On Friday, we will leave the EU. For the first time in our modern history, the United Kingdom will exist as a union of nations outside of empire. Guy Verhofstadt, the EU Parliaments Brexit coordinator, warned against it. “The world of tomorrow,” he said, “is not a world order based on nation states or countries. It’s a world order based on empires.” Verhofstadt took the Napoleonic view. The modern European liberal state is only politically viable if it is part of an imperial union of nations. [...]
Now we are leaving. Brexit, the controversies of immigration, and the fraying of relations between the four countries of the United Kingdom, are symptoms of the long and chronic unwinding of Britain’s imperial role and identity. Just as the Union was constructed out of the growth of empire, so its post-Brexit reconstitution will need to evolve out of the making of the UK’s post-imperial role in the world. [...]
The new political era begins with the estrangement of the governing class from the country. Neither a liberal progressive Labour Party, nor a Conservative Party dominated by market liberalism has the necessary politics to forge a new hegemony. Both parties are products of the liberal settlement which favoured state driven, technocratic and legalistic responses to political problems. Institution and nation building democratic politics is an alien concept. Neither has shown the capacity to think big and strategically about Britain’s future role in the world.
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