“Obviously every state is defined by its history, and some define themselves by what their father did in the war, and it gives them great personal pride.” But British history didn’t stop after the war. Ammon puts the fantasies down to war stories from Brexiteers’ childhoods. It was through this distorted lens (“ Let’s put the Great back in Great Britain”) that a majority voted to leave. At some point they convinced themselves that the reason we are at the centre of most world maps is because the Earth revolves around us, not because it was us who drew the maps. Our colonial past, and the inability to come to terms with its demise, gave many the impression that we are far bigger, stronger and more influential than we really are. For if memories of the war made some feel more defiant, recollections of empire made them deluded. For while the Brexit vote was certainly underpinned by a melancholic longing for a glorious past, the era it sought to relive was less the second world war than the longer, less distinguished or openly celebrated period of empire. It declares nothing significant changed during the course of Britain’s downwardly mobile 20th century … We are being required to admit that the nations which triumphed in 19 live on somewhere unseen, but palpable.”īut Ammon was only half right. Remarking on the chant “Two world wars and one World Cup” that rang out whenever England played Germany at football, academic Paul Gilroy wrote, in After Empire: “The boast to which the phrase gives voice is integral to a larger denial. And this nostalgia for a particular, and peculiar, version of our history long preceded Brexit. There were some sound reasons for voting to leave the EU – although the campaign was rarely fought on them, and wasn’t won because of them. They weren’t called “the allies” for nothing.) Referring to the popularity of films such as Darkest Hour and Dunkirk, Peter Ammon said: “History is always full of ambiguities and ups and downs, but if you focus only on how Britain stood alone in the war, how it stood against dominating Germany, well, it is a nice story, but does not solve any problem of today.” (If the second world war taught us anything, it was that you couldn’t stand alone. So when the outgoing German ambassador to Britain claimed this week that Brexiteers were fixated on the second world war, he was on to something. “Any talk of German reunification is anathema to her.” At one point it got so bad that the former foreign secretary Douglas Hurd claimed: “Cabinet now consists of three items: parliamentary affairs, home affairs and xenophobia.” “She seems to be obsessed by a feeling that German-speakers are going to dominate the community,” Wright writes.
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