What future does democracy have? What future should it have? And, moreover, can the problems of democracy be solved within the framework of democratic politics?
Tag: Brexit
A Man in Brussels
Storytelling about the European Union tends to be done by those aggressively disinterested in its survival. Isn’t that a problem?
Whose England? Whose Brexit?
A subplot running through Jonathan Coe’s most recent novel, Middle England, involves a feud between two garish children’s clowns that culminates in a ...
“Rivers of Blood” @50
Imperial historians, and inhabitants of places colonized by Britain, know that much of England’s history happened beyond its borders. As decolonization whittled away imperial possessions ...
Brexit or Utopia?
Ali Smith’s Autumn, the first installment of a four-volume “seasonal quartet” that now continues with Winter, was hailed on its release as “the first great Brexit novel.” As any reader of the book knows, there ...
Populism, Right and Left
It says a lot about the mood among liberal commentators that George W. Bush is currently being remade into a kind of quaint grandee of American politics. Even Bernie Sanders, a staunch opponent of ...
That Was Now
When Ali Smith’s Autumn was released in the UK this past October, it was greeted as the first “serious” Brexit novel. Yet its ostensible subject is the friendship between an old man and a young ...