Why Britons Really Regret Brexit

Keir Starmer’s downfall marks a decade since the fateful referendum, now widely regarded as an economic failure. But both must be understood as products of an anachronistic political system.

In my late 20s, as a newcomer to the history faculty at the University of Cambridge, I came under the bracingly baleful influence of that most acerbic of Tory historians, Maurice Cowling. He taught me to understand English history as a succession of challenges to the established religious and social order, which the Conservative Party existed to contend…