Mary Kenny: 'Brexit is too complex to be explained by Brit-bashing'

Mary Kenny

Yes, the United Kingdom is in a bit of a pickle over the ‘deal or no deal’ Brexit. But not to worry. The noted Irish intellectual and commentator is on hand to dispense his analysis of the whole problem: the root cause of Brexit, Fintan O’Toole avers, is the fatal British nostalgia for empire.

The Brits can’t cope, psychologically, with the fact that they’ve lost an empire. Obsessing about Nazis and World War II is another exercise in nostalgia – my God, haven’t we heard enough about Dunkirk? In his latest publication, ‘Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain’, O’Toole constructs a fanciful “psychodrama” in which the UK is playing out a ‘Fifty Shades of Gray’ scenario: enjoying the masochism and the ritual humiliation of being a loser.