The increasingly alarming developments in global politics in the last month – and weeks – and days – have brought us closer to a fundamental choice. What we will choose is very unclear. Recent events also highlight that we may have fallen over another cliff in our international influence.

The cliff first. Britain is no stranger to world politics being a place of great power politics and might being right. For 250 years – roughly 1700 to 1950 – we liked it: we were mighty. For the next 70 years we managed and helped create a system which safeguarded the not so top nations. It gave us an illusion of clout, sometimes genuine clout.

We helped set up the UN, partly out of conviction that it would make the world better and safer, partly because it would preserve our own influence. With all its failings, it has done quite well until recently in both aims. In crystallising our own influence, it has been almost embarrassingly successful, giving us (and France) permanent seats and vetoes in the Security Council when we are the 22nd and 23rd biggest countries by population and with economies smaller than Germany’s, Japan’s and India’s.

In our own region we were co-founders of NATO (with several senior roles, including Deputy Commander, traditionally allocated to us) and the European Court of Human Rights, whose Convention was largely drafted by our lawyers. We fluffed the European Union, first by turning down the chance of joining its predecessor at its start, thereby........

© Herald Scotland