pdotb finished reading Britain in Fragments by Satnam Virdee
Britain in Fragments by Satnam Virdee, Brendan McGeever
Britain today is falling apart. One of the most dominant states in world history finds itself confronted with growing demands …
While the endpoint of the book is Brexit, it does such a good job of tracing the way the proletariat has been split, first through offering voting rights, but only to certain segments of the working class, and then during the twentieth century, by leaning on racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. Also good on the way Labour has generally acted as a diversion from anything more radical, and the way that the shift to the right under New Labour opened up space for nationalism. In Scotland this manifested as the SNP who occupied a position left of centre, but still to the right of Old Labour, but in England this led to the rise of first the BNP and then, when they imploded, UKIP.
