Because I'm not used to speaking for short amount of time, I've written something. Cause anyone that knows me knows that trying to get me to stick to 15 minutes is near on impossible. So I've written something that I've entitled "The battle of Britishness in the age of Brexit" and the title of the essay comes from a brilliant book by Tony Kushner that examines the waves of migration to Britain from the 17th century up until the 1950's. I suggest everyone read it to see how much depressing continuity, and also lack of credibility, there is around contemporary debates about migration.
I would like to talk about remembrance and forgetting. Before we get into my analysis, I would like to make some, what should hopefully be obvious observations, by analysing the role that narrow nationalism, xenophobia and often outright racism played in the Brexit campaign, we are of course not suggesting that everyone who voted leave is akin to the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, nor that remain voters are a homogenous group of revolutionary anti-racists.
This should be so obvious it should hardly be stated. I've met black socialists that voted leave, I've met absolute xenophobes who voted remain, and everything in between. the ruling class was of course itself massively divided on the issue, with the Murdoch press and Tony Blair – usually in such sublime agreement when it comes to waging war – occupying opposite camps.
