Next year marks a decade since Britain voted to leave the EU, yet the country remains divided over why it happened and what should follow. In Between the Waves, New Statesman editor Tom McTague attempts to answer this by placing Brexit in its broader historical context, tracing Britain's ambiguous relationship with Europe back to the end of the second world war.
The book charts the path from when EU membership was seen as an antidote to British decline – 'a nation that lost an empire to gain a continent', as the Sun put it in 1975 – to when it was blamed for that decline. McTague controversially reframes the 2016 referendum less as a backlash from the left-behind and more as the intellectually coherent outcome of an inherently unstable relationship.
From the start, Britain faced a choice between joining a union whose purpose it distrusted or staying out of a potentially threatening bloc. Successive governments managed these tensions by ignoring the EU's core mission of ever closer integration while pursuing its benefits. Through this lens, David Cameron's referendum becomes a willingness to face contradictions others had brushed aside.
However, the book leans heavily on leave-side witnesses, with exhaustive accounts of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings's academic influences, but little on the Blair-Brown years. European perspectives are largely absent, with the continent relegated to a background presence in Britain's internal dramas. McTague considers whether earlier immigration curbs might have tempered euroscepticism but concludes this lacks nuance.
The book ends by acknowledging that Britain's relationship with Europe may not be settled, especially as the threat from Putin draws British interests closer to its neighbours. It reminds us that the British idea of Europe has never been fixed, and though this chapter may be concluded, the story continues.
