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From the Falklands to Brexit: cut-price Jingoism

Thatcher’s cut-price Jingoism, which exploited new ideas about PR, is an inspiration to her successors, the hard Brexiteers. But there are lessons too for those who oppose them.

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falklands victory.jpg

Image: Falklands Victory Parade through the City of London, PA Archive, all rights reserved.

If you want to understand how British policy makers think; don’t go to Chatham House, go to Lewis Carroll instead. The current government’s Brexit strategies are straight from the White Queen: Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. A list of Brexit ideas emanating from Theresa May’s cabinet number far more than six impossible things – such as Boris Johnson’s ludicrous suggestion that the success of the London congestion charge showed how easy it would be to replace customs checks on a post-Brexit Irish border.