Exploring the Impact of Brexit on British Politics: An Analysis of Heroic Failure

Hartmuth Huber: Eine sehr hellsichtige und kluge Analyse der britischen (oder besser englischen) Befindlichkeiten und deren Auswirkungen auf die Brexit-Politik. Es lag zwar schon 2018 vor, aber es haben wohl keine Engländer gelesen, sonst hätten sie womöglich diesen massiven Fehler nicht gemacht, in dessen Strudel sie immer noch strampeln ohne ein rettendes Seil zu fassen zu kriegen, an dem sie herausgezogen werden könnten - so sie das überhaupt wollen.

Germany on Oct 22, 2022

Patrick G Cox: Mr O'Toole demonstrates his forensic observation of the national character. At times I found myself thinking that much of what he is saying about our penchant for lauding often monumental failures of leadership and frequently hubris or arrogance by dressing it up as 'heroism in the face of insurmountable odds' exposes something we all recognise, but don't want to acknowledge. Largely because it exposes the fact that many of our leaders 'don't do detail', or don't plan properly and tend to 'respond' rather than 'lead'.

This book should be a 'must read' for all of us.

Germany on Mar 17, 2022

Edith Schwarz: Der Author gibt den vielen Buchern und Analysen von Brexit und den Problemen im Kaum-Vereinigten Koenigreich eine irische Perspektive, die oft ausser Acht gelassen wird. In vielen Dingen trifft er den Nagel auf den Kopf. Es ist auch unterhaltend im Stil, keine trockene Aneinanderreihung von bekannten Fakten. Und ja, das Problem wird weiter bestehen, Grossbritannien kommt nicht aus der Identitaetskrise mit der schlechtesten und untalentiertesten Regierung in 300 Jahren

Germany on Feb 05, 2022

J. Sheppard: Extremely interesting for a US reader. Even if you try to follow Brexit closely from here, you don’t get the level of detail or analysis presented here. The older British couples (Brexit supporters) my wife and I met in France last fall should read this.

United States on May 20, 2020

sylvia: Liked everything about this book .. easy to read/understand why the Brits have embarked on this
dangerous road of no return ... best book to read on Brexit. Fintain writes so well he also makes the
whole Brexit sage easy to understand.

United States on Sep 04, 2019

Kindle Customer, Washington DC: Easy to read, depressing analysis on a country mismanaged by a failed political class. I have the utmost respect for UK but this time trouble will not end with crazy Brexit. It is just starting

United States on Feb 19, 2019

Catherine Czerkawska: Updating my previous positive review to be even more positive. It's both hilarious and sad to read the handful of outraged 2018 negative reviews on here, from 2021 and the dreadful government of extreme Brexiters we're now saddled with. Pretty much everything that O'Toole predicts in this book has turned out to be true, with so many of the English in particular now bemoaning the fact that Brexit does mean Brexit, (who knew?) and that the UK is the third country it said it wanted to be. We weren't thrown out. We did this to ourselves. We left the club, and now we're blaming anyone but ourselves for the fact that we aren't allowed to use all the facilities the way we used to. Everything is the EU's fault, apparently. And oh dear god, the union flags everywhere, and the great British everything ... I don't think even genius O'Toole could have predicted just how far all this madness would go. Nobody in their right mind could.

However, here's what I wrote earlier.

Following Brexit as this crazy project lurches on, I'd become not just depressed, but bemused. Latterly I'd begun to wonder if I was going mad. This book convincingly explains not just Brexit itself, but so many...

United Kingdom on Feb 16, 2019

Kevin Egan: If the British could heed the wisdom of Fintan O'Toole, they'd be able to work their way out of their Brexit mess. Along with the incisive analysis and the warm sympathy for ordinary people, the book is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, because Brexit dilemmas are so completely ridiculous once people stop to think about them. If only more people would stop and think!

United States on Feb 01, 2019

Cher: One has to be deep into British/English history, literature and popular culture to appreciate all the minutiae of the background and reasons for the Brexit, as described by the author - much too much information for the average reader. It would be like trying to explain the Trump phenomenon in the US by delving deeply into US history, literature and culture - possibly interesting but infinitely useless.
To understand Brexit, the first chapter is really the only relevant part of the book - the Brits never understood the underlying reasons behind the efforts of the Club of Rome and the striving for a sense of common goals and solidarity, not just as a vehicle for economic advancement, but even more as a means to put an end to the long history of European hostilities and wars.
As someone born in Germany, I grew up with a grudging admiration for the British for the tenacity und guts with which they held out against Hitler. The French, who actually were "subjugated" by the Germans during WW II, were able to put much of understandable resentments aside, and join with Germany as the driving force behind the European Union. The English, by contrast, as described by the author,...

United States on Jan 25, 2019

Gloops: I took a punt on this after seeing the author interviewed on Channel4 News last month. It is not an account of the process of Brexit but “simply one possible answer to… how did a great nation bring itself to the point of such wilful self-harm?” So his viewpoint is immediately clear. He writes as an outsider - but a very close kind of outsider - whose ambivalence towards England includes honest affection for a country long valued by so many Irish as a place to escape to.

He starts by diagnosing self-pity at the root of Brexit: a deep sense of grievance combined with a high sense of superiority. We won the war but lost our empire, still haven’t found a leading role in the world and now see the defeated nations doing rather well for themselves. Immediately after WW2 we diverted ourselves with new ideas - notably the Welfare State and especially the NHS - but since 1979 these have been gradually eroded, undermining people’s confidence in the future. But we have looked elsewhere for someone to blame. Britain’s “deep problems of class and geographic division, increasing social squalor and rising inequality, cannot be its [own] fault. It has an excuse for everything...

United Kingdom on Jan 20, 2019