Nairn on the Union

Tom Nairn reviews Michael Fry’s book The Union: England, Scotland and the Treaty of 1707 in the latest issue of New Left Review, and takes the opportunity to deliver a scathing survey of the state of the union today:

From 1979 to the present, foreign policy has grown ever more crucial
for London—the era of the South Atlantic War, a protracted (and
unresolved) debate over European Union, and nato’s
Balkans crisis, as well as of the advance of globalization. Status and
a global presence have shown themselves to be more important to the
all-British identity than the postwar welfare state, or the conventions
of liberal legalism. In the end, it is foreign-policy fixations and
delusions that have dragged the state into the present abyss. A feared
subordination to Europe has turned into actual subservience to George
W. Bush’s American neo-conservatism, and condemned the uk army (with its large Scottish contingent) to the Iraqi charnel-house, and the hopelessness of Afghanistan. (New Left Review)