ABSTRACT
This chapter comprises analysis of a series of debates since the 2016 EU referendum. These show how Island Race tropes were mobilised by both ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ supporting Members in order to maintain Britain’s crucial role vis-à-vis both Europe and the rest of the world. Insularity is shown to be a highly mutable trope, figuring as a marker of how EU membership cut Britain off from other ties and, conversely, as a signifier of isolation after Brexit. British foreign policy-makers have reckoned with this new reality outside the EU by defining the Global Britain posture of limitless engagement with the rest of the world, despite continuing closeness to the rest of Europe. These discursive acts of ontological security-seeking bring up profound questions of belonging, not the least of which concerns the Union itself. In how it suggests that Island Race identity tropes are actually expressions of Englishness, it is in the unique geopolitical posturing of Scottish nationalists in Westminster that the most profound challenge to British foreign policy identity in the twenty-first century is located.
