The Permanent Benefits of a Temporary Partnership

By Banksy

Sockets with three holes, cars driving on the other side, a different currency... After the EU referendum, old British idiosyncrasies became objective pieces of information I should much earlier: Britain is entirely different from the rest of Europe. 

The most hidden indication came from my friends. Progressive, travelled, well-intended, left-wing close to a parody like me with our yoga classes, tote bags and brunch on Sundays. Still, they refer to the land on the other side of the Channel as ‘the continent.’ So, if the ‘the continent’ happens to be a separate entity, what’s the UK then? I’ve asked them plenty of times. Then, an awkward silence that was always broken by the same response: ‘An Island!’

Island, insula, isolation… they belong to the same family. Geographically and emotionally, the UK has always been more out than in. In painful retrospect, the relationship between the EU and the UK seems that it was always going to be a temporary partnership. In the ‘ideal’ scenario of a reversed result (52% for Remain), the debate may have cooled down, but not closed. 

Everyone around me shares the same grief today. Slowly, I’m learning to separate communal sorrow from my own appreciation. It’s a strange and laborious disentanglement. Feeling sorry for what’s not going to come, for what my friends and their children won’t enjoy, while grateful for having the chance to develop a second language that it will always be mine, new professional skills, an intimacy with nuances that my mother tongue didn’t offer…

The EU will be smaller. Britain will become economically and culturally poorer and less influential. But I happened to be in the right place at the right time.