Image: "Demagogues", Flickr/Philip Hunt. Creative Commons, some rights reserved.
Brexit in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US are the focus of this elegantly written and insightful analysis about the period of political uncertainty in which the West finds itself. We are living through this period and many of us – citizens as well as politicians and the media – are struggling to understand both how we got here and what kind of future we might reasonably hope for and expect. Anthony Barnett’s book, The Lure of Greatness: England's Bexit and America's Trump, provides an account of the lead-up to the current situation, offers a global perspective especially regarding the role of neoliberalism as the dominant economic paradigm of the age, and suggests some possible ways forward for the UK, of which the most salient and dramatic is that it should cease to exist so that our four constituent nations can go their own independent way.
The book is unashamedly judgemental about some of the key figures on both sides of the Atlantic. Notably enjoyable – and apposite – is the author’s contempt for Tony Blair and David Cameron, the first of whom he describes as governing with a more than passable imitation of megalomania, and the latter as a frivolous, contemptible liar who treated the country as just another playground for the destructive wantonness of the Bullingdon Club.
