To take power, May had to pretend that she, too, dreams these impossible dreams. And that led her to embrace a phony populism in which the narrow and ambiguous majority who voted for Brexit under false pretences are be reimagined…
#Brexit
Fintan O’Toole: Britain: The End of a Fantasy – The New York Review of Books
Posted in Noted & Quoted, Political Philosophy, Politics Tagged with: Brexit, Conservatism, Populism
The Economist: How to understand Angela Merkel’s comments about America and Britain
Foreigners often get Mrs Merkel all wrong. She is not the queen of Europe, nor has she any desire to be it. She is a domestic leader and politician whose mounting international stature is always a function of her ability…
Posted in International Relations, Noted & Quoted, Operation American Greatness Tagged with: Brexit, Merkel, Trump
The EU can push for a hard Brexit, too – Financial Times
Even the negotiation process itself allows the EU to do well by doing good. The EU side is considering opening much of the negotiation to public view by publishing negotiation mandates and other documents. That is a good thing in…
Ian Dunt: Extreme Brexit: This was May’s last moment of control – politics.co.uk
This was her last moment of control. Once Article 50 starts, the brute force of reality will invade the self-interested dream Britain has been having since June 24th. It is easy for May to be popular now and for even…
Rogers and Shetler-Jones: After Brexit, a Bold Britain… – War on the Rocks
Brexit has given the United Kingdom a once-in-a-generation opportunity to sweep out the dead wood – clear away the policies that no longer serve a purpose in the contemporary context – and replace them with something more fit for the…
John Harris: Whoever the leader is, Labour may never recover from this crisis – The Guardian
The truth, unpalatable to some but which is surely obvious, is that Labour is in the midst of a longstanding and possibly terminal malaise, and now finds itself facing two equally unviable options. On one side is the current leader…
Timothy Garton Ash: As a lifelong English European, this is the biggest defeat of my political life – The Guardian
This nostalgic optimism is the siren call of the Brexiteers: we were once great on our own, so we can be again. It’s a complete non-sequitur of course (“Carthage was once great, so it can be again”), but mighty seductive.…
Christopher Caldwell: Britain Exits, Democracy Lives, And Everything Has Changed – The Weekly Standard
Everything is being revalued. Political institutions, too. Economic issues, fear, immigration—these all caught Britons’ attention and rallied them to the polls. But at its core this was a battle over definitions of democracy and freedom. This may have been Britain’s…