Brexit – the bookshelf
Although the use of the B-word is now banned (with no exceptions) in Whitehall, its reality is taking shape and has been inspiring – sometimes to despair – political commentators and many writers, who did not wait for the 20 December vote in Westminster to put their views across on a decision that has deeply divided the United Kingdom. In prose or verse, taking the form of historical narrative, political analysis, novel or thriller, there is something for everyone on the Brexit bookshelf. As an exhaustive inventory is beyond our scope, here is a selection of titles from among the best British publications.
Kevin O'Rourke, author of "A Short History of Brexit", argues the need to go back as far as the 1950s to understand the reasons why the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union. In 1956, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Harold Macmillan, proposed a planned framework for the United Kingdom’s relations with the EEC, allowing it the possibility freely to conclude trade deals with the rest of the world. O’Rourke observes that this plan G (as it was called at the time) became plan A. Although it did not work in 1956 and cannot work in its current form, it is for exactly the same reason: “UK policymakers have produced a blueprint that was indeed very good for Britain, but in so doing had paid insufficient attention to other countries’ interests”. O’Rourke, a professor of economic history at the University of Oxford and municipal councillor in the French village of Saint-Pierre d'Entremont, was born in Switzerland to an Irish father (a senior Irish diplomat who served as Ireland’s permanent representative to Brussels in the 1980s) and a Danish mother: what Theresa May might call an "anywhere".
Kevin O'Rourke. A Short History of Brexit. Pelican. ISBN: 978-0241-39827-2. 384 pages. €24.42
In 2016, Ian Dunt compiled expert opinions in "Brexit, What the Hell Happens Now: All you need to know about Britain's divorce from Europe", to illustrate that “implementing Brexit practically amounts to making a new country”, “alongside the dismantling of our Union”, i.e. the United Kingdom.
Ian Dunt. Brexit, what the Hell Happens Now. Canbury Press. ISBN: 978-0995-49785-6. 192 pages. €10.49
In "Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem", the political editor of the Sunday Times, Tim Shipman, devotes nearly 600 pages to Theresa May’s disastrous campaign in the 2017 general elections.
Tim Shipman. Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem. Harper & Collins. ISBN: 978-0008-26438-3. 592 pages. €8.89
The conclusion reached by the authors of “Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire”, Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson, is cautiously optimistic: if the country opts to go down the conciliation route, it may be able to forge itself a new identity.
Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson. Rule Britannia: Brexit and end of Empire. Biteback publishing. ISBN: 978-1785-90453-0. 320 pages. €15.69
The Irish journalist Tony O'Connell examines the possible consequences of Brexit for his country in "Brexit and Ireland: The Dangers, the Opportunities and the Inside Story of the Irish Response". In “Heroic Failure: The Politics of Pain” (a title that reveals much about its content), his countryman Finian O'Toole, journalist and historian, explores the historical roots of Brexit.
Tony O'Connell. Brexit and Ireland: The Dangers, the Opportunities and the Inside Story of the Irish Response. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0241-98242-6. 416 pages. €9.07
Finian O'Toole. Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain. Head of Zeus. ISBN: 978-1789-54098-7. 276 pages. €14.79
For anybody who is interested in the real story behind the 1975 referendum, Robert Saunders points out in “Yes to Europe: The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain" that the United Kingdom, which was then far more insular and less cosmopolitan, voted convincingly in favour of joining the EEC: 67.2%. Labour party politician Neil Kinnock, who campaigned against joining, commented that “only an idiot would ignore or resent a majority like this: we’re in forever”. He was wrong about that; Kinnock’s personal position on Europe also changed over time and he became a member, then Vice-President, the European Commission (from 1995 to 2004). “I was actively involved – on the losing side – and Saunders brilliantly and objectively captures the context and the atmosphere of the campaign”, the former Commissioner notes.
Robert Saunders. Yes to Europe: the 1975 Referendum and seventies Britain. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978-1108-44224-4. 422 pages. €15.93
However, this political cataclysm is also the stuff of novels.
This road was first travelled in 2016 by Ali Smith, with "Autumn", the first volume of what has somewhat hastily been dubbed the “Brexit tetralogy” (Smith herself prefers to call it a "seasonal quartet"). These novels evoke the atmosphere of the country after the referendum, often with a striking simplicity (“all across the country there was misery and rejoicing”) and the Scottish writer inhabits a universe that is extremely rich and complex. After “Winter” and “Spring”, the final volume, “Summer”, is due to be published in July of this year.
Ali Smith. Autumn. Anchor. ISBN: 978-1101-96994-6. 288 pages. €12.93
More “classic” (otherwise known as "a cracking good read"), "Middle England" by Jonathan Coe tackles the theme more directly. Families and generations clash in this "social comedy", as the author describes it, describing these splits as a metaphor for a country that is deeply divided, but which must learn to overcome these conflicts if it is to survive.
Jonathan Coe. Middle England. Penguin. Knopf Publishing Group. ISBN: 978-0525-65647-0. 432 pages. €26.52
Ian McEwan pulls no punches with his novel "Cockroach". Here, unlike Kafka’s “metamorphosis”, from which he takes his inspiration, it is not a man who is transformed into a “monstrous insect”, but the insect which occupies the body of the man goes on to become the Prime Minister. His cabinet members are all cockroaches. Reviews of the work been mixed: some hailed it a comic triumph, whilst other critics considered that a younger McEwan would have thrown it in the dustbin as scribble.
Ian McEwan. The Cockroach. Anchor. ISBN: 978-0593-08242-3. 112 pages. €10.30
Rachel Cusk takes a more subtle tone in her collection of essays, "Coventry", in which he raises the question of the “deluge of fine writing that follows the referendum, which contrasts strangely with the reticence that preceded it (…). The liberal elite are defending their reality, but too late”.
Rachel Cusk. Coventry. Faber&Faber. ISBN: 978-0571-35044-5. 256 pages. €15.83
Brexit has even inspired a poet, Luke Wright. In "The remains of Logan Danworth", a monologue in verse (in a slim volume and taking the form of a stage play), Wright tells his story from the point of view of a young journalist deciding to join the side of the Remainders in what he considers to be “the greatest battle in years”, whilst at the same time watching the disintegration of consensus within the country and in his own marriage. About Boris Johnson’s change of heart, he writes: “he’s come out for the other side. It’s clear he’s only doing it to win the Tory base, as if they’ll ever make him PM”.
Luke Wright. The Remains of Logan Danworth. Penned in the Margins. ISBN: 978-1908-05869-0. 100 pages. €12.70
The best work of fiction on Brexit was written to order. Commissioned in 2017 by Peirene Press to “build a fictional bridge between the two Britains which have opposed each other since the referendum day”, Anthony Cartwright wrote "The Cut", a short novel that takes place in the West Midlands, more specifically the Black Country, the most industrialised region of the country in the 19th century. This is Cartwright’s home country and the reader can sense his deep familiarity with the people and mentalities as he recounts the Brexit dilemma and a growing gap between Remainders and Leavers through a meeting between two individuals: a former boxer forced to do odd jobs for a living and a journalist who has come here from London to film a documentary for the BBC. It is well written and avoids stereotypes; it is strong and poignant. Cartwright does not pick sides, but seems to understand the resentment of those who feel unfairly blamed for the car crash that was Brexit, whilst not holding back about the hostility towards all things foreign.
Social and political changes are sometimes better seen through the lens of the ups and downs of imaginary lines (one needs only think of Dickens) than through the debates on “somewhere” and “anywhere” discussed by David Goodhart in "The Road to Somewhere", a notion that was somewhat incautiously thrown about by Theresa May, apparently unaware of its potential controversy. Cartwright understands the people of the Black Country and shows them to us in all their disarray, their wounded pride, their disenchantment, but without condescension or mockery.
Anthony Cartwright. The Cut. Pereine Press. ISBN: 978-1908-67040-3. 129 pages. €13.76
Brexit has not been a missed opportunity for the thriller genre. With “Agent Running in the Field”, its undisputed master, John Le Carré, proves that at the age of 88, he has lost none of his talent. Brexit is not the core theme of this story of treachery and reconciliation, written with virtuosity and precision, but whenever it is mentioned in conversations, it is as if the reader can hear the voice of the author, an ardent Remainder, for instance when it is described as an “act of self-immolation” which “marches the public over a cliff”.
John Le Carré. Agent Running in the Field. Viking Press. ISBN: 978-0241-40121-7. 288 pages. €15.54
The negotiations for the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union are, on the other hand, central to the plot of “Accidental Agent” by Alan Judd: the head of MI6 is offered information on the “bottom lines” that may decide the outcome of these negotiations by a senior EU official, and has to decide whether he can use them.
Alan Judd. Accidental Agent. Simon &Schuster. ISBN: 978-1471-15068-5. 272 pages. €10.02
With “The Friends of Henry Perkins”, Chris Mullin, former Labour MP and briefly a member of Tony Blair’s government, takes us forward to the year 2025 and a post-Trump world, in which the Labour Party is led by a woman for the first time.
Chris Mullin. The Friends of Henry Perkins. Scribner. ISBN: 978-1471-18248-8. 192 pages. €11.91
In 1941, George Orwell had no way of knowing that there would be a European Community and then a European Union, or that the United Kingdom would join it and then leave it, but in his brilliant pamphlet “The Lion and the Unicorn”, he argues that his fellow countrymen should “stop despising strangers”. Orwell goes on to point out that the British “are Europeans and ought to be aware of it”. Eighty years on, this concept would still appear to be just as difficult for some of them to get their heads round.
Lidia Gazzo
The Refugee Reception Crisis in Europe
This collective work examines the way refugees have been received in Europe, before during and after the mass influx of the years 2015/2016 and the changing state of public opinion at these various points in time. It is the result of a collaboration between teams of researchers from the Free University of Brussels, the Catholic University of Leuven and the University of Liège. In addition to a transnational comparative analysis at European level, it presents six case studies: Germany and Sweden (which present a relatively high degree of tolerance towards the reception of refugees), Hungary (staunchly opposed), Greece and Italy (the main entry points) and Belgium.
The researchers reiterate that according to data published by Eurostat in 2019, the member states of the EU received 1.3 million asylum applications in 2015 and 1.2 million in 2016. Following the agreement between the EU and Turkey, the number of asylum seekers fell sharply in 2017 to around 700,000. They also point out that at the time, 1 million asylum seekers represented 0.2% of the total EU population. The researchers consequently take the view that the member states betrayed their “eurocentrism” by refusing to acknowledge the burden represented by the hosting of refugees, mostly from Syria, on their neighbours, namely Turkey (3 million) and Lebanon (1.5 million). The latter figure represented 25% of the total population of Lebanon. In Europe, four member states (Germany, Hungary, Sweden and Austria) received two thirds of all asylum applications in 2015 between them. Countries with long traditions of being welcoming, including the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom, took fewer refugees than the European average. The chapter on Germany does, however, stress that the country received a total of 2.14 million migrants in 2015.
For most countries, the book shows a disconnect between the virulence of the political and media debate and a more moderate public opinion concerning the perception of the threat, both economic and cultural, raised and/or instrumentalised within this debate. On a scale of 0 to 10, the perception of the economic threat varies between 4 and 5 in northern Europe and the perception of the cultural threat between 3 and 4. Moreover, perception of the threat remained practically static between 2002 and 2016. In Western Europe, the picture is the same, but with higher levels of concern: 4 to 6 for both the economic threat and the cultural threat. In the south, public opinion is more concerned, with scores of up to 7. In the east, the perception of both types of threat is between 4 and 6, but the perception of the cultural threat grows strongly from 2012. Hungary stands out with more than 45% of the general public opposed to all immigrants.
Olivier Jehin
Andrea Rea, Marco Martiniello, Alessandro Mazzola and Bart Meuleman (under the direction of). The Refugee Reception Crisis in Europe – Polarized Opinions and Mobilizations. Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles. ISBN: 978-2-8004-1693-9. 260 pages. €23.