The Lure of Greatness: England’s Brexit and America’s Trump

359 Pages·2017·2.04 MB·English

by  Anthony Barnett

CONTENTS
New Walls

PART I: After Trust
1 Jailbreak
2 The Four Breaches of Trust
3 Roll the Dice
4 Explaining the Disruption
5 The Authenticity of Leave and Trump
6 The Artificiality of Remain and Clinton

PART II: Cameron
7 A Man of Means, Not Ends
8 Words Pop Out of His Mouth

PART III: Brexitannia
9 Short Preface to Brexitannia
10 It Was England’s Brexit
11 Anglo-Britain, the Hybrid Nationalism
12 I’m Not English. Oh Yes You Are!
13 Big Britishness
14 English European, a Modern Nationalism
15 Why the Right Wins and the Left Loses
16 The Discombobulated Constitution
17 The Sovereignty of Parliament
18 The Monarchy and ‘The People’
19 The Blair Coup
20 Manipulative Corporate Populism
21 From Churchillism to Thatcherism
22 From the Establishment to the Political-Media Caste
23 The Daily Mail Takes Power
24 The BBC
25 What Kind of Country Do We Want to Be?

PART IV: From Globalisation to Immigration
26 Neoliberalism: Just Say the Word
27 The Legitimacy of the European Union
28 Britain and the EU
29 No Left to Turn to
30 Where the 48 per cent go next
31 People Flow
32 Combined Determination

PART V: Conclusion
33 Peace or War
34 Citizens, Reimagine
35 Conclusion

Acknowledgements
Index

Supporters
Dedication
Copyright
Anthony Barnett was the first Director of Charter 88, the campaign for
constitutional reform, 1988–95. He co-founded openDemocracy in 2001, was its
first Editor and writes regularly for it. He co-directed the Convention on Modern
Liberty in 2009. He is a Londoner.
ALSO BY ANTHONY BARNETT
Iron Britannia: Why Parliament Waged its Falklands War
Soviet Freedom
Power and the Throne (editor)
This Time: Our Constitutional Revolution
The Athenian Option (with Peter Carty)
Blimey, it could be Brexit!
England, 1830

These vague allusions to a country’s wrongs, Where one says ‘Ay’ and
others answer ‘No’
In contradiction from a thousand tongues, Till like to prison-cells her
freedoms grow Becobwebbed with these oft-repeated songs Of peace and
plenty in the midst of woe – And is it thus they mock her year by year,
Telling poor truth unto her face she lies, Declaiming of her wealth with gibe
severe, So long as taxes drain their wished supplies?
And will these jailers rivet every chain Anew, yet loudest in their mockery
be, To damn her into madness with disdain, Forging new bonds and bidding
her be free?
John Clare
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New Walls
If you are British, and especially if you are young and British, your right to
move, live, love, work, research and settle in another country of our continent,
may be taken away from you by Brexit, should it be implemented. The
likelihood that the UK will leave the EU strikes at your freedom to be the
European that you are. Equally important, it removes your ability to welcome
Europeans to come and live with you. Instead they, and the millions of
Europeans who have helped to make our country so much a better place to live
in, face the threat of expulsion. Grief over the loss of a shared European future
hurts the young especially, but not only. Scientists, artists, scholars, medical
researchers, business people and engineers – all those engaged in creative work
and cultures embedded in international collaboration that the EU has assisted so
hugely – are torn inwardly as the UK is ripped out of their European networks.
If you are American, your right to exist without fear is in jeopardy. In a
country of immigrants, to be an immigrant is to live in dread, if not for oneself,
for relatives or visitors. Welcome to what it is like to be black, is one riposte,
revealing what is at stake when contempt for due process, civilised government,
honesty and every liberty except wealth rules in the White House. It was
becoming possible to love, live and share life with others without regard to the
colour of their skin, nationality or religion. This has been put at risk by the
election of Trump.
Perhaps the expectations were unspoken and it was only after his election and
the referendum that something precious was lost, that is akin to bereavement. In
addition to personal fears a dangerous political poison is in the air. Many were
elated at the prospect of Trump and Brexit giving them voice and self-
government, but in Washington and London authoritarian centralisers are
bending the state to their will. These horrible developments are separated by the
Atlantic but joined by more than the coincidence of taking place within months
of each other.
Since the end of the Second World War, shared human rights have
transformed the meaning of individual liberty across Europe. The German
Chancellor Angela Merkel grew up in East Germany behind the wall that