How did the British become so excitable? Everyone who has observed British politics play out as a dance of dervishes since 2016—when Britain voted narrowly to bolt from the European Union—has been struck by how untethered from its age-old traits of stability, continuity and moderation the country has come to be.
As it wrestles with the effects of Brexit, which include the nitty-gritty of trade and travel as well as grander matters of identity and nationalism, Britain’s political system has combined “feverish activity with almost complete paralysis.” This “negative dialectic,” say Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones—professors of politics at the University of Edinburgh and Cardiff University, respectively—has served to “diminish the country’s much vaunted global reputation.” The world now looks at Britain and asks why its politics is so much like that of the less fortunate lands on which the Brits have gazed (heretofore forgivably) with condescension.
