Peter Hitchens explores the possibility that he coined the now prevalent term “Yookay” when he referred to “Ukay” years ago to describe the silly, ramshackle polity that seemed to be replacing Great Britain and the empire before it. Think of the old red VR-marked postboxes: That was Great Britain. The Yookay is the Deliveroo driver on an electric bike, or — rather more darkly — a luxury-watch thief on a motorcycle.

It was actually the case that the revolutionary current known as New Labour did view the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as something like the dying Habsburg empire. They wished to change it irreversibly and beyond recognition. As we would later find out, they regarded the sovereign Parliament at Westminster as an obstacle to a series of radical and profound changes in government, law, and society. Many of them sought to dissolve what was left of Britain in the European Union, which encourages small, divisive nationalisms within the borders of its members, to help break up the older, larger patriotisms of the nations it absorbs.

And one of the things they did was to undermine the old definition of the country as Britain.

Read the whole thing at Compact.