Lose the Brexit Mindset: Escape the Fear, Embrace Prosperity

In a world pulled between nationalism and globalism, internationalism offers the only path forward, one that protects identity while embracing cooperation.

By Sean Ash

I am my own country. But I am also part of the world. And both of those truths matter.

There’s a fear that lurks behind every mention of cooperation on a global scale. It’s the shadow of control, the image of a boot stamping on a human face forever. George Orwell’s 1984 gave us that haunting vision: a future where power is centralised, language is reduced to obedience, and the individual is nothing but a cog in a machine ruled by fear. And many people, when they hear words like “globalism” or “international cooperation,” instinctively recoil, imagining this nightmare of totalitarianism. Their fear is not baseless. We have seen what happens when power is pooled without accountability. We saw it in the Soviet Union, in authoritarian China, in regimes where identity is erased and conformity is enforced.

But that is not what internationalism is.

The European Union, for all its criticisms and complexities, is the very opposite of Orwell’s dystopia. It is not a faceless authority that crushes nations beneath a single boot. It is a living experiment in how diverse countries can work together while remaining themselves. The EU doesn’t ask France to stop being French or Poland to forget its past. It doesn’t tell the Irish to erase their culture or the Portuguese to surrender their language. What it does ask is that we recognise something bigger than ourselves, not to replace our identity but to strengthen it through solidarity.

Yes, there is pooled sovereignty. But let’s be clear. We’re not throwing ourselves into the deep end and surrendering our entire being. We are not dissolving our identities or submitting to some central authority. We are simply each putting in an arm. Just an arm. And when all nations put in an arm together, we create a shared space that protects everyone. Not from each other, but from the very forces that history has shown us to fear.

What do we get in return for that shared contribution? We get safeguards. We get rights. We get the most advanced legal protections the individual has ever known. Protection from discrimination, from political persecution, from mass surveillance, from arbitrary imprisonment. We get laws that tell even our own governments: you cannot cross this line. We get a firewall against totalitarianism, the very thing that those who shout the loudest about freedom claim they are trying to avoid.

This is where the irony becomes impossible to ignore. The Brexiteers and nationalist ideologues claim to fear authoritarianism. They claim they don’t want unelected globalists telling them what to do. They say they want sovereignty, liberty, individual rights. But it is these very international frameworks, human rights conventions, treaties, the rule of international law, that have done more than any nationalist movement ever has to protect the individual from authoritarianism.

And yet, these same voices are the first to call for withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights. The first to attack judicial review. The first to chip away at the independence of the press, the courts, and the institutions that keep tyranny in check. They speak the language of freedom while dismantling the very systems that protect it.

What they truly want is not liberty for all. It is power for themselves.

But internationalism offers something different. It says yes, we are free, and we are responsible. Yes, we are nations, and we are neighbours. Yes, we are proud, and we are not blind. It says we are willing to put in an arm, because the strength of the whole protects the dignity of each.

The alternative, too often, is nationalism, and nationalism is what has brought the greatest suffering to this world. Nationalism is not pride in one’s country. It is obsession with its dominance. It is the kind of thinking that leads to genocide, to annexation, to war. It’s the kind of thinking that led to the trenches of World War I, to the invasion of Poland, to the gas chambers and the gulags. It’s the obsession with land, with blood, with “us and them.” And it hasn’t gone away.

In Russia, nationalism has been weaponised to justify the bombing of maternity wards in Ukraine. In the United States, it has stormed Capitol buildings. In Britain, it tore up decades of cooperation under the delusion of taking back control, only to leave people with less. In China, it is enforced through surveillance and silence, turning dissent into treason. Nationalism is what continues to drive climate denial, border cruelty, and the persecution of refugees. It is nationalism that fears the outsider and worships the past. It is nationalism that repeats history and calls it pride.

And still they accuse us, those of us who want peace, who want progress, of being globalists. But we are not globalists. We are not calling for a world without identity, without borders, without culture. We are internationalists. That means we are for the nation-state and for the world. We believe that you can be proud of where you come from and still care for those you’ve never met. We believe you can wave your flag without stabbing it into the earth of another. We believe in freedom, but not the chaotic freedom of unchecked ego. We believe in a freedom that is intelligent, deliberate, and bound by conscience. A freedom that listens, not just shouts. A freedom that builds, not just blames.

This isn’t a utopian dream. It is already real. It’s there every time countries coordinate to tackle a pandemic. It’s there when global scientists work together to study the climate. It’s there when refugees are welcomed with dignity instead of suspicion. And it’s there when the people of Europe, after centuries of war, choose dialogue over domination.

So yes, I am an internationalist. I am not afraid to say it. I believe in my country. I believe in its people, its language, its memories. But I also believe in something bigger, a world where nations sit together as equals, with the courage to listen and the strength to act. A world where cooperation does not erase identity but protects it. Where solidarity is not a threat to sovereignty, but its greatest safeguard.

I am my own country. But I am also part of the world. And both of those truths matter.