There's no going back – May has burned the boats of a divided nation | Martin Kettle

The PM’s article 50 speech invoked a misty-eyed vision of a fairer Britain – but Brexit will not produce that kind of country

Like Aeneas fleeing from Troy on the shore of Italy, or Cortés on the coast of Mexico, it was a moment for the burning of the boats. On Wednesday Theresa May burned hers. But they were our boats too that she burned, Britain’s boats, boats in which, for half a century, postwar Britain has tried to reconcile its history and its future in Europe – and failed. For good or ill on both sides of the channel, Britain will not be returning to the European Union.

It doesn’t get more serious than that for this country. Yet it ended, as it began, with more of a whimper than a bang. As 1973 dawned, the Guardian reported that Britain had embarked on its membership of Europe without fireworks. “It was difficult to tell that anything of importance had occurred,” records the paper’s front page, “and a date which will be entered in the history books as long as histories of Britain are written, was taken by most people as a matter of course.”

Related: May wants security, free trade, liberal values: just what we’re throwing away | Jonathan Freedland

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