Book review: Britain Alone, by Philip Stephens

This commanding new book by Philip Stephens illustrates how, in the years since the end of the Second World War, Britain has been damaged time and again by its leaders’ delusions of grandeur. Review by Joyce McMillan
Philip StephensPhilip Stephens
Philip Stephens

Those who believe that the time has come for Britain to put the bitter Brexit debate behind it, and to begin a process of healing, might be well advised to read this commanding new book by Phillip Stephens, chief political commentator at the Financial Times, before raising their hopes for reconciliation too high. Rarely if ever, in the history of the British state since 1707, has one half of Britain’s ruling elite committed an act of policy viewed with such absolute contempt by the other half; and rarely has that contempt been expressed with such elegance, such fluency, and such a devastating wealth of supporting detail, as in this mighty survey of the follies, failures and occasional successes of British foreign policy since 1945, culminating in the Brexit debacle.

In a sense, Stephens’s thesis is a straightforward one. He begins by quoting Henry Tizard, a scientific advisor to the Attlee government, who argued in 1949 that Britain could still be a great nation, but was no longer a great power. Tizard also warned that if it persisted in trying to be a great power, despite its reduced postwar circumstances, it might also forfeit its reputation as a great nation; and over the next 400 pages, Stephens proceeds to demonstrate – with some repetition, but huge narrative flair – how Tizard’s warning was repeatedly disregarded, as one government after another fell prey to Britain’s post-Second World War myths of enduring national greatness and exceptional virtue.

Hide Ad

Not every Prime Minister since 1945 endures the full lash of Stephens’s scorn. Harold Macmillan, Ted Heath and John Major emerge as clear-sighted politicians who understood that the country’s best hope of global influence now lay in playing a major shaping role in Europe, while also maintaining strong transatlantic links. Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair are seen as having started well in maintaining these twin priorities, only to fall victim in the end to their respective personal myths; Stephens’s chapter on the catastrophic series of misjudgments that led Tony Blair into the Iraq War is a little masterpiece of recent history.

Britain AloneBritain Alone
Britain Alone

Most of the others, though – from Churchill, who could not face the truth that British withdrawal from India meant the end of Empire, to the unlovely post-2010 trio of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson – experience the full weight of his wrath. As Stephens observes, the language of the 2016 Vote Leave campaign was still drenched, 70 years on, in sepia-tinged wartime imagery and language; and in voting for Brexit, the UK seemed finally to turn its back on a 21st century reality it had never found comfortable, and to embrace a series of illusions drawn from the historic past.

Except that, as Stephens readily concedes, “Britain” may no longer be the right word for the economically isolated country the UK has now become. If a plurality of English voters are still playing out the psychodrama of 1939-45, Northern Ireland and Scotland, both of which voted to Remain, have clearly moved into a very different place over the last 40 years. Northern Ireland has already been hived off from the UK, and allowed to remain in the EU single market, in order to preserve its peace process and its open border with Ireland; and Scotland may soon run out of reasons to remain in a union where its sense of its own future and identity can be so brutally ignored. After Brexit, will it be Britain Alone, or England Alone? asks Stephens, in the final sentence of the book. And if Scotland’s voters decide, over the next few years, to make it the latter, then in Stephens’s view his own country will finally have been wrecked by its leaders’ delusions of grandeur; and by its inability to face the realities not only of the late 20th century, but of the tumultuous new millennium in which we now live.

Britain Alone, by Philip Stephens, Faber & Faber, £25

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription at https://www.scotsman.com/subscriptions

Joy Yates, Editorial Director