Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain

by Fintan O'Toole

To take a simple and symbolic example, the Brexiteers and their cheerleaders in the press would make much of the idea of restoring the blue-covered ‘British passport’ as an icon of independent identity. But asked in 2011 what nationality they would have on their passport if they could choose, fully 40 per cent of English respondents chose English.23 There is good reason to think that these are the people who voted most enthusiastically for Brexit. Here we see one of the paradoxes and contradictions of Brexit itself. It is driven by a force – English nationalism – that its leaders still refuse to articulate. It draws on English disengagement from the Union, but wraps itself in a brashly reasserted Unionism.