He also discusses the fatal attraction of heroic failure, once a self-deprecating cult in a hugely successful empire that could well afford the occasional disaster: the Charge of the Light Brigade, or Franklin lost in the Arctic. In exploring the answers to the question: 'why did Britain vote leave?', Fintan O'Toole finds himself discovering how trivial journalistic lies became far from trivial national obsessions how the pose of indifference to truth and historical fact has come to define the style of an entire political elite how a country that once had colonies is redefining itself as an oppressed nation requiring liberation the strange gastronomic and political significance of prawn-flavoured crisps, and their role in the rise of Boris Johnson the dreams of revolutionary deregulation and privatisation that drive Arron Banks, Nigel Farrage and Jacob Rees-Mogg and the silent rise of English nationalism, the force that dare not speak its name. 'A wildly entertaining but uncomfortable read. 'Best book about the English that I've read for ages' Billy Bragg. 'Hugely entertaining and engrossing' Roddy Doyle. 'A quite brilliant dissection of the cultural roots of the Brexit narrative' David Miliband. 'There will not be much political writing in this or any other year that is carried off with such style' The Times. A book about the delusions of Brexit, the threat it poses to economic prosperity, peace in Ireland and the tradition of British democracy.
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