Politics Past and Present

A troubled UK is in desperate need of politicians and commentators who can think historically.

Shuttlecocks and Mackerel, or Members Going to Vote on the Corn Bill, 14 March 1815, by George Cruikshank © Bridgeman Images.

If the study of history cultivates anything, it should be the ‘long view’, the ability to consider questions that affect our future from the deep perspective of the past, to take account of who we are, where we’ve come from and where we might be going. It is fair to say that this is an ability the UK appears to have lost. The loss has, of course, been exposed by the seemingly never-ending crisis of Brexit, which has long been as much, if not more, about the UK’s domestic politics than it is about ‘Europe’, a subject about which most Britons remain remarkably ignorant almost 45 years on from the country’s original decision to throw in its lot with the EU’s predecessors.

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