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Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

> Another posted a picture of some ham in Sainsbury’s, moaning: “We presume not meeting EU food safety standards. Good enough for little Englanders who thrive on second-rate everything though.”

Not sure exactly what a "little Englander" is (I presume some political faction); but whenever someone throws in a contemptuous dig like that, I feel a little schadenfreude, like their unhappiness is deserved.

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"Little Englander" is a derogatory term for English nationalists and British people who are xenophobic or naïvely nationalistic — for the latter, those who think England is "better than all other countries", and that England should only work together with other countries when there is a direct advantage for England rather than for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

Which is a large part of the sentiment behind brexit, though not the only one.

It may not have been the only sentiment involved in Brexit, but the only people left that think Brexit was/is good are those with that sentiment.

Especially the brexit we actually got.

It sounds like Little Englander means a Brit who is a Euroskeptic and has nationalistic tendencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Englander

However, the current Brexiteers favor a powerful Britania that rules the waves. That does not seem to rhyme with independence of colonies, which is what that wiki entry describes. It might be that the writer thought it meant something else, though.

It's an ironic appellation of the term. The Brexiteers may want to be a world-striding UK, but the UK doesn't have that clout. In leaving the EU, they left one of the entities that did have that clout (in the rare moments that the EU could find a unified voice).

It sounds to me like maybe there's an older use of the term that emphasized independence from the colonies and a newer version that maps more or less to "right populist".

I don't live in the UK, but it seems like this might be similar to how the new populist/Trumpist Republicans are still called "Republicans" even though they don't support a lot of things that previously were associated with Republicans (foreign intervention, state & local rights, etc.).

> Not sure exactly what a "little Englander" is (I presume some political faction)

Expanding on others' answers, it's the sort of thing uttered by the sort of people who do this sort of thing: <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-30148768>

> "little Englander"

Mostly used by flag accounts on twitter to dismiss the political right, the working class, home owners...

Any one they don't like that day really....

What's a "flag account"?

Probably pride flag/Ukraine/Palestine/Israel/what ever the "current thing" currently is. Though, there's the other side of that as well, the "I'm against the current thing" flags, US, Russia, etc.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-support-the-current-thing

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