Her story – of survival, of wanting a better life, and of the need for human contact – is as old as the story of mankind itself.
May doesn’t believe in Brexit at all, but behaves as though she does, indeed as though it has been her burning ambition since she entered the House of Commons.
New social class distinctions are increasingly relocated outside the borders of a particular national economy, becoming transnational and carried out by ‘ordinary people’.
What these stories highlight is a more general social truth: to be a tenant is to be precarious, at continual risk of rent rise, legal disputes and being evicted.
If Parliament is sovereign and wants to vote, it votes. If someone else (the government) is in a position to “give” it the right to vote, it is not sovereign.
“Here’s also why Brexit happened. Europe is a mystery. Europeans come from a faraway land. Australia is nearer.”
The great irony of Brexit is that most outcomes will lead to a loss of sovereignty and democracy. But there is a route forward.
Whilst the media bemoans the ‘death of the high street’, across London, investors are trying to drive out the kind of local, culturally appropriate small retail that keeps areas alive.
The challenge is on the streets, at the ballot box, and through popular culture, as a new history makes clear.
Jayne and her children won their long battle for the right to stay in the UK. Then they faced a fresh fight, with security company G4S.
Brexit – driven by unenlightened, defiantly anti-modern nationalism – could be the most serious constitutional crisis since Great Britain’s inception in 1707.
