The Brexit Effect

When less might have been more? Anthony Seldon’s ‘The Brexit Effect’ is a 600-odd page compendium of 36 essays - a kaleidoscope of perceptions covering a myriad aspects of a divisive decade in British politics … and society. Fascinating insights stand alongside the banal and the blindingly obvious, though they are often dressed up by academics and commentators whose contributions are a little uneven. I enjoyed Peter Kellner’s and John Curtice’s analyses of public attitudes during and after the referendum. I liked Amand Menon’s account of what it did to British politics, but found Conor Burns’s gratuitous name-calling unnecessary when describing the Boris effect. There are sound reflections on the role of the civil service, the impact on our international reputation and even the occasional mea culpa. Ultimately, however, I was more convinced by those who saw BREXIT as an unmitigated and regrettable disaster – but that’s just my own confirmation bias. And that, of course is the whole point. This issue exposed a deep fissure in British society, and relatively few of us have changed our minds. We probably just didn’t need quite so many contributors to tell us.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.