England: people tend not to realise how unconfident our national psyche is and how everything that we have ever done has ultimately come out of fear. People tend to mistake grandiose pageantry and rhetoric for accurate reflections of what people feel and failing to recognise our countries deep seated insecurities.
People don't get that England was a creation of empire and not our own. We were created by invasions and populated by the descendants of war, death and destruction. We were surrounded to the north by Scotland, West by Wales and Ireland, to the East we had Viking hordes, to the southeast Germanic invaders, to the south the French and the Southwest the Spanish. Our history until the 1700's was one of constant fear of invasion and destruction.
Our Empire was not just a wish for money. It was our salvation. A way to finally counterbalance France and Spain and stop them from invading our country, killing our people and remaking us as a new France. Slavery was integral for a time to ensuring that our colonies would develop and be able to protect us. Imperialism ensured that our enemies would not conquer India, South Africa, everywhere else and use the proceeds to conquer us. Ireland had to be conquered to ensure it could not be used as a jumping off point to invade our nation.
Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves. Britons never, never, NEVER shall be slaves.
Even at the height of empire, this insecurity never went away. We were one naval disaster, Irish revolt, continental coalition away from European armies being able to land in Kent and reduce us to slavery.
The ultimate proof we were right? The Second World War. Germany, powerful and dominant, able to defeat France and all of the other European countries, and the only thing keeping Britain safe and competitive in the fight against them was the Empire and the hope that America could intervene to save us, as they both did.
With the fall of Empire we have but one course available, protect ourselves by allying with the ones who can save us, America, and do everything possible to maintain that alliance. We dress it up to be pretty under the 'special relationship', but we keep trident as a failsafe.
The fear remains for our populace. We are scared of a European parliament and state that we cannot protect ourselves from. We are scared of Scottish nationalists calling the shots. We are scared of everything.
We are a genocidal state suffering from PTSD. Just because we are comparatively highly functioning doesn't mean that we are not deeply screwed up. We're working on our shit, and trying to do better this time around, but we need reassurance and security.