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Heroic Failure

Fintan O'Toole

4.17 · Rating details · 1,447 ratings · 177 reviews

England's favourite poem, Rudyard Kipling’s If , says that triumph and disaster are the same thing. It also enjoins the English to “lose, and start again at your beginnings/ And never breathe a word about your loss.” Most modern English heroics are screw-ups, retreats or disasters: the charge of the Light Brigade, the doomed Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passag ...more

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Paperback, 200 pages

Published April 4th 2019 by Head of Zeus (first published November 22nd 2018)

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Oct 24, 2020 Trevor rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: social-theory, history

This book is written by an Irishman about Brexit – I don’t know if Gaelic has its own version of the German ‘Schadenfreude’, but if not ‘Brexit’ would be as good a contender as any other. “I won’t lie to you, I was delighted when Mary fall on her arse – it was a total Brexit”.

I had thought that this book was going to be a history of Brexit. For the past five years or so two stories have dominated the world but at the same time seemed so bizarre that I’ve come very close to not believing the news ...more

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Dec 17, 2018 Rory Harden rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

If you are, say, a liberal-leaning American, and you want to know what the heck is the matter with England, then this is the book to which you should turn.

The writer is, happily and necessarily, Irish.

Here you will find the disease known as ‘Brexit’ fully described and diagnosed. The prospect of a cure, however, remains contingent and – dare one say? – nebulous, having to do with the downfall of neo-liberalism. Wish us all luck with that one.

O’Toole doesn’t have much to say about Trump, but one ...more

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Aug 23, 2019 Manuel Antão rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

School Bully: "Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain" by Fintan O'Toole

I’ve pointed out previously that the main reason for Brexit is because Britain (or rather England) simply does not understand what the EU is about.

Johnson’s jokes about the EU and, Germany’s, and his expansionist plans, captures the general sense of distrust in England. I think the obsession with centralised power is really at the heart of Brexit and the B ...more

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Feb 05, 2019 Astrid rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

I have to admit that at times the book was hard for me to understand, as the author's target group seems to be readers from either within GB or the Commonwealth. I haven't heard about a lot of books or movies he mentioned. Nevertheless, I understood what he was bringing across and gosh, things are much clearer for me now. Nationalism and Sado-Populism (the later a word I never heard before), are two of the major roots for Brexit... and if I was living in Scotland or Norther-Ireland I would hate ...more

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May 22, 2020 G. rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-four-to-fives

Provides excellent cultural and historical context to Brexit. Contains fantastic sentences such as this: The political erotics of imaginary domination and imaginary submission are the deep pulse of the Brexit psychodrama. Sounds like something out of a penny dreadful, which I appreciate because it certainly fits the wtfery of the whole thing.

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Jun 08, 2019 Brendan Monroe rated it really liked it

Shelves: british, great-character-alert, non-fiction, politics, we-re-all-doomed, scary-future, drama-drama-drama, england

This is a great primer on Brexit for those who may not know very much about it. By "those", I mean me.

While I've tried my best to keep up with what's been happening with our neighbors across the pond, the view from the New World has of late been obscured by our own social and political crisis, for which I blame ... English nationalism.

Did I say English? I meant American. Although anyone who reads Fintan O'Toole's "Heroic Failure" will likely be struck by the astonishing similarity between the t ...more

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Jan 31, 2020 Peter Beck rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: published-2019

I am still trying to understand why the Brits would inflict so much economic harm on themselves by leaving the EU. In this quick and insightful read, Irish columnist Fintan O’Toole argues that we must look to literary greats like Orwell and Kipling, the British psyche, and a latent English nationalism that has blossomed since Scottish devolution in 1999.

O’Toole writes as a friendly but concerned neighbor rather than a historic enemy of Great Britain. He notes, “When a neighbor is going mad, it i I am still trying to understand why the Brits would inflict so much economic harm on themselves by leaving the EU. In this quick and insightful read, Irish columnist Fintan O’Toole argues that we must look to literary greats like Orwell and Kipling, the British psyche, and a latent English nationalism that has blossomed since Scottish devolution in 1999.

O’Toole writes as a friendly but concerned neighbor rather than a historic enemy of Great Britain. He notes, “When a neighbor is going mad, it is only reasonable to understand the source of their distress” (xxii). O’Toole’s diagnosis: a superiority complex coupled with delusions of oppression.

That the U.K. won World War II but lost an empire never sat well with many Brits, according to O’Toole. This has led to visions of “Empire 2.0” consisting of the Anglosphere--the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Even if this were possible, O’Toole points out that in this Anglo-Saxon Union the U.K. would become subservient to the U.S. rather than the EU. Ironically, leaving the EU could easily lead to the final step in decolonization--the loss of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland has already been cut adrift in the eyes of Unionists.

Brexit advocates managed to convince enough voters that the UK had become a “vassal state” or “colony” of the EU. Politicians and thought leaders frequently likened the EU to Hitler and Nazi Germany. The best salesman for Brexit turned out to also be the biggest liar: Boris Johnson (BoJo). Thus, even though BoJo became prime minister a year after O’Toole wrote his book, BoJo is the individual O’Toole spends the most time on. It is no coincidence that BoJo’s only book published during the decade was a shoddy Churchill biography. He wanted the public to think of him as the reincarnation of Britain's most revered leader. BoJo used his perch as a “Guardian” columnist to hone his lies about EU red tape. He discovered that imaginary EU food regulations (most famously shrimp-flavored potato chips) resonated with the public. As O’Toole puts it, “The British had an insatiable appetite for every kind of Euro-menace to their food and drink” (p. 103). Parliament’s Treasury Committee confronted BoJo with his lies, but “you cannot expose a naked man” (p. 137). Sadly, BoJo “had no strategy, no tactics, no serious intent at all. And for very good reason-- Leave was not supposed to win” (132).

O’Toole’s arguments about the role of the “cult of heroic failure” (the paradigmatic example being the “Charge of the Light Brigade” blunder) and “sadopopulism” (Bexiters were former Punks prone to self-mutilation) veered into psychobabble for me.

I wish O’Toole had spent more time discussing yawning income inequality and the fraying of the social safety net in the U.K. as I think this has great explanatory power both in the U.K. and the U.S (the Midlands = West Virginia; London = NY/DC/Boston/LA?). O’Toole argues that “Working-class communities in England, like their counterparts in most of the EU, are absolutely right to feel they have been abandoned” (p. 130). Unfortunately, he does not develop this point. Also, this book is written for a British audience--I had to look up the meaning of "naffness" and I still have only a hazy idea of what "Turkey Twizzlers" are.

O’Toole doesn’t address English nationalism until the final substantive chapter (skip the Postscript chapter--when has one ever done more than summarize the months since the manuscript was written without adding to the preceding narrative?). Since Scotland gained greater self-rule in 1999, surveys show that the English are growing more conscious of their identity. O’Toole never really explains what this identity is, other than a vague preference for St. George over St. Patrick. Is it anything more than soccer hooligans waving the white flag with the red cross through it? Perhaps the English themselves haven’t figured this out yet. ...more

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Sep 11, 2019 Radiantflux rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: uk

109th book for 2019.

Written by a prominent Irish theater critic this analysis of the cultural background motivations for Brexit—think lost empire, the nightmare of the colonizer being colonized, a white England forever—is excellent.

The book—published in late 2018—is perhaps a little dated now but the analysis remains very much on point. For anyone who is mystified by why Britain—or more accurately England minus London— wants to leave the EU this book offers a useful set of frames by which to vi ...more

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Feb 24, 2019 MJ Nicholls rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, senryu-reviews, zeitgeist, pogue-mahone, new-in-2018

Senryu Review:

A trenchant takedown
of English psychodrama
poised to bankrupt Brits

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May 25, 2019 Tom Richards rated it it was amazing

Having lived with Brexit for three years, I never really understood it until now. There seemed to be literally no benefit to leaving the EU. All the supposed advantages: taking back control of our borders; repatriating powers from the ECJ; £350 million per week for the NHS; signing free trade deals with other countries- these all vanished upon closer inspection. As a rational individual, I couldn’t understand why we would participate in such an enormous act of national self-harm.

Fintan O’Toole Having lived with Brexit for three years, I never really understood it until now. There seemed to be literally no benefit to leaving the EU. All the supposed advantages: taking back control of our borders; repatriating powers from the ECJ; £350 million per week for the NHS; signing free trade deals with other countries- these all vanished upon closer inspection. As a rational individual, I couldn’t understand why we would participate in such an enormous act of national self-harm.

Fintan O’Toole has written a remarkably erudite analysis which looks into the decidedly non-rational reasons for Brexit, drawing on countless historical examples to illustrate the mindset of a Brexiteer. Paradoxically, it has taken an Irishman to explain the deep-seated elements of the English psyche (and they are English, rather than British) which are impelling us. Or perhaps not so paradoxically, for the answer has its roots partly in the politics of Empire, and the Irish have recent experience of being an oppressed nation. Having lost a great Empire, we are trying to assuage our historic guilt by putting ourselves in the position of the colony, the vassal state of the EU, which forces its hordes of migrants upon us against our will. The oppressor becomes the oppressed; the sadist becomes the masochist. We are able to revel in self-pity while harking back to past glories, dreaming of re-creating the Empire through a succession of free-trade agreements with the Commonwealth.

Except that this is all a myth. We are not, in fact, being oppressed. No-one is actually invading us, bombing us or occupying the country. The best examples of oppression we have been able to find have been Boris Johnson’s mendacious examples of straight bananas, and prohibitions on prawn cocktail crisps and the recycling of teabags. But it suits us to believe this, because it allows us to evoke a feeling of solidarity against the external threat, and indulge a national love of the eponymous ‘Heroic Failure’ of the book. We celebrate historic disasters as long as they have been prosecuted with the requisite amount of enthusiasm, brio, and self-sacrifice. Forethought and preparation are anathema, since the point is to guarantee failure in as difficult circumstances as possible. Hence we have Franklin’s ill-fated expedition to discover the Northwest Passage, the imbecility of the Charge of the Light Brigade, and Scott of the Antarctic lauded as national treasure rather than second-rate loser.

Brexit is merely the latest incarnation of this national passion for glorious disaster. We can see this in the entirely superficial way in which we have tried to execute leaving the EU. First, a referendum blithely given to the public for trivial political reasons, with no clear idea or explanation of what a vote to leave would mean in practice. Then, after exhortations to ‘just get on with it’ and to believe in the ‘sunlit uplands’ afforded by Brexit, a similarly blithe triggering of article 50, again without any semblance of a plan. For three years, no real effort has been made to explain the difficult trade-offs involved, except perhaps by Ivan Rogers, one of the derided ‘experts’, who got the sack for his trouble. When the negotiations with the EU27 became difficult, we got more insistence that we just needed to try harder and believe in Brexit- as if Michel Barnier and the Irish border could be made to disappear if only we squeezed our eyes tight and found some new resource within ourselves.

So that explains it. We are not self-harming for any rational purpose, instead fulfilling a psychological need for victimhood. Somehow I feel much better for knowing this, for at least now I have a framework, albeit a topsy-turvy one, on which to hang my understanding. Amplifying her travails with a disastrous and unnecessary election, Theresa May is channeling Scott of the Antarctic. Brexit? It’s the Charge of the Light Brigade. ...more

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Nov 03, 2019 Siria rated it really liked it

Shelves: politics, nonfiction

In Heroic Failure, Fintan O'Toole undertakes a kind of cultural history of Brexit, arguing that the roots of this ongoing fiasco are far more complex and thoroughly embedded in the English national psyche than has generally been appreciated. I use the term 'English' here deliberately, since O'Toole argues that Brexit is essentially an English phenomenon. It's driven by a thwarted sense of English superiority in a post-Empire age and by the increasing failure of 'English' to remain an easy defaul ...more

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Jan 04, 2019 Neil Fox rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Fintan O'Toole, Ireland's premier political and social commentator who wickedly satirized the ludicrous excesses of the Celtic Tiger for years and most memorably compiled his writings on that subject in 'Ship of fools', has in recent times made commentary on Brexit his forte. In 'Heroic failure' he pointedly turns his sharp intellect and razor wit onto that great topic of our times.

Heroic Failure is no political commentary or analysis of Brexit, nor is it a chronological detailing of the events Fintan O'Toole, Ireland's premier political and social commentator who wickedly satirized the ludicrous excesses of the Celtic Tiger for years and most memorably compiled his writings on that subject in 'Ship of fools', has in recent times made commentary on Brexit his forte. In 'Heroic failure' he pointedly turns his sharp intellect and razor wit onto that great topic of our times.

Heroic Failure is no political commentary or analysis of Brexit, nor is it a chronological detailing of the events that led Britain down that road, it is about the National psychology rather than the politics that led to Brexit.

O'Toole explores the mindset that gave us Brexit - a National self-pity fueled by a sense of grievance and superiority. He argues that Brexit follows the tradition of heroic failure - the last stand, the doomed expedition, the suicidal cavalry charge - of which British history is replete. The charge of the light brigade, Gordon of Khartoum, the doomed expeditions of Franklin and Scott, the Somme, Ypres and Dunkirk come from an inexplicable urge to be glorious in defeat rather than endure the humiliation of face loss from admission of being wrong, or of needing to change direction - I'd rather be jolly well lost than have to ask directions, by Jove. Britain is somehow also trapped in an obsession about its finest moment which was a great success as opposed to a failure - World War 2, because of the decades' long anticlimax that followed - economic stagnation, the loss of Empire , the ignominy of watching the economic rise of former enemies Japan and Germany. The EU is the Nazi invasion that never came.

O'Toole brilliantly examines the counter cultural aspects of Brexit - traditional upper class twittery mixes with the popular culture forces that gave us Punk, Brexit as a nihilistic anarchy, equating 'take back control' with ' Never mind the bollix, here's Brexit'. The punk rocker of English Nationalism, unable to give the 2 fingers to the United Kingdom itself with its undesirable Scots, Welch and Norther Irish, instead tells Brussels to fuck off

Continuing the punk and rebellion theme, Brexit can be seen as a revolt against the ogress of a Nanny State carefully cultivated and conjured up by the likes of Farage, Johnson, Rees Mogg and Gove. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage carry themselves off as the man-in-the-pub, a slightly disheveled and sloppy-of-appearance ordinary bloke drinking his warm ale while munching on his prawn-flavored crisps, quick with a joke and a light up yer smoke, a common man just like you and me, the honest man in the street or pub. The opposite is of course true, as this is a cynical populist charade invented by elitist snobs who only see the common man as a vehicle for their political ambitions and couldn't give a hoot about him beyond this. One of the great political dupes of modern times is how the Conservative party, whose agenda is basically to further enrich the already wealthy, has managed to siphon off working and lower middle class voters whose interests they definitely do not represent. Jacob Rees-Mogg in his country estate with chauffeur driven cars and a Nanny who still wipes his arse for him won't be the one to suffer the economic consequences of Brexit - his investment funds safely berthed in EU-member Ireland's domain provides Brexit insurance for this. The same phenomenon can be seen in the US with how the Republican Party has attracted blue collar voters, and the explanation is the same. The right wing parties grab what should be the left-leaning economic demographic by making the hot-button social issues their own as they distract from their true economic agenda. In America it's abortion, guns, immigration and religion; in Britain it's also immigration plus interference in our traditional way of life from faceless Eurocrats, the Nazis who never invaded physically but who seek to take over by more covert perfidious means. The outcome of all this in America is Trump, in Britain it's Brexit.

Johnson & co, like Trump, never expected to actually win, and so were painfully unprepared for what came next - the leadership struggle, the exposure of their campaign lies ( all that money that was to flow back into the NHS from Brussels), the backfiring gamble of the 2017 General Election and the fiasco of the exit negotiations with the EU.

Brexit is a National disaster, a tragicomic farce and colossally unnecessary own-goal foisted on the Nation by the follies of the Conservative Party, the ultimate playing-out of old Etonian rivalry between Chum Boris and Friend David, naively swallowed by the Battle of Britain coffin-dodger brigade, little Englanders and knuckle-dragging Xenophobes and racists manipulated by the right-wing gutter press. It is quite literally a bus-wreck, as O'Toole hilariously points out in his use of the climatic scene from 'The Italian Job' as Brexit metaphor, with the gold at one end of the precariously perched bus representing the promises of Brexit whilst the hapless bank robbers whose grasping for it from the other end threaten to tilt the whole thing over the precipice are the Brexit gang. Unfortunately their actions have very much taken the Great out of Britain , and the Kingdom is now far from United. To paraphrase Scott's brave companion as he wandered out alone into the Antartic whiteout, we are going out now and we may be some time. ...more

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Dec 09, 2018 Thomas Harte rated it it was amazing

What I particularly liked about this book is that firstly it was written by an Irishman who very eloquently tore asunder the misinformation and warped thinking at the heart of Brexit. It was also a book that touches on the collateral damage Brexit will cause to Ireland. It is also a book that examines Englishness and delves into the psychology of Brexit and the thinking of those behind this process. A very welcome addition to the debate.

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Jan 26, 2019 Domhnall rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: politics

Fintan O’Toole is a terrific journalist with the Irish Times and has a long record of penetrating and biting reporting. I became a fan on reading his account of the 2008 financial crash- “Ship of Fools” – and this exploration of the background to Brexit is no less insightful. He places the Brexit debate unequivocally in the context of the continuing progress of extreme neoliberalism: “It is not possible simultaneously to ask people to trust the state and to tell them that the state has no busine ...more

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Apr 12, 2019 Lena B rated it really liked it · review of another edition

one of the strangest books I've read ngl ...more

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Dec 03, 2018 Rory rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Kinda rambles and is undirected. O'Toole has written many excellent OpEds about Brexit, but this form doesn't work.

The whole book can be summarised as "The English never got over winning the Second World War" ...more

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Mar 16, 2019 Ksenia Kulichik rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book was like a crash course in British (English?) national identity over the past hundred years with Brexit as the sour culmination of the long dragged on grievances.

It is brief and incisive, digging into the cultural origins and underpinnings of Brexithink, rather than dissecting its political manifestations or charting the timeline. O’Toole attacks the issue from many angles and draws parallels with plenty of historical events and cultural works, painting a multi-dimensional and vivid po ...more

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Apr 23, 2019 Richard McGeough rated it liked it · review of another edition

Where Fintan O’Toole is good, he’s very good: the concept of sado-populism, the Italian Job analogy, the brilliance of Boris Johnston at spinning trivial inconveniences into compelling narratives. Where he misses, he misses rather embarrassingly: I didn’t find the 50 Shades analogy convincing, while O’Toole’s thesis that if you’re an old punk, you’re up for a bit of anarchy in the name of Brexit was just cringeworthy. I’m glad I read it. The original appeal was to get a distinct Irish perspectiv ...more

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Jun 06, 2020 Tim Julian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Superb dissection of the act of collective madness that is Brexit by one of the astutest political commentators writing today. O'Toole identifies the roots of Brexit in a peculiarly English masochistic fantasy that longs for domination by a cruel master. In the absence of a suitable candidate for the role of dominator, part of the political and media elite seized upon "Brussels" and, naturally, the evil Germans (who, annoyingly, kept refusing to be anything but eminently reasonable) as the cause ...more

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Dec 15, 2018 Bert Bruins rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A timely book as they say. Fintan O'Toole is an Irish writer and columnist with other books to his name on Ireland and Irish identities. Here he turns his attention to the Brexit referendum and issues around English identity. To his mind anti-EU sentiment is predominantly a symptom of English (rather than British or UK) identity-insecurity that followed from the loss of empire, sharing decision making with equals within the EEC/EU, and the rise of nationalism in Wales and Scotland.

This long essa A timely book as they say. Fintan O'Toole is an Irish writer and columnist with other books to his name on Ireland and Irish identities. Here he turns his attention to the Brexit referendum and issues around English identity. To his mind anti-EU sentiment is predominantly a symptom of English (rather than British or UK) identity-insecurity that followed from the loss of empire, sharing decision making with equals within the EEC/EU, and the rise of nationalism in Wales and Scotland.

This long essay sometimes reads as psychoanalysis of a nation, like a modern day Erich Fromm writing about England rather than Germany, which no doubt will irritate some. There are plenty of lighter moments however, where O'Toole is not just pithy but also witty. Here he sees relevance in a recent TV advert for spectacles featuring John Cleese:

"Cleese gave the world an alternative image of Englishness that seems in retrospect more representative of the culture that produced Brexit: a hysterical Basil Fawlty giving a 'damn good thrashing' to his broken-down Austin 1100 Countryman Estate with the branch of a tree"

This I also found funny, yet to the point, talking about Tommy Robsinson followers:

"Victimhood has been seen to be the currency of power - women, people of colour, ethnic minorities appeal for equality by reference to their collective suffering. In this sense, the far-right is the white man's #MeToo movement. Not only am I not guilty, I am in fact the victim."

Boris Johnson, as the man who despite his history of lying and his comic flippancy,. is seen as the man who swung the referendum comes in for some special attention

Finding grievances against the EU largely fictitious, and therefore unfulfillable, O'Toole in his final words recommends dealing with English nationalism by taking it seriously, in other words thinking about the creation of an English parliament or something similar. I would add that political sciences professor David Runciman's viewpoint also deserves more attention. He has argued in recent years that the not-university-educated half of the population (the Somewheres rather than the Anywheres in David Goodhart's terms) deserve more respect (and that translates into more money and power) if we don't want to see more populist rebellions such as the Brexit vote or the elction of Trump.

I don't think the Boris Johnsons and Rees-Moggs of this world are the people to deliver such a thing though. Anybody out there who thinks they are? ...more

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Nov 12, 2019 Will rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Given that this was written prior to Boris becoming PM and who knows what twists and turns Brexit will take after the December general election, I figured I had best get this read. However, I needn’t have rushed as instead of a blow-by-blow account of the Brexit referendum and subsequent calamity, it explores the English (not British) attitudes and mentalities that have lead us to this point.

I absolutely was not expecting to be reading an analogy of how Brexit relates to 50 Shades of Grey, or h ...more

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Dec 23, 2018 Ascoyne rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, 2018

As a remainer I just don't understand the leaver psyche at all. I've been shocked to discover close family and friends who I've considered fairly intelligent and self aware who seem to have fallen for the leave rhetoric in a big way.

The book is good in its way but only plays to the remainer echo chamber and won't impact on the leaver viewpoint. Basically the country is fairly evenly split between the two viewpoints and from my point of view not even basic logic gets through to the adamant leaver ...more

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Jan 06, 2019 Carlos Martinez rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-politics

A well-written and insightful look at the social psychology of Brexit, and the politics underlying it. O'Toole argues that Brexit is in essence a neoliberal project, designed to free the ultra-rich from regulation, taxation and accountability. Since this isn't a project that people would ordinarily vote for, its proponents have tapped into some of the most vulnerable parts of the national psyche, in particular empire nostalgia, racism and xenophobia.

Repetitive at times, and some parts resonate m ...more

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Feb 11, 2020 Maddie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

4.5

This book has a very interesting thesis and did an excellent job at synthesizing the core issues and ideas that ultimately led to a leave vote in the Brexit referendum. I also liked how O'Toole's Irishness and very obvious English degree shaped this book and brought fresh lenses to something I've read so much about -- it is very rare to find new commentary about Brexit one hasn't read before, but this book did just that.

Overall: Highly recommend. ...more

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Jan 03, 2021 Ian Cook Westgate rated it liked it · review of another edition

Very smooth read and well written. However, it presupposes a solid prior knowledge of British domestic history/culture that can be occasionally difficult to parse, and the analogies it uses to describe Brexiteers can veer into the ridiculous (for example, a surprising amount of pages are devoted to how "50 Shades of Grey" is a great way to understand how Brexit supporters think of and interact with the European Union). ...more

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Dec 13, 2018 Cameron Climie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: academic-non-fiction, history

An incredibly well-written, thorough and diverse dive into the many currents of political psychology that underpin Brexit. O'Toole comes at Brexit from a variety of different angles - the resurgence of English nationalism since devolution, the role the EU has played as a substitute for actual invaders since the Second World War, the role of food in driving popular euroscepticism. A number of key figures in the Brexit movement - particularly Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg - come out looking ev ...more

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Mar 22, 2020 Lorcan Neill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: politics

The Politics of Pain offers one of the best, and most interesting, takes that I have read on Brexit.

All I can say is that there is a special place in hell for for Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Boris Johnson. As with most great tragedies, the poor will pay for what they have done.

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May 07, 2020 Andrew J Galea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A flawless dissection of England's masochistic self-destruction. A country once drunk on its own colonial power has long struggled to define itself in the hangover of the Empire's collapse. Brexit is a final, violent, self-immolation. Superbly written, deeply funny, but also completely accurate and profound. ...more

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Jan 01, 2019 Will rated it really liked it · review of another edition

An eloquent and eminently readable assessment of Brexit as the English Revolution. Using the British predilection for heroic failure - the Charge of the Light Brigade and Scott of the Antarctic - O'Toole sees Brexit as an exercise in hubris and self-pity from a people still reeling from a sense that they lost the peace in the aftermath of the Second World War and became a minor part of an EU dominated by erstwhile enemies and losers. Brexit becomes an exercise in regaining their rightful place i ...more

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Dec 08, 2018 Matt Pack rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This was book #67 of 2018 - it was fantastic. Fintan O'Toole is great. ...more

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About Fintan O'Toole

Fintan O'Toole

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Fintan O'Toole is a columnist, assistant editor and drama critic for The Irish Times. O'Toole was born in Dublin and was partly educated at University College Dublin. He has written for the Irish Times since 1988 and was drama critic for the New York Daily News from 1997 to 2001. He is a literary critic, historical writer and political commentator, with generally left-wing views. He was and contin ...more

Books by Fintan O'Toole

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Quotes from Heroic Failure

“Why, then, were there no photographs of Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl holding hands at the Brandenburg Gate to match the pictures of Kohl and François Mitterrand at Verdun in 1984? Because Thatcher literally carried in her handbag maps showing German expansion under the Nazis.4 This was a mental cartography that English conservatism could not transcend – the map of a Europe that may no longer exist in reality but within which its imagination remains imprisoned. ‘Europe,’ Barnett writes, ‘moved on from the Second World War and Britain didn’t.’ One might go so far as to say that England never got over winning the war.” — 4 likes

“Even as a game of chance, however, Brexit is especially odd. It is a surreal casino in which the high-rollers are playing for pennies at the blackjack tables while the plebs are stuffing their life savings into the slot machines. For those who can afford risk, there is very little on the table; for those who cannot, entire livelihoods are at stake. The backbench anti-Brexit Tory MP Anna Soubry rose to her feet in the Commons in July 2018, eyed her Brexiteer colleagues and let fly: ‘Nobody voted to be poorer, and nobody voted Leave on the basis that somebody with a gold-plated pension and inherited wealth would take their jobs away from them.’ But if that’s not what people voted for, it is emphatically what they got: if the British army on the Western Front were lions led by donkeys, Brexit is those who feel they have nothing to lose led by those who will lose nothing either way.” — 4 likes

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