The victory of the Conservative Party in British elections last week has brought two possibilities closer to fulfillment: withdrawal from the European Union, and, more drastically, the secession of Scotland.

Buoyed by his unexpected triumph, Prime Minister David Cameron may well find himself presiding over the final disintegration of post-imperial Britain. Seventy years after the end of World War II, when an exhausted Britain began to give up its far-flung possessions, the country confronts its grimmest post-imperial fate: division, isolation and irrelevance.

This is hardly the fault of the Conservative, or the Labour party. Analysts have been quick to credit English nationalism, stoked by the Tories after the Scottish referendum last year, for Cameron's victory. In actuality, angry English reactions to meddling European Union bureaucrats have been gathering political momentum at least since the 1990s.