 What would lead a city like London to seek independence?
What cities in the post-Brexit era could learn from a 14th-century trading bloc As you fly from the country now known as Germany to Britain, the coastal geography of northern European cities gently unfurls. By their nature cities along coasts and rivers developed so they could be open to trade with each other. It could point us towards new relationships between progressive city dwellers in a world that otherwise seems to be putting the brakes on modernity. Despite some of Britain's Leave voters longing to inhabit a fantastical realm immune to foreign influence, the reality is patently very different to that. In the late 1300s, Chaucer wrote about characters travelling to Jerusalem, and others who came from Europe; and it was at exactly this point that the Hanseatic League slowly started to coalesce, eventually influencing our isles. The League is most easily understood as a loose federation of cities that acted together in self-interest to promote trade. The Hanseatic cities developed their own legal system, and their armies came to one another's aid. "So it is not unrealistic to think of cities as discrete entities that compete and collaborate with each other, independently from the states to which they belong." The League stretched from Novgorod in the east – in what is now Russia – to London in the west. It was a huge – and hugely ambitious – undertaking in the days when communications consisted of ink and paper and the only viable method of travel was by ship. In some ways it was an exercise in what we today call 'soft diplomacy'.
 They want free movement of people, capital, goods, and ideas.
 They choose modernity over mythology.  They want to deal with rational thinkers, not people going backward.  They want to remain in the EU.  They want free movement of people, capital, goods, and ideas.