Dr Britain
Tom Nairn (June 2001)
The absent or fog-shrouded hinterland to Tony Blair provides him with
a quintessentially 'British' identity, detached from England, Scotland
or Wales. He is the vehicle for Labour's tranformation, in which
Left has become Right. Who else in the ranks of New Labour can 'speak
for Britain' in just his easy fashion?
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Tom Nairn is a Scottish academic and author now based in Ireland
but teaching for part of the year in Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
His The Left Against Europe (1975) was the first polemic to urge
the British left to be positive about the European Union. Author of
The Break-Up of Britain (1977), The Enchanted Glass (1984),
and After Britain (2000), his new book Pariah: Misfortunes
of the British Kingdom, from which the above contribution is extracted,
is published in September 2001 by Verso.
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