Now that it’s a reality, can an esteemed historian produce convincing arguments for the UK’s departure from the EU?
They may have triumphed in politics, but in academia, Brexiters are an embattled minority. Perhaps the most combative of their tribunes is the emeritus professor of history at Cambridge, Robert Tombs. Beyond the innate value of dissent, Tombs’s own position is also intrinsically interesting. As a brilliant historian of 19th-century France, he can hardly be written off as a Little Englander. As a French citizen by marriage, he presumably continues to enjoy the benefits of EU citizenship as well, so he has less skin in the game than most.
A short, punchy, eloquent statement from such a distinguished historian on the case for the kind of very hard Brexit that has now become a reality raises hopes for some genuine illumination. But The Sovereign Isle will, for varying reasons, disappoint both many of Tombs’s fellow Brexiters and anyone looking for a cogent statement of what this great disruption means for the economic and political future of the UK.
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