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17 tweets,
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1/ “ Brexit is a fabulous form of displacement – it acknowledges a profound and genuine unhappiness about how the British are governed but deflects it on to Europe. irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan…
2/ Let’s just say that if Theresa May were the head of a newly liberated African colony in the 1950s, British conservatives would have been pointing, half-ruefully, half-gleefully, in her direction
3/ and saying “See? Told you so – they just weren’t ready to rule themselves. Needed at least another generation of tutelage by the Mother Country.”
4/
“Aptitude for self-government is not what comes to mind when one looks in from the outside at the goings-on in Westminster last week, when, as Tom Peck so brilliantly put it in the London Independent,
“Aptitude for self-government is not what comes to mind when one looks in from the outside at the goings-on in Westminster last week, when, as Tom Peck so brilliantly put it in the London Independent,
5/ “the House of Commons was a Benny Hill chase on acid, running through a Salvador Dali painting in a spaceship on its way to infinity”.
6/.
Referencing G B Shaw
“The alleged aptitude of the English for self-government,” wrote Shaw in his preface to Androcles and the Lion, “is contradicted by every chapter of their history.”
Shaw’s quip does point up two of the deep problems that underlie the Brexit project
Referencing G B Shaw
“The alleged aptitude of the English for self-government,” wrote Shaw in his preface to Androcles and the Lion, “is contradicted by every chapter of their history.”
Shaw’s quip does point up two of the deep problems that underlie the Brexit project
7/
“First, the problem of this imagined effort at self-government is the “self” bit. What is the self of the British polity? As in all nationalist revolts, the easy bit of “Them against Us” is Them: in this case the EU. The hard bit is Us. “
“First, the problem of this imagined effort at self-government is the “self” bit. What is the self of the British polity? As in all nationalist revolts, the easy bit of “Them against Us” is Them: in this case the EU. The hard bit is Us. “
8/. “Brexit appeals to a collective British self but it is itself the most dramatic symptom of the unravelling of that very thing...
It has merely marked out in bright red ink the fault-lines that have long been less vividly present – the drifting apart of England and Scotland;
It has merely marked out in bright red ink the fault-lines that have long been less vividly present – the drifting apart of England and Scotland;
9/. ”..the economic and cultural divide between what Anthony Barnett calls “England-without-London” and the rest of the UK (Wales being the obvious anomaly)
10/. “the social and geographic rifts between the winners and losers of the long Thatcherite revolution. Brexit, in a worst-of-all-worlds moment, brings all of these divisions to a head while doing absolutely nothing to address them.
11/
”It reveals a polity that cannot create consensus because it lacks a foundation in social consent.
The other, closely related, problem is the English nationalism that is at once such a powerful force in Brexit and so poorly articulated.
”It reveals a polity that cannot create consensus because it lacks a foundation in social consent.
The other, closely related, problem is the English nationalism that is at once such a powerful force in Brexit and so poorly articulated.
12/.
“As every former colony knows, nationalism is a great beast for carrying you to the point of independence – and then it becomes a dead horse. Shaw wrote to his friend Mabel FitzGerald (mother of the future taoiseach Garret) in December 1914:
“As every former colony knows, nationalism is a great beast for carrying you to the point of independence – and then it becomes a dead horse. Shaw wrote to his friend Mabel FitzGerald (mother of the future taoiseach Garret) in December 1914:
13/. “Even the subject nations like Ireland must never forget that the moment they gain home rule, the horse will drop down under them, and reveal, by a sudden and horrible decomposition, that he has been dead for years.”
14/
“Brexit is a dead horse, a form of nationalist energy that started to decompose rapidly on June 24th, 2016, as soon as it entered the field of political reality. It can’t go anywhere. It can’t carry the British state to any promised land.
“Brexit is a dead horse, a form of nationalist energy that started to decompose rapidly on June 24th, 2016, as soon as it entered the field of political reality. It can’t go anywhere. It can’t carry the British state to any promised land.
15/
“Yet a fantasy of glorious, defiant aloneness is at the heart of Brexit’s wish-fulfilment. It is a great warning about being careful what you wish for. What we are seeing at the moment is a sneak preview of England standing alone.
“Yet a fantasy of glorious, defiant aloneness is at the heart of Brexit’s wish-fulfilment. It is a great warning about being careful what you wish for. What we are seeing at the moment is a sneak preview of England standing alone.
16/
“It is not surprising that it is a preview of a horror show.
For when you really are alone, what are you alone with? You are alone with your demons. “
Such powerful writing and commentary from @fotoole.
Day after day from so many Irish journalists.
“It is not surprising that it is a preview of a horror show.
For when you really are alone, what are you alone with? You are alone with your demons. “
Such powerful writing and commentary from @fotoole.
Day after day from so many Irish journalists.
17/. Was it only yesterday that I posted a thread on an article by @seanwhelanRTE?
I hope they will all forgive me for butchering their superb work to reduce them to threads, thus easier in the future to find the quotations I seek to reuse.
I hope they will all forgive me for butchering their superb work to reduce them to threads, thus easier in the future to find the quotations I seek to reuse.
