In a few days, it will be nine years since the event that changed most of our lives. Where were you that morning, when you were trying to work out just what the hell had happened to Britain now that we had voted to leave the EU?
Hard to believe Brexit is entering its 10th year. Harder yet to believe that the shifty salesman who sold it to Britain is now one of the most popular politicians in the country. But that’s the phenomenon that is Nigel Farage.
In this week’s TNW, Jonty Bloom lays out the duplicity and deceit and seeks an explanation for Farage’s continuing success. As ever with populists, the answer lies in the deficiencies of others.
“Nine years after Brexit, Nigel Farage is once again offering them snake oil. But as many see it, at least he is offering them something.”
Sonia Sodha tackles the other side of the coin: what she terms Labour’s honesty deficit. With trust in mainstream politicians at an all-time low, Sonia believes it’s this metric that Starmer has to reverse if he is to defeat Reform in four years – but their lack of candour before the election has set them up to fail:
“They didn’t front up with voters about the tough trade-offs facing the country; or that the City-powered economic boom of the 2000s is not going to be easily or quickly come by again; and that the economic reality of an ageing population makes today’s fiscal problems look like child’s play. They came in promising sunlit uplands, but all they’ve got to deliver is incrementalism.”
One of our team took a week off and came back yesterday, amazed at how quickly the world moves.
“A plane crash in India, Israel at war with Iran, Los Angeles rioting against Trump… I’m going to think twice before going on holiday again any time soon.”
The world is moving at an unprecedented pace. We’re doing our level best to keep up—and to keep you, dear reader, engaged in the consequences.
Matthew d’Ancona tackles the disorder in America:
“Democracy dies in darkness, but it also dies under arc lights,” he writes.
The events in the States over the past couple of weeks – the riots, Musk’s isolation, the bizarre military parade for the Dear Leader’s birthday – all tend towards one conclusion: an autocracy has descended.
Michael Donald, one of the UK’s greatest portrait photographers, meets Sean Scully—one of our most successful living British abstract painters. It’s an enthralling meeting of creative minds, with Michael trying to understand what it is about abstract art that can either pass you by or move you to tears. Sean’s story is extraordinary—growing up in real poverty in north London before making it big in the art world. Michael’s words are profound and revealing. It’s my must-read of the week.
Finally, our digital editor Eleanor Longman-Rood revisits Jacqueline Harpman’s belated literary sensation: I Who Have Never Known Men. This extraordinary novel has an even more extraordinary backstory—published in 1995, it vanished into obscurity until it was reissued and took BookTok (an enormous social media gathering of book lovers) by storm. No surprise, since it is a real tale of our times. Gen Z’s Handmaid’s Tale, as Eleanor memorably describes it. It’s a gem of a story within our superbly curated collection of arts and culture articles in this week’s The New World.
