in most former British colonies, now Member States of the Commonwealth of Nations, which says, “When the Englishman is about to leave a garden for good, he wrecks it because he knows no other way to behave.”

It was 1560 m above sea level — amidst the snowy splendour of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — that the hypocrisy of Englishmen reached its highest point. The British Prime Minister David Cameron, addressing 2,000 global leaders, CEOs and investors at the Annual Meeting Plenary in the mountain resort, announced his decision to hold a referendum by 2017 on Britain's future EU membership.

LONGSTANDING DIVIDE

It is now a fact that Britain is sleepwalking toward a departure from the Union. But it is also fact that from the very outset, Great Britain's participation in a united Europe was a quarrel.

When the EU was founded, the British still had not finished mourning over their lost empire. Europe seemed far-flung and Continental efforts at unification were seen by many among the British elite as little more than impractical, naive and romantic. Regardless of such doubts, the EU became a reality, and a grand triumph.

Perhaps, the prospects of a huge market and economic benefits ultimately led London to join.

Free enterprise in the UK pushed the government toward Brussels because staying away was far too risky, economically. That said, for past several decades, Brussels has been depicted in the British press as little more than a bureaucratic ogre.

And, London has mostly engaged but in a distinct role: that of a spanner in the wheel. Therefore, even as a reluctant member and 'bystander', there has hardly been a decision aimed at greater European integration that Britain has not managed to obstruct.

The country never joined the border-free travel regime known as ‘Schengen’. Unfriendly immigration officers still check everybody who enters the country from the other side of the Channel. And from the very beginning, the political establishment has been extremely sceptical of the common currency. Britain has enjoyed the benefits of a common market while refusing to shoulder its share of the burden. Their recalcitrant manner even brought financial advantage.

ONE-SIDED AFFAIR

Ever since Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously demanded “I want my money back,” Britain has had to put in less membership fee to the EU than the size of its economy would otherwise entail, while at the same time demanding a greater say in all decisions.

Britain is well on its way to once again becoming what it has always been, both in geographical terms and in spirit: an island, politically and culturally far removed from Europe.

Offering an amusing take on the British developments, the German tabloid Bild offers eight reasons why the EU doesn’t need the British: “Because they drink stale beer, drive on the wrong side of the road, consider black pudding, marmite and vinegar and chips to be delicacies, their electrical plugs are different from those on the Continent, they do not use the metric system, any other food tastes better than fish and chips, that they have greater debts than Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland together and, even without their bagpipes, there will still be plenty of idiots in Brussels.”

While the world has changed, this island continues to swim in the narrow cold, forbidding waters of self-interest and unfairness. This is Europe in which the British are at best spectators in the gallery.

Napoleon had once used a French version of Adam Smith’s quote to dismiss England’s preparedness for war against France: “ L'Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers ” meaning, “Great Britain is a nation of shopkeepers”. Yes indeed they are!

(The author is former Europe Director, CII, and lives in Cologne, Germany. >blfeedback@thehindu.co.in )

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