After Britain - Softcover

If only all constitutional politics could be as lively as this, even the English might start to take an interest in their future as a nation. In this provocative work Tom Nairn suggests--or, rather, bludgeons his reader over the head with the idea--that Tony Blair and his New Labour government are intent on the preservation of a decaying British state, only replacing one set of ruling elite with another. Giving Scotland devolution will solve nothing: the Scots now know that they must have independence, restoring that right to run their own affairs which they lost with the Act of Union in 1707. That in turn will force the English, no longer able to rely on their Britishness for their sense of identity, to determine who they really are and what they really want. Someone else can fill in the detail of how it will all work, Nairn's is an extended pamphlet of broad brush analysis, a mischievous lecture employing outrageous generalisations, dollops of public and private emotion and entertaining personal anecdotes. Best of all, he acknowledges that the Scots have brought many of their problems on themselves. By the end of this book, independence is such an inevitability that the only wonder is that it has not already happened. I certainly wouldn't fancy my chances debating the issue with Nairn. Whether he's right, of course, remains to be seen. --Kim Fletcher

Torn Nairn is one of Britain's most celebrated iconoclastic political thinkers. His celebrated book on the monarchy, The Enchanted Glass, was the first serious republican critique of the House of Windsor for half a century. He lives in Edinburgh and Ireland.