What does it mean to be alone? Aloneness functions as exclusion or self-exclusion—in Britain’s case, both. Ours is the imagined superiority in standing apart from (or above) others, and the fear that they are leaving us behind. This is isolation both sought and resented.
In Britain Alone, journalist Philip Stephens explains how that aloneness came to be. He identifies the key tussles of British policymaking since 1945: how the false binaries of America versus Europe and history versus geography masked a more profound choice between nostalgia and reason. It is a magnificent, exhilarating book, laying bare the contradictions, misunderstandings and delusions that led Britain first to build a bridge across the Channel and then bulldoze it.
From Suez, to Iraq, to Brexit, Stephens reveals common themes. The last 70 years have repeatedly exposed the same fears about sovereignty, prestige and a lost, mythologised past. Britain’s myth-making has romanticised its relationships with both the Commonwealth and US, while treating its key partner, and vehicle for greatest influence—Europe—with defensiveness or disdain.
The book is much more than Brexit. It encompasses most of Britain’s international activity since the war. Particularly illuminating is the chapter on Harold Macmillan’s quest for American nuclear weapons, and his desperate (now largely forgotten) summit with Kennedy. Throughout, Stephens demonstrates how the nuclear deterrent and pressure on sterling dictated Britain’s wider foreign policy.
What could have been a meandering history becomes, in Stephens’s hands, a gripping saga of blunders, triumphs and missed opportunities. With sharp pacing and lean, subtle prose, he makes his stance clear while letting us piece together the conclusions.
Ultimately, the story is a tragedy—a nexus of paranoia and exceptionalism, Britain has learnt nothing and accepted nothing. Indeed, while we were fretting about our decline we failed to see the success we had made of international cooperation. Now, too late, we stand alone.
Britain Alone: The Path from Suez to Brexit by Philip Stephens (Faber & Faber, £25)
