I'm trying to get my head around the latest buzzword from "You Decide" (the Westminster Civil Service disinformation campaign), which is that "together with England, Wales and Northern Ireland", [we] are the "greatest family of nations for 300 years".
There's a few minor points here, like the fact Northern Ireland only came into existence in 1921 when the Irish Free State left the UK to become an Imperial Dominion. And that Ireland didn't join the UK proper until the Act of Union of 1801 (which is why Union flags prior to this have no offset St. Patrick's cross in them). Then there's the constitutional status of poor old Wales, which (correct me if I'm wrong) was made a principality of the Kingdom of England in 1537 and only in recent i.e. post-1997 referendum times has begun to be recognised as something more than a Principality, i.e. a country in its own right.
Now what I don't get is what a "family of nations" actually is. I was pretty sure that the UK is a constitutional monarchy and a Unitary State, with devolution to some extent of another in three of the 4 "home nations", not some sort of quasi-federal family of equals. If you google it, you see the phrase used with regards to the nationhood complexities of Israeli and Korean politics, but it doesn't seem to appear in any media references for the UK until about February this year.
So what we are left with is that we are the "greatest" (define great?*) recently invented, constitutionally meaningless group of nations (not countries) that haven't been together for 300 years. It just doesn't mean anything, yet this is one of the top 9 reasons given by the Civil Service to support maintaining of the Union!
You can see how I'm confused and in need of a constitutional or political better to clear things up for me.
* I don't think their short and turbulent spell in the United Kingdom really worked out all that great for Ireland to be honest.
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