Identifying as an EU citizen over a national citizen does seem a little odd now, but no doubt after a few decades it'd be moving towards the norm, and there wouldn't necessarily be anything wrong with that. I'd also wonder what you mean about questioning their motives, and why that'd necessarily be a bad thing?
The EU originated as a mutually beneficial trading agreement. Unfortunately it has become a vanity project which has suffered a great deal of mission creep. It apparently regards itself as supreme overlord of its “member states” and has scant regard for democracy or national identity.
In reality it’s a motley collection of countries which have little shared history and little in common. They are also economically very different. Trying to unite all of them under one identity is futile, just as trying to unite them economically has failed - the Euro has been a disaster for Greece and Spain which have been unable to devalue their currencies or control their own interest rates.
I don’t consider it remotely desirable to be a “citizen of the EU”. It was never intended to be a nation state in its own right, so why is it doing its best to become one? I suspect it’s largely because the unelected and unaccountable beureaucrats in Brussels want to line their own pockets and empire build.
These faceless individuals do not have the best interests of this country at heart and are not accountable to us as an electorate. They are not open to scrutiny in the same way as Westminster is, for all its flaws, yet have more and more influence over our daily lives. That is something I find deeply sinister.
And as for that referendum, it was only advisory,
But with all due respect can you imagine the outcry if remain had won the referendum and leavers wanted the government to ignore the result and leave the EU anyway? The referendum was legally only advisory, yes, but nobody voting in that referendum believed the result wouldn’t be acted upon.
As for the EU/UKParl democracy question, like I said earlier I think they're both not great, and it depends how much value you place on your ability to influence them. I'm not particularly bothered by how much influence I have (having been on the loosing side of all elections I've either voted in or been interested in) and so like I mentioned above, so long as it 'works' I'm happy enough with it. Perhaps as I get older my views will change, but maybe not.
This is probably a point where we need to agree to disagree. In the end it is a value judgement we all have to make as individuals.
I place a lot of value on living in a self determining democracy. I also lament the fact that a lot of people today apparently take that for granted. It’s something that many people around the world would dearly love to see. We are lucky to be living in a (relatively) peaceful time but perhaps our generation has forgotten the sacrifices that had to be made in the past to protect our freedom.
In my opinion, Cameron should have taken that result back to the EU and used it to push for more reform, given that there was still something of a eurosceptic opinion across other EU states rather than resigning and starting of this whole sorry process.
One of the biggest problems with the EU is that it is too arrogant and intransigent to change. Cameron made a great song and dance about repatriating powers from the EU and singularly failed to do so. That was one of the things that sealed my leave vote.
The other thing I think people overlook is that the EU is in real trouble at the moment. Brexit has taken some of the focus off its other problems. Southern Europe is in a mess, extremist political parties are on the rise, I think it’s far from certain that the EU will continue in its present form.
I'd love to be proved wrong about the success (or lack thereof) of Brexit but I've got a niggling feeling that it won't.
I hope you are proved wrong as well. That’s something we can definitely agree on.