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TIts main text written by 43 different authors, including seven lords, four baronesses, one dame and three masters of the land, may be the closest we can get to a brief overview of the causes and effects of Brexit. Its editor, Sir Anthony Seldon, is the respected historian at 10 Downing Street and has written the definitive text on British government in the 21st century.
However, the word “English nationalism” appears exactly once in its 600 pages – a quick look at the line taken by the Daily Mail during the 2016 referendum. Interestingly, while there is a good article by Aileen McHarg called On Scotland, there is none called On England. There is no attempt to give even an overview of the conflicts, contradictions and concerns within the UK where Brexit was won: not the city of England. For many politicians and intellectuals, it seems, English is still a culture that cannot speak its name.
This lack is important, not only for understanding the recent past, but also for the UK’s immediate future. It avoids the most important question: why, even though many who voted for Brexit now see it as a failure, is the man who did so much to make it happen a contender for prime minister?
Peter Kellner points out, in his contribution, that a third of those who voted to leave now say they have failed and, surprisingly, a quarter of the group say Nigel Farage is “the” one who disappointed them. More of them criticize Farage than criticize the European Union itself. Yet Farage is still setting the agenda in English (and Welsh) politics.
But if a prominent contemporary historian such as Seldon finds it unnecessary to try to understand the national impulses that led to Brexit, then Farage’s victory is also impossible to explain. The collection doesn’t even have a real story about him – making, if not Hamlet without the prince, perhaps a Punch and Judy show without Mr Punch.
That Brexit is a real failure should not be denied. The the most recent independent studyfrom Stanford University, have found that by 2025 Brexit reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8% compared to what it would have been. Revenues fell by 12% to 18%, while employment and productivity were reduced by 3% to 4%.
Because of their criticism of the dawn of a new golden age, the wise Brexiters knew this would happen. What they really thought was that economic pain was a price worth paying for political reform. Retaking power was, as the winning slogan was, a real point. And there may be some honor in this – there is more to life than finance.
But as the judge and historian Jonathan Sumption says in the foreword of the book, “Britain’s ability to control” its future is very limited outside the EU”. The UK is still very involved in the EU decisions but has no say in them. Regarding immigration – seen by many voters as visible evidence of the end of the regime – Migration Observatory Director Madeleine Sumption reminds us in her article that it really went up to register after Brexit, which it failed “surprisingly to achieve his clear promise”.
If voters trade growth for self-governance, they have a big problem on both sides of the equation. Brexit did not herald the re-emergence of a liberalized ruling class whose light had been obscured by global clouds. Amusingly, pro-Brexit former Tory MP Conor Burns wrote in his article that Simon Case, Boris Johnson’s cabinet secretary, was “lightweight” – “that’s why he was appointed.”
Funny because the Case itself also appears to spread the case: “The vision of a country freed from the shackles of Brussels authorities has become a reality of confused ideas, fruitless negotiations, parliamentary disputes and administrative confusion.”
Veteran anti-EU activist and former Ukip MP Douglas Carswell concludes with a lament: “A Vote Leave would have made us independent. We need to be independent.” Six ministers since 2016 and a seventh on the way makes one wonder if post-Brexit Britain is governed at all.
However, disappointment was part of the package. The nature of Brexit was that it could be an immediate loss – a loss that ended as quickly as it approached. Victory was taken and, as Carswell says, “we still have the European disease”. Gisela Stuart, a former Labor MP who was prominent in the leave campaign, believes Britain is “still haunted by the ghosts of five decades of EU membership”. Paul Stephenson, Vote Leave’s communications director, describes his victory now as “bitter”: “We fought for victory from the brink of defeat, but then quickly let it be taken away from us.”
Nowhere among the Brexiters is there any real reckoning with their failures. Burns refers to the ongoing Irish border problem as a “problem of the Irish people’s own making”, apparently unaware that Northern Ireland voted to remain and the Irish government apparently does not want Brexit to happen.
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Patrick Minford, the economist who promised the best years, writes (in an article by Zheyi Zhu) that although “in the long run Brexit should be disruptive”, the whole point is to “promote long-term employment”. We can reverse John Maynard Keynes and wonder if in the long run all the leave voters will be dead before they see any economic benefits. Economists Paul Johnson and Robert Johnson argue that, “it seems unlikely that long-term national income will be less than 4 percent, and it could be much more”.
However, there is no strong evidence in the book that the Remainers are better off facing the crisis behind Brexit. In her essay, Susan Greenfield admits that “the most important question about whether to leave or stay in the EU was about our identity”. But (appropriately for a psychologist) he continues to think about knowledge only at the level of knowledge. This is interesting in itself but it does much to draw attention to the absence of any real attempt to define “the other way” in political and cultural terms.
For this, one must turn in another direction – for example, roll The future of England Research by political scientists Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones. The recently finds that Farage supporters choose “being English” over “being a parent” as a sign of who they think they are.
Those for whom English is the basis of their knowledge were not happy in 2016 and they are not very happy now. Henderson and Wyn Jones find them “very aware of what they clearly see as the great difference between the former glory and the present low; the England whose elite group seems to be under siege from inside and outside; England which has achieved a major change (at least, Brexit) to solve its concerns, but is not satisfied with the results”.
Brexit was a hypocritical and self-inflicted answer to the English question. But the great and the good seem pointless to even hear it, let alone try to give a good answer.
