What Brexiteers Don't Want You To Know - Tom McTague

JOIN US ON SUBSTACK: substack.com/@wtfisleftEarly Access to Ad-Free Extended InterviewsAsk our Guests QuestionsLIVEs with Jovan + FreddieWL Book Club + Community DiscussionArticles + Exclusive Content****Are we more American than European? Has the UK's future been fatalistically forged? New Statesmen Editor and Brexit Historian Tom McTague offers an account of the real trade offs faced by the British establishment.Too often, politics resorts to a conclusion of managed decline. A despondent shrug. Are we suffering from learned helplessness? A belief that it’s now too hard to create the change our society is yearning for?History does not work like that. A radical contingency of events might present as inevitability. But in McTague’s chronicle of Britain’s topsy-turvy relationship with the Europe and its Union, one thing stands out: it is never over. So perhaps the Pro-European Left needs to channel their inner Declan Rice (“It’s not done!”). Maybe it isn’t - maybe the dream of Britain as an integral player in the EU need not be abandoned.But if that is to be the unwritten Post-Brexit story, the #FBPE brigade need to get real. Why did Britain choose to leave?One answer is to lament the brainwashing of the right-wing press, the outsized influence of Cambridge Analytica and the weather on the day (it was raining for both teams, Ty!).But another answer, one that cuts deeper, would argue that this is a profound civilisational question. One that must arrest the hard realities of geopolitical competition, like a British moth to an American flame.In the end, it is about money and it is about power. How much hard power should Britain give up to be able to choose its own destiny? Is it even possible to decouple from the American empire? What control is really open for us to wrest back, after all?Some of these questions we attempt to answer. But the diagnosis is clear: if we want to keep the welfare state, things are going to have to change. Chapters00:00 Intro02:11 Is Farage Closer to Power or Failure?08:37 Unpredictability of the Next Election14:28 Where’s the Left’s Dominic Cummings?18:18 Why the Starmer’s Project Failed23:32 Reindustrialisation and the AI Revolution28:42 Tech Regulation and British Sovereignty 35:05 The Populist Right’s Civilisational Project40:01 Restoring the Left’s Radical Tradition44:35 A Federal Europe or an Imperial America?51:32 Can Middle Powers Create an Alliance?58:82 Britain’s Post-Brexit Ambitions1:03:19 A Left-Mythology on English Identity1:10:58 Enoch Powell’s Impact on The Modern Right1:14:00 A Future For European Integration?