Robert Tombs Robert Tombs

Time warp

We love to bring history into our political debates. But we shouldn’t

issue 17 August 2019

How we love bringing history into our political debates. It may seem strange in a country where so little history is taught at school, but perhaps that makes it easier. We grab hold of vague notions of the past for a Punch-and-Judy brawl. There could hardly be a better example of this than Brexit, in which we skim through the whole of our history to search for analogies to batter the other side with.

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