GOVERNING a country polarised, uncertain and isolated from Europe, its female leader seeks salvation in faraway lands. Cutting loose from Europe, she hosts Middle-Eastern sheikhs in Westminster anxious to secure foreign markets and investment, and courts Turkey’s leader to shore up exports with arms sales. Sound familiar? If so, it is. For when she travels to Ankara and Bahrain, and hosts Emirati and Qatari financiers on the eve of giving Brussels notice, Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, is retracing a path first taken by Queen Elizabeth I when she left the European Union’s spiritual antecedent, the Catholic church, 450 years ago.
Back then, the consequences of Brexit looked even more dire than they do now. In 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated “the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime”, and called on her subjects to rebel. His marriage proposals declined, a furious Philip II, king of Spain and lord of extensive Hapsburg lands, barred Britain from access to Europe’s wool markets, and built an armada to invade. The Scots, then as now, sided with the continent.
Bereft of European allies, the head of the newly-formed Church of England reached...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2ox1q9U
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