The memory of past greatness can be debilitating for a people who feel they have failed to rise to a historic occasion. We Greeks have been burdened by this sensation at various moments in our postwar history: in 1967, when we failed to prevent a military coup; or more recently in 2015, when we allowed the troika of the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank to crush us. Brexit Britain is, today, wallowing in a similar sense of having betrayed both its past and its future. A “Speech of Hope” for Britain is now more necessary than ever as the country endures a humiliating impasse.
Polarisation and discord have been Brexit’s predictable consequences. However, there is something that binds together all strands of British public opinion: self-pity. Right-wing Brexiteers are perhaps the group most immersed in it. They crave “Empire 2.0” (a global, London-centred, mercantilist realm) and imagine themselves as an insurgency against brutish forces they cannot overcome. Pro-establishment Remainers strive to thwart Brexit, trading on the sad conviction that sovereignty is a luxury for an island constantly shrinking in global influence. Lexiteers imagine that Brexit may help them avenge the left’s comprehensive defeat at the hands of home-grown Thatcherism.
Content from our partners
