Brexit |

Britain is in decline and not just because of Brexit

February 09, 2024
According to a new book, Brexit has made existing divisions in British society worse, including class, the North-South divide, and nationalism in Scotland and Ireland. Through the perspective of a foreign journalist, An Island Adrift, which was released in Spain this week, examines the epidemic, Britain's traumatic exit from Europe, and the rise and fall of Boris Johnson. Ana Carbajosa draws the compassionate yet critical conclusion that Brexit exacerbated other tensions already present in British society. “In part they were due to Brexit but some were before Brexit. Brexit contributed to exacerbate them,” she told i. “One of them was the class division. It generates disaffection towards the political class and [asks] ‘from where you are from?’ Eton and Oxford seem highways towards not only public service but political life. Everyone knows Rishi Sunak went to Winchester and Boris Johnson went to Eton.” Ms Carbajosa, who moved to London in 2020, said she was surprised by the depth of the division between the North and South. “I remember in a supermarket [in the North of England] I asked a woman: ‘Who did you vote for last time?’ She said she hadn’t voted for ages and did not have any idea who the prime minister was,” she said. Ms Carbajosa said nationalism in Scotland and Northern Ireland had returned because of Brexit. In the book, she travels to Eton College to witness how generations of British prime ministers like Boris Johnson, writers like George Orwell, and actors like Dominic West were taught. “I went to Eton where I had the sensation of watching an exotic tribe from the pages of National Geographic,” she writes.

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