Ed West Ed West

The new nostalgia for a pre-Brexit world

Among its many treasures, Brexit has spawned a new genre of think piece, the nostalgic ‘what has happened to the Britain I love’ lament in the GuardianFrom an Irishwoman here; an Egyptian here; and a German, here.

It is sad to see people on the Wrong Side of History clinging to a mythologised, imagined good old days. This must have been a very different Britain to the one I used to read about in the Guardian that was a hot-bed of racism and intolerance.

Still, I’m not sure what has changed exactly; apart from the issue of hate crimes, which are hard to analyse because they are not broken down by seriousness or the race of the perpetrator (with the telling exception of anti-Semitic violence), and which compared to the everyday toll of mindless violence in London seem tiny in scale.

Other than that, it’s hard to find evidence that much has actually changed.

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