Although there is also national separation within Britain: Scotts and Irish would rather state that they belong to Scotland and Ireland. Geography in its turn influences the politics that country choses to follow. UK is an active member of the European Union, and it plays a huge role politically, but mostly as a guarantor or an observer, hands off, one of the most important ones. Thus, the geographical position of British Isles has led to a very interesting phenomenon – feeling of a unique national self-awareness while being an active member of a very diverse society. .
But geography itself cannot define the feeling of nationality. Just like the Earth's core shifts and slowly, year by year, changes the location of the Isles centimeter by centimeter, Brits are drifting away from the European view of the world. The very beginning of the British history was not so promising. It all has started from the Roman conquests when Celtic and Gaelic tribes had to fight with Italian conquerors for more than 400 years, and then went on with an invasion of Germanic tribes, which started them off the wrong foot with Scandinavian people. Much later what seems to be a stream of back luck will lead to Norman Conquest, which will give a beginning to long and very tangled relationships with France. So, one might say that future-to-be UK was not in a prevailing position when it comes to first centuries of the AD Era. One might presume that even at that time Britain managed to be quite different from the vast majority of Europe. Whilst some of the tribes and rudiments of nationalities have already started conquering new territories, future British subjects were still trying to embrace their own lands. When it comes to UK-European relationships of that time, it won't be an exaggeration to say that at that point of British history, the relationships were one sided, the term of diplomacy was still something that only Ancient Greeks knew about.