I've written a blogpost on "Brexit in Historical Perspective". It's a longish read, so here's a summary of the argument. [THREAD] gladstonediaries.blogspot.com/2020/01/brexit… 
2. Brexit marks the end, not just of a four-year political struggle, but of an entire phase of British history: half a century in which Britain was fundamentally reshaped by its membership of the European bloc.
3. From 1961 to 2016, every British government - whether Labour or Conservative - thought that Britain should be inside the European bloc. Yet ministers have shown little understanding of why Britain joined, or of the strategic dilemmas to which membership became the answer.
4. To say this is not to refight the arguments of the last four years. But unless we understand why Britain joined – and why alternative strategies were rejected – we will not be realistic about the scale of the challenge that lies ahead.
5. Britain in 1945 confronted a series of major challenges. Its economy was exhausted, it was heavily in debt and it was battling colonial insurgencies. It initially attempted to rebuild its strength outside Europe: chiefly through the Commonwealth and the "Special Relationship".
6. Yet each of those strategies collapsed over the "long" 1950s. While the EEC surged ahead economically, Britain's share of Commonwealth markets contracted rapidly. Neither the Commonwealth nor the "Special Relationship" provided the hoped-for platform for British power.
7. Meanwhile, sovereignty seemed to be leaking away to currency markets, the International Monetary Fund and trade blocs setting the rules of trade.
8. By the early 1960s, Britain's national strategy seemed to have run out of road. That was brutally exposed by Dean Acheson, in a famous speech at West Point.
9. The result was a fundamental reorientation of British strategy. The goals would remain the same, but Europe would become the central instrument of British policy.
10. That consensus held in government from 1961 to 2016. Even Margaret Thatcher, in her most Eurosceptic phase as prime minister, insisted in the notorious Bruges Speech that "Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community".
11. Diplomatically, Thatcher bowed to no one in her determination that Britain should cut a dash in the world. But she saw membership as a continuation, not a rejection, of Britain’s global role.
12. Campaigning in 1975, Thatcher dismissed the idea that Britain could reclaim its national sovereignty simply by leaving the EEC.
13. Those assumptions were broadly accepted by every government until 2016. Their collapse re-opens all the big strategic questions of British politics. It is possible that better answers might emerge in future; yet there has been little sign of the new strategic thinking needed.
14. The danger is that a Euroscepticism birthed in the 1990s - when trade wars, security threats & great power competition seemed a thing of the past - and marinated in mythic visions of a past when Britain "stood alone" - refuses to face the strategic dilemmas that lie ahead.
15. Brexit means we are going to have to find new answers to some serious strategic dilemmas. If we pretend those dilemmas do not exist, or if we simply go back to old answers because we have forgotten why they were rejected in the first place, disaster lies ahead.
16. Brexit requires a fundamental recasting of Britain’s national strategy. Achieving that will require more imagination, more humility & a more clear-eyed appreciation of the options than anyone has yet offered in Britain’s tortured Brexit debate. [ENDS] gladstonediaries.blogspot.com/2020/01/brexit…
