Heroic failure : Brexit and the politics of pain / Fintan O'Toole.
Publisher: London : Head of Zeus, 2018Description: xviii, 217 pagesContent type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volumeISBN: 9781789540987; 9781789541007Other title: Brexit and the politics of pain [Portion of title]Subject(s): European Union -- Great Britain | European Union -- Great Britain -- Public opinion | Nationalism -- England | Great Britain -- Foreign relations -- European Union countries | European Union countries -- Foreign relations -- Great Britain | Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 2010-DDC classification: 327.41040905Item type | Current library | Class number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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Book | House of Lords Library - Palace Dewey | 327.41040905 OTO (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 016536 |
t.p. "An Apollo book".
Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-217).
The pleasures of self-pity -- SS-GB: life in occupied England -- The triumph of the Light Brigade -- A pint of beer, a packet of prawn cocktail flavour crisps and two ounces of dog shit, please -- Sadopopulism -- The twilight of the gods: English dreamtime -- The sore tooth and the broken umbrella.
"In exploring the answers to the question: 'why did Britain vote leave?', Fintan O'Toole finds himself discovering how trivial journalistic lies became far from trivial national obsessions; how the pose of indifference to truth and historical fact has come to define the style of an entire political elite; how a country that once had colonies is redefining itself as an oppressed nation requiring liberation; the strange gastronomic and political significance of prawn-flavoured crisps, and their role in the rise of Boris Johnson; the dreams of revolutionary deregulation and privatisation that drive Arron Banks, Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg; and the silent rise of English nationalism, the force that dare not speak its name. He also discusses the fatal attraction of heroic failure, once a self-deprecating cult in a hugely successful empire that could well afford the occasional disaster: the Charge of the Light Brigade, or Franklin lost in the Arctic. Now failure is no longer heroic--it is just failure, and its terrible costs will be paid by the most vulnerable of Brexit's supporters, and by those who may suffer the consequences of a hard border in Ireland and the breakdown of a fragile peace."-- Taken from cover.