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Britain Beyond Brexit HARD TIMES Britain beyond Brexit Issue 104 (2020) ISSN 0171-1695 www.hard-times-magazine.org Hard Times founded by Jürgen Enkemann Editors of this Issue Georgia Christinidis, Jessica Fischer, Frauke Hofmeister Hard Times Editorial Team Anke Bartels, Georgia Christinidis, and Dirk Wiemann Hard Times Advisory Board NFO Aileen Behrendt |Sebastian Berg | Dietmar Böhnke | Stefani I Brusberg-Kiermeier | Jessica Fischer | Jana Gohrisch | Frauke Hofmeister | Michael Krause | Irmgard Maassen | Luke Martell | Ingrid von Rosenberg | Christian Schmitt-Kilb | Jörg Strehmann | Stephanie Sumner Please address any enquiries to Hard Times Magazine Prof Dr Dirk Wiemann Department of English and American Studies University of Potsdam Am Neuen Palais 10 14469 Potsdam UBLISHING Germany P or [email protected] Layout by Aileen Behrendt and Frank Wehrmann Image on front cover by Public Domain Cover Design by Frank Wehrmann i Editorial Georgia Christinidis, Jessica Fischer and Frauke Hofmeister 1 New Directions: Boris Johnson and English Conservatism Andrew Gamble 8 Corbynism, Hegemony, and Us S Sebastian Berg T 17 “Taking back Control”: Whose, and Back to When? EN Logie Barrow T 33 Questions to Philip B. Whyman ON on British Politics and the British Economy beyond Brexit C Sebastian Berg OF 39 Past the Point of no Return: Scotland, Brexit and Independence Klaus Stolz 48 Borders, Brexit and Beyond: Fragments ABLE on Northern Ireland Frauke Hofmeister T 59 A Bitter Spring Felicity Dowling 66 Still GETting Across Borders? Austerity, Brexit and Scottish Schools Annegret Landgraf and Jennifer Riedel 72 Dispatches from Brexitland M.G. Sanchez 79 A European in Wales, in Times of Brexit Elena Schmitz 86 Obituary: H. Gustav Klaus Christian Schmitt-Kilb S T EN T ON C OF ABLE T Editorial Georgia Christinidis, Jessica Fischer and Frauke Hofmeister he title of this issue of Hard Times is unintended centrality of Brexit to these pages, T deliberately ambiguous: “Britain beyond the contributions clearly show that Brexit Brexit” can be interpreted both temporally, as cannot be separated from many wider political an interest in the future after Brexit and, by questions that are currently at stake not only in extension, the history that led to the current Britain, but globally. There is a further respect situation, but also as a broadening of the scope in which this issue is, itself, symptomatic: there of discussion, which is all too often exclusively is no agreement, either among contributors, dominated by the ongoing crises of Brexit or even among the editorial team, regarding and now Covid-19, thus losing track of other the likely causes, significance, implications, or problems that may contribute to and, in turn, be effects of Brexit, and the relationship in which exacerbated by these crises, such as the ongoing it stands with other political issues, both in the impact of austerity and privatisation. Both short and long term. It is therefore filled with the temporal extension and the broadening of multiple dissenting voices. It should be noted, perspective potentially denoted by ‘beyond’ furthermore, that due to difficulties partly were important concerns for the editors of this related to the Covid-crisis, the contributions issue; it turned out, however, that the process of to this issue were not all completed at the producing the issue came to mimetically resemble same time, but at different points throughout the problem it was designed to address: many the year 2020. Therefore, different vantage contributors wanted to write on Brexit and/or points compound the differences in (political) Covid-19, while it turned out to be more difficult perspective. to find contributors interested in addressing themselves primarily and systematically to the he historicising approach of some of changes undergone by the NHS—even more T the contributions to this issue as well as so after Covid-19 hit. Despite the originally the multiplicity of perspectives it contains is i Hard Times 104 (2020) Georgia Christinidis, Jessica Fischer and Frauke Hofmeister evoked by Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus (1920) on he ‘sense’ or ‘meaning’ of the current, the issue’s cover: the painting was, famously, T multiple crises, of austerity, Brexit, and bought by Walter Benjamin, who, in his Theses Covid-19 seems equally difficult to fix – other on the Philosophy of History (1940), interprets than, perhaps, in the future, with the benefit of the figure as the angel of history, hurled hindsight, from the vantage point of the angel backwards, by the storm of progress, into an looking backwards, as it were. unknown future while keeping its eyes fixed on the ruins of the past. Although it is not clear he articles in this issue can be read as that it is the storm of progress that has caused T addressing themselves to three primary the destruction, Benjamin’s interpretation concerns: firstly, they undertake to embed the of the image is reminiscent of his, perhaps immediate issues into a broader perspective, most well-known, dictum that “[t]here is no which relativises their newness and investigates document of civilization which is not at the them in contexts that are easily forgotten in the same time a document of barbarism.” The fast-changing environment of the media. Thus, ambivalence inherent to Benjamin’s theses is both Andrew Gamble and Logie Barrow, from further heightened by familiarity with the other different disciplinary and political perspectives, meanings he attributed to the painting during read Tory policy during the Brexit negotiations the twenty years that he possessed it, from its and the Covid-19 crisis as the latest manifestation association with the Cabbalistic belief that new of strategies, preoccupations, priorities that have angels are constantly created, some of whom long characterised the Conservative Party. At pass out of existence again almost immediately, the same time, the imposition of neoliberalism their sole purpose of being the adoration of since the 1970s and its intensification since G*d, if only for a single instant, to his playful the economic crisis of the late 2000s have invocation of the figure as ‘guardian angel’ of exacerbated the effects of policies that are not, the fictitious ‘University of Muri’. In the Acta in themselves, novel. In thus contextualising Muriensa, Benjamin and his friend Gershom and historicising Brexit, Gamble’s and Barrow’s Scholem satirised contemporary academia. accounts counterbalance the oft-propagated Scholem’s poem addressed to the angel, “Gruß narrative that Brexit is a direct outcome of the vom Angelus”, ends with a stanza that rejects primal xenophobia and racism of the working the possibility of determining the meaning of class. At the same time, we complement the the image: academic discussion of Brexit, austerity and other issues with assessments by an activist (Felicity Ich bin ein unsymbolisch Ding Dowling) as well as experiential accounts (M. bedeute was ich bin G. Sanchez, Annegret Landgraf and Jennifer Riedel) that provide a counterpoint to the Du drehst umsonst den Zauberring greater abstractions of academic discourse, lest Ich habe keinen Sinn. it be forgotten that people’s lives are, in many ii Hard Times 104 (2020) Editorial ways and senses, at stake - albeit opinions on shares her thoughts as “A European in Wales, in what the best ways to ameliorate their situation times of Brexit”, and some of her observations may differ. are echoed in M.G. Sanchez’s autobiographical contribution set in the North of England. econdly, we give room to voices that go S beyond some of the ‘orthodoxies’ that have hat emerges clearly from this issue of established themselves as part of the discourse W Hard Times is that the problems that both of pro-EU commentators in Britain and beset the contemporary conjuncture are closely that of German observers of British politics. linked to an entire series of broader political Thus, Sebastian Berg takes issue with many of questions, such as the appropriate level of the criticisms levelled against Corbynism and government (local, national, or transnational), provides an overall positive assessment of what, the future of the nation state and devolution, he argues, is not an era named after a leader of the the relationship between neoliberal and Labour Party but a “force in British politics” that neoconservative tendencies in contemporary continues to take effect as a counterweight to the politics, the ongoing impact of austerity and neoliberal hegemony. Philip Whyman, in turn, privatisation, the role played by ideology and makes a case for Brexit from the perspective of the media in influencing political developments a left-wing economist and a founding signatory on the one hand, and the impact of individual of the network “The Full Brexit”. personalities like those of Johnson and Corbyn on the other. Although answering such far- hirdly, our contributors remind us of the reaching questions transcends the scope of a T impact of current political developments single issue of a magazine, insisting upon their beyond England as well as beyond Britain, significance in the context of the current crises namely in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and may, we hope, help to avoid the temptation of Wales. Here, the conditions of crisis make well-worn narratives and easy answers. visible and exacerbate conflicts of interest that pre-existed the current challenges, but that he issue’s editors would like to thank may come to a head in their aftermath. While T Sebastian Berg for his help with recruiting Annegret Landgraf and Jennifer Riedel draw our contributors, and the editorial team in Potsdam attention to the impact of austerity measures on for agreeing to a speedy publication at one of Scottish schools, Klaus Stolz shows how Brexit the most stressful times of the academic year. has revealed the still largely unitary character of the British state and argues that Scotland will Georgia Christinidis (Rostock) sooner or later leave the United Kingdom.
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