Photo via Smith Archive/ Alamy Surely Alex Niven’s article starts from a false premise ? To claim that a British citizen’s country of citizenship is the UK is to misunderstand the nature of the state we live in. It is most certainly not “our weirdly uncredited true nation state”. The UK is one of the few multinational states surviving in Europe. I can only think of Switzerland as an alternative, but there used to be more. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and the Austro-Hungarian empire spring to mind. It is the confusion of “state” with “country” that brings about the problem, and Niven should be more aware of it. Reading this article from the western side of Offa’s Dyke, the Anglocentrism underlying it shines like a beacon. The UK was created by English imperialism. Its demise began in 1921 when Ireland left the Union. The future is uncertain, but there is no reason to assume that the current configuration will survive.…