Brexit is the hard right elephant in the room of a British state hurtling at warp speed back to the 19th-century

When First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon announced in her press conference last week, making the economic case for Scottish independence, that central to that case is Scotland rejoining the single market and the EU, she identified the elephant in the room of the escalating chaos and crisis that has engulfed a failing British state.

Brexit was then and remains now a hard right political project rooted in a nostalgic and entirely mythological rendering of Britain’s ignoble past at the expense of engagement with the present. Dripping in the poison of nativism, white supremacy, Little Englanderism and base xenophobia, this incestuous, hate-filled project was from inception, when stripped of the mealy-mouthed paeans to democracy and self-government, all about determining who is really British and who is really not, who is really worthy and who is really not.

From the get-go Brexit’s prime movers — Messrs. Farage, Rees-Moog the swivel-eyed denizens of the European Research Group (ERG) — cared less about the hard economic evidence that Brexit would be tantamount to an act of self-harm, and more about ensuring that the break from Europe should be absolute in every particular, no matter the threat to peace in Ireland and no matter the cost in terms of trade, jobs and investment.

Five years on from the Brexit referendum and UK trade with the EU — the largest trading bloc in the world — is down sixteen percent than it would’ve been if Brexit hadn’t happened. The social impact meanwhile has been similarly significant, what with the ending of free movement resulting in staff shortages in the hospitality and agricultural sectors, while also impacting negatively on the NHS, especially in social care where pre-Brexit a high proportion of staff came from across the EU and who have mostly returned home in justifiable response to the welcome mat being unceremoniously ripped from under their feet.

Five years on from the Brexit referendum, the abject madness currently unfolding in Number Ten makes Hitler’s Bunker seem like the acme of reason and stability. We have a libertarian crank as prime minister in the shape of Liz Truss, set to be the shortest serving PM in British…