Heroic Failure : Brexit and the Politics of Pain

Author(s): O'Toole, Fintan,
Binding: Paperback,
Date of Publication: 05/09/2019,
Pagination: 304 pages,
Series: N/A,
Imprint: Head of Zeus,
Published By: Head of Zeus,
Book Classification: Brexit
ISBN13\EAN\SKU: 9781789540994
Description: 

A fierce, mordantly funny and perceptive book about the act of national self-harm known as Brexit.

A great democratic country tears itself apart, and engages in the dangerous pleasures of national masochism.

Trivial journalistic lies became far from trivial national obsessions; the pose of indifference to truth and historical fact came to define the style of an entire political elite; a country that once had colonies redefined itself as an oppressed nation requiring liberation.

Fintan O'Toole 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. Now failure is no longer heroic - it is just failure, and its terrible costs will be paid by the most vulnerable of Brexit's supporters.

A new afterword lays out the essential reforms that are urgently needed if England is to have a truly democratic future and stable relations with its nearest neighbours.