Sigismund Goetze's 'Britannia Pacificatrix' mural in the UK Foreign & Commonwealth office. Image: Wikimedia Commons. Public DomainThroughout its history, Britain has had a reputation for stability and security. This after all was one of the main clarion calls in Scotland’s indyref and, more recently, the Brexit vote. But it has always been a bit of a myth - and is now increasingly fictitious. Firstly, discussions supposedly about ‘Britain’ often collapse into discussions purely about England, and the south of England at that. In the European referendum and its aftermath, much of the discussion that occurred repeatedly - supposedly about the country, its challenges and future - wasn’t actually about the UK, but instead about England. This has become the way the country is presented by its elites. One glaring example of this was the previous week’s BBC post-vote analysis, ‘Brexit: The Battle for Britain’ which had lots to commend it. Politicians were candid, telling stories about decisions - and about each other.
There were however two big problems with this. Firstly, it presented politics as the pastime of an insider class sitting in swish London offices and presiding over us, reducing the affairs of the state to nothing more than a spectator sport. In this light, the referendum seem less like a democratic affront to elitism and more like another spectacular act of political theatre. Secondly, and as seriously, was the problem of the missing Britain. In a one-hour programme, there was not one single, even tokenistic, reference to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Instead there was lots of discussion about London and its critical importance for the Remain vote. Apart from that, the only other geographic reference was to somewhere vague called ‘the North’. This apparently isn’t a very happy place, is filled with lots of disquiet and frustration, sense of loss, and inability to accept change. People stubbornly cling to their Northerliness and refuse to embrace Southernness. ‘The North’ was represented by three disgruntled and elderly working class men in a pub – who felt that all politicians lied and didn’t listen to people like them. And there was one woman - the Leave-voting Sam Adamson from Sunderland who stated that: ‘For the working-class people, it was like, ‘Yeah, you heard us – now do something about it’.” We will see how that works out.
This is what shrunken dreams look like.
