Alex Andreou talks to special guest FT science editor, Michael Peel, about his book "What Everyone Knows About Britain, Except The British". Nostalgia is the disease from which our dysfunctional politics flows. How can we change course? And what could modern Britain be in the future, if it stopped longing for the past?
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“There are probably two types of voter, those who vote emotionally and those who vote emotionally but don't admit that they do.”
“The way Brexit was campaigned for illustrated a wider problem in politics today, which was a reluctance to talk about trade-offs and downsides. It’s possible to make a coherent argument for Brexit, which is also honest. But that was never the offer. The offer was: there are no downsides, this is all going to be great, you just need to sign on the dotted line. That was why it was corrosive.”
“What is really needed is a moment of political clarity, to say: our politics is based on this nostalgic idea that we can go back to the days of Western industrial and political dominance. Those days are gone. Whether you consider that state desirable or not, it was a unique moment in time that is never coming back.”
“It is revealing, in discussions of the Thatcher era, how little North Sea Oil is mentioned. If Britain had done what the Norwegians and other countries did, the wealth fund would be worth hundreds of billions of pounds. ”
You can buy Michael Peel's book here https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/what-everyone-knows-about-britain-except-the-british-michael-peel/7598496?aid=15177&ean=9781800962088&
Our bookshop which includes many of the books we have discussed or featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot.
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