Thread by @peterjukes

Fantastic #GeneralElection2019 analysis from
⁦@JamesMelville⁩. Thread follows

Brexitannia: The British Identity Crisis on ⁦@BylineTimes⁩ bylinetimes.com/2019/12/13/bre…

@JamesMelville @BylineTimes The Great British public have decided to give the Tories five more years of power. To “get Brexit done”, millions of voters have stuck two fingers up at a window, without realising it’s a mirror.

Britain is now a battered ship Britannia sailing against the wind across stormy waters and travelling towards an iceberg which, because of a lack of planning and poor navigation, 52% of the crew somehow decided didn’t exist.

The British ‘values’ of politeness, humour, endeavour, manners, creativity, multiculturalism, stoicism, civic pride, innovation and community spirit... appear to be getting drowned out by the sound of exceptionalism draped with the Little Englander flag of patriotism.

Genuinely awe-inspiring identity and pride has been replaced by an insecure and confused identity based on ethnic nationalism and England, in particular, currently has an identity crisis.

Britain, once renowned for its pragmatism, common sense and political stability has become the diametric opposite. It is now an island of wild and empty rhetoric, impulsive populism and political extremism combined with a dumbing down of political discourse

The roots of this backlash stem from a gradual erosion of Britain’s industrial base, disenfranchised communities, economic decline and an increase in understandable resentment. This has been wilfully exploited by the readiness of the Tory Party to lie and peddle obvious untruths

So, when combining another five long years of a Conservative Government with a now seemingly inevitable hard Brexit, it is unclear as to where Brexitannia is heading.