Theresa
May’s Empire of the Mind
By TOM WHYMANFEB.
15, 2017
COLCHESTER, England
— After Prime Minister Theresa May gave a bullish speech last month
outlining her plans for Britain’s negotiations to leave the
European Union, the front page of The Daily Mail, a right-wing
tabloid, displayed a triumphant cartoon depicting Mrs. May, head
thrust proudly into the air, standing on the edge of what I assume is
one of the White Cliffs of Dover. The Union Jack flew behind her as
she trampled a European Union flag.
This image resembled
nothing more than “The Rhodes Colossus,” a famous jingoistic
cartoon from 1892 in which the racist, empire-building diamond tycoon
Cecil Rhodes stood similarly astride Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town.
“We’ll walk away from a bad deal — and make E.U. pay,” read
the text beside the illustration, as if the Lord Kitchener Wants You
poster had been blessed with the eloquence of Mrs. May’s new best
friend, Donald J. Trump.
But was she supposed
to look like she was about to jump off that cliff?
Sober analysts agree
that Mrs. May’s plans are deeply foolish. Her intention is to
sacrifice Britain’s membership in the European single market,
something necessary for the economy to function as it is now
configured, to gain full control over immigration policy, which is
not. In short, she is planning to profoundly alienate key industries
and trading partners to score populist popularity points.
Parliament will be
afforded little oversight in relation to the process and frankly
doesn’t seem interested in opposing it, no matter how extreme Mrs.
May’s plans are. The House of Commons voted recently to give itself
as little power as possible to reject whatever terms Mrs. May
eventually puts to it, a bizarre move for a legislative body in an
apparently functioning liberal democracy. The prime minister’s
Brexit plans will alienate Britain’s regions as well: Scotland saw
support for independence spike after the June 23 referendum result,
while in Northern Ireland there are profound fears over what Brexit
will mean for the Good Friday Agreement.
All this domestic
turmoil is indicative of the way in which Brexit goes to the heart of
Britain’s national identity. For this reason, it is hard to believe
that the jingoistic associations of The Daily Mail’s cartoon were a
coincidence. Brexit is rooted in imperial nostalgia and myths of
British exceptionalism, coming up as they have — especially since
2008 — against the reality that Britain is no longer a major world
power.
This is evident in
Mrs. May’s rhetoric. Her Brexit speech, for instance, invited us to
imagine the “Global Britain” that will somehow emerge once the
country has left the European Union, its citizens “instinctively”
looking, as she has claimed the British do, to expand their horizons
beyond Europe and exploit opportunities across the world. This is
simply a sanitized version of the dream of a British Empire in which
every eastern and southern corner of the globe could be imagined as
an Englishman’s rightful backyard, ready for him to stride into,
whenever he so chose, to impose his will and make his fortune.
The bullishness of
the Brexiteers represents a progression from an earlier era of
revived empire nostalgia that might be described as the “Keep Calm
and Carry On” era. From the mid-2000s, tropes such as the titular
wartime posters, alongside a rediscovered love for old-timey
delicacies like tea, cupcakes and gin, offered a retreat from a world
made freshly hostile to the middle class by the global financial
crisis.
These tropes abide
today — but they have ceased acting merely as a shelter, for those
who live surrounded by them, against politics. They have now become
an active, transformative political force. It’s not just The Daily
Mail cartoon, or Mrs. May’s crypto-imperialist rhetoric. It’s the
U.K. Independence Party leader Paul Nuttall, striding about in a
tweed jacket and matching hat like a Victorian country squire. It’s
the Brexit secretary David Davis, responding to complaints from the
Civil Service that it lacks the budget to deal with the logistics of
leaving the European Union by invoking the Blitz spirit of World War
II. It’s the foreign secretary Boris Johnson saying that France’s
president, François Hollande, “wants to administer punishment
beatings to anyone who chooses to escape, rather in the manner of
some World War II movie.” Those most under the spell of imperial
nostalgia have now become the sorcerers themselves, having somehow
managed to conjure up a mandate to transform Britain in their image.
But no matter how
confident the Brexiteers might be, their grip on reality remains
patchy at best. Global Britain’s delusions are unlikely to
withstand the shock of actually leaving the European Union. One
indication of this came shortly after the referendum result, when it
emerged that Marmite, an iconic British food, was actually owned by a
Dutch company, Unilever. Its prices are set to go up after Britain
leaves the European Union. Andrea Leadsom, the minister for the
environment, food and rural affairs, has indicated that Britain’s
post-Brexit trade strategy will be primarily based around the export
of jam, biscuits and cheese. Britain, it seems, is in danger of
becoming the world’s largest church fete.
Still, Mrs. May will
probably be able to carry the public with her. Her Brexit plans have
generally polled well, and since taking office she has remained by
far the most popular of all the major party leaders. Even if there is
an economic collapse when Britain leaves the European Union — as
most analysts think is likely — her mandate probably won’t be
hurt: Already the right-wing press is lining up to lay the blame for
the coming crisis on the bad attitude of “Remoaners,” as it has
labeled the “liberal elitists” who remain pro-Europe even after
the referendum result.
So what’s going to
happen? These days, it feels like the worst-case scenario always
prevails. If that happens this time, too, Brexit will mean that
England, shorn of Scotland, Northern Ireland and maybe even Wales,
contracts into a small, isolated, one-party state governed by
schoolteacherly Conservatives who persist in wild-eyed delusions
about their country’s special grandeur. In this desperate fantasy
Britain, there are no jobs, and any dissent — from disseminating
pro-foreigner propaganda to having a nonregulation haircut — will
be punished by forced participation in the government’s “Clean
for the Queen” program (which incidentally is a real initiative
that was pioneered last year to encourage Her Majesty’s subjects to
de-litter their neighborhoods in preparation for her birthday).
All of this might
sound bizarre, over-the-top, even actively demented. But if what the
Brexiteers want is to return Britain to a utopia they have devised by
splicing a few rose-tinted memories of the 1950s together with an
understanding of imperial history derived largely from images on
vintage biscuit tins, then all of this seems chillingly plausible,
insofar as it would, in many ways, constitute the realization of that
dream. Viva Britannia!
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