What is Britain? The right answer could win the next election | Timothy Garton Ash

The Conservatives are winning the battle to appeal to the unhappy English voter over the future of Britain and its place in Europe. Labour needs to sharpen up

Angela Merkel will visit a fine exhibition about Germany at the British Museum when she comes to London this week. What we need next is an exhibition about Britain at a museum in Berlin. For instead of the German question, Europe now faces the British question. “Germany, but where is it?” asked Goethe and Schiller, but that was long ago, and today everyone is asking: “Britain, but where is it?”

Like the German question of old, the British one has an internal and an external aspect. The external: will Britain leave the EU? The internal: how can the UK accommodate growing English demands for more self-government, in response to what Scotland has won?

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