Brexit Blues

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: Brexit Blues
Date: June 22, 2017
Host: Dorothy Wickenden
Guest: Sam Knight (London-based contributor to The New Yorker)

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Overview

This episode, hosted by Dorothy Wickenden, marks the first anniversary of the Brexit referendum—a seismic event leading Britain toward withdrawal from the European Union. Against this backdrop of political upheaval, the discussion centers on recent national tragedies (notably the Grenfell Tower fire), Theresa May’s fraught leadership, the shifting fortunes of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, and the complicated future of Britain’s political landscape.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Grenfell Tower Fire as a Political Flashpoint

• Scene and Response:
  • Sam Knight recounts his experience arriving at Grenfell Tower hours after the fire. The disaster is described as immediately traumatic, both emotionally and politically, with visible public anger and trauma.
  • "You could feel immediately that this was going to be a nationally sort of traumatic event." — Sam Knight (03:57)
• Symbolism:
  • The fire becomes a symbol of the UK's growing social and economic divides, exposing governmental neglect and a failing social safety net.

2. Theresa May’s Political Crisis

• Timeline of Events:
  • The Grenfell disaster struck just days after May’s disappointing showing in a snap general election, leaving her government weakened and the nation questioning her leadership.
• Leadership Critique:
  • May’s delayed response and perceived aloofness fuels criticism, as she is seen addressing only emergency workers and not the affected residents.
  • "It immediately seemed that she was out of touch and slow to respond." — Sam Knight (05:16)
• Election Miscalculation:
  • The snap election, intended to secure a dominant majority for Brexit negotiations, backfires due to a campaign seen as narrow and unfeeling.

3. The Conservative Manifesto Misstep

• Policy Disconnect:
  • May’s original two-pronged promise (Brexit and domestic intervention for struggling Britons, aka "JAMs: just about managings") was undermined by a campaign focused solely on a hard Brexit, alienating her base.
  • "All there was was this quite antagonistic austere Brexit policy and not much else." — Sam Knight (07:10)

4. Labour’s Resurgence and Internal Contradictions

• Corbyn’s Paradox:
  • Despite his ambiguous stance on Brexit and past skepticism of the EU, Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign energizes supporters seeking authenticity, lifting Labour’s performance well beyond expectations.
• Divided Base:
  • Labour remains split: northern, pro-Brexit supporters versus urban, pro-Remain constituents, leading to an unsustainable ambiguity in its Brexit position.
  • "Labour are benefiting from a lot of kind of positivity, but actually not too much scrutiny of their position, which is also an incredibly confused one." — Sam Knight (08:20)

5. The Youth Vote and Anti-Nationalist Sentiment

• Corbyn’s Youth Appeal:
  • While there’s energy around Corbyn, data shows youth turnout was consistent with the Brexit referendum, complicating the narrative that young voters alone powered Labour’s gains.
• Emerging Coalition:
  • Success attributed not just to youth, but to a diverse coalition of urban, well-educated, and healthier voters aligning against “backward looking nationalism.”

6. Blairism, the Third Way, and Brexit’s Deeper Roots

• Blair’s View:
  • Tony Blair sees Brexit as a repudiation of his centrist, pro-Europe legacy—the internationalist "Third Way" he championed now deeply out of favor.
  • "For talking to Tony Blair, it's clear that he can't believe this is happening because he thinks he solved this." — Sam Knight (13:03)

7. National Mood Reflected by the Queen

• Tone Shift:
  • Both the Queen’s birthday address and the State Opening of Parliament are remarkably somber and understated, reflecting the public’s sense of national disorientation and gloom.
• Brexit-Dominated Legislative Agenda:
  • Of 24 pieces of new legislation, a third are Brexit-related, underscoring how the withdrawal process will consume British politics for years.
  • "There is this sort of grim tone of buckling down, as it were." — Sam Knight (14:44)

8. Hard vs. Soft Brexit: Shifting Political Language

• Softening Stance:
  • The election result is widely seen as a rejection of the most extreme (“hard”) Brexit, with growing conversation around models that would keep the UK connected to the EU’s single market and customs union, similar to Norway or Switzerland.
• Terminology Overload:
  • "British politics and the media at the moment [are] just attaching a whole load of words to the word Brexit...Hard Brexit, Soft Brexit, Extreme Hard Brexit..." — Sam Knight (14:52–15:30)

9. The Trump Factor

• Trump’s Absence and (Un)popularity:
  • The US president’s planned visit seems increasingly unlikely amid deep unpopularity and controversial exchanges with London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
  • "If you're any senior official in the British government at the moment, the last thing you want is an email from the White House trying to fix this trip." — Sam Knight (16:24)

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Notable Quotes

• On the Grenfell Tragedy:
  “It was immediate and it was unforced and it didn’t feel like journalists were putting microphones under people’s noses and guiding them… it was just an immediate anger flowing from the situation.”
  — Sam Knight (03:42)

• On Theresa May’s Perception:
  “There was this immediate sense that the Queen was somehow plugging more into the national mood than she was.”
  — Sam Knight (13:34)

• On Labour's Brexit Problem:
  “Labour MPs will sort of have the freedom to tell them what they want to hear as well. So the Labour Party itself is incredibly and unsustainably, I would suggest, divided on quite what the outcome it wants from all this as well.”
  — Sam Knight (09:20)

• On the Extended Brexit Process:
  “This is actually an extended two-year period because of the complexity of the Brexit negotiations and rather in keeping with the kind of thin tone of the Conservative manifesto.”
  — Sam Knight (14:20)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & Overview of National Crises — 01:16–02:40
• Grenfell Tower Fire & Political Impact — 02:40–04:23
• Theresa May’s Leadership Woes — 04:23–05:40
• Conservative Manifesto and Election Misstep — 05:40–08:08
• Labour Party Position & Corbyn — 08:08–09:39
• Youth Vote, Urban Coalition — 10:24–11:27
• Tony Blair and the Third Way — 11:27–13:13
• Queen’s Addresses Reflect Public Mood — 13:13–14:44
• Brexit: Hard vs. Soft & Political Language — 14:44–15:59
• Trump’s Relationship with Britain — 15:59–17:10

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Conclusion

This episode presents a rich, behind-the-scenes look at the United Kingdom’s tumultuous political moment in the summer of 2017. Through personal reportage and thoughtful analysis, Dorothy Wickenden and Sam Knight unpack the intertwining crises of political leadership, societal dislocation, and the existential uncertainty introduced by Brexit. The episode highlights the deep national soul-searching underway, the complexities of party politics, and the ways in which recent tragedies have become touchstones for a broader debate about the UK's future.

Transcript

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about Politics. It's Thursday, June 22nd. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of the Brexit referendum when Great Britain voted to withdraw from the European Union. The vote triggered the resignation of David Cameron and the appointment of Theresa May as Prime Minister. The country has suffered a series of catastrophes in recent months, including four terrorist attacks since March. Last Wednesday, the deadliest fire in London since World War II broke out in a public housing project, killing at least 79 people. The fire has become a symbol of the country's deepening economic worries. David Lammy, a 44 year old Labour MP from Tottenham, lost a friend that morning. In an interview on the news, he spoke of the tragedy in political terms.

[Sam Knight]

We need to live in a society where we care for the poorest and the vulnerable, and that means housing. It means somewhere decent to live. It was a noble idea that we built and it's falling apart around our eyes. That's what it's about.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Sam Knight joins me from London to talk about how England is coping with its strains of populism and nationalism and how the debate over Brexit is changing. Sam, welcome.

[Sam Knight]

Thank you. Hello.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

You were at the scene of the fire last Wednesday morning. Can you tell us a little bit about the scene there and why it's become such a potent political symbol?

[Sam Knight]

Yes, yeah. I mean, it's very, very strange living in the UK at the moment, because you go to bed at night and you turn off your phone and then you look at it the first thing in the morning and you just pray that something hasn't happened.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

That sounds familiar to people here too.

[Sam Knight]

And it keeps happening. And so I woke up that morning and headed over there. I must have got there at about 9:30 or quarter to 10 in the morning. The fire started just after 1 o' clock in the morning and it was still burning. There were still flames coming out of the tower. And the social housing, we call it an estate, you would call it a project, is sort of tucked between two major roads and it's actually quite hard to get to. And that was part of the problem with the response. Fire engines couldn't get through these rather narrow streets. So you started to see fire engines and fire crews four or five streets before you got to the building. And you could see people in their pajamas or in their night clothes who just sort of run out of the building and they evacuated lots of buildings around it. So there was just a lot of people walking through the streets, bereft and obviously traumatized, but also angry. It was immediate and it was unforced and it didn't feel like journalists were putting microphones under people's noses and guiding them towards saying things. It was just an immediate anger flowing from the situation, which was on top of what was obviously a kind of very upsetting disaster. You could feel immediately that this was going to be a nationally sort of traumatic event.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Theresa May was already under considerable political strain. Talk a little bit about how she responded and how that contributed to her political troubles.

[Sam Knight]

Well, the timing of this was just exquisitely bad from her point of view. She'd been, I hesitate to say, reelected, sort of staggered over the line at this general election the previous Thursday. So it was just four days afterwards. The government hadn't been officially sworn in yet. MPs hadn't returned to the House of Commons. She no longer commands a majority in the House of Commons. So there's a sense of a government not really able to kind of execute its powers or its agenda. And then a national Emergency takes place.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

There seemed to be a big delay between the time when the fire was announced and she came out and said something about it.

[Sam Knight]

Yes. So she made her first kind of public response, I believe about 6:30 in the evening. Once this had been leaving the national news for 20. Well, that was. It immediately seemed that she was out of touch and slow to respond. And then when she did visit the scene, there were these damaging long lens photographs of her just talking with the fire crews and emergency teams, but not meeting any local residents.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So why did she call that snap election? That was supposed to be a moment of triumph for her party.

[Sam Knight]

Yes. So for us to rewind back, whatever it is, seven weeks and it seems a huge amount of time ago. But at that point, Theresa May was unassailable and the complete dominant figure in British politics. The Brexit negotiations were about to begin. She had set out her strategy in a way that was seen as rather uncompromising and bold, but there was no doubt that she was a Prime Minister in command. And she decided against the apparently incredibly weak Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to call a snap general election. Where you can suddenly call an election, it just takes place six weeks later. And the idea would be to decimate labor in the House of Commons, return a hundred seat majority for the Conservatives and then have a huge mandate to go into these Brexit talks with the approach that she's adopted.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And what about this manifesto? She released her Conservative manifesto. And was that a precipitating factor here?

[Sam Knight]

There? May entered Downing Street a year ago, entrusted as the person to execute the will of the people and to carry out Brexit. But she also made it very clear as she entered Downing street that she wanted to be more on the side of ordinary people in this country. We had this terrible kind of acronym that sprung up, jams, the just about managings. And she unveiled a kind of range of policies aimed at the middle classes, people stuck on stagnant wages, people not as kind of prosperous as they want to be. And clearly some of that disaffection kind of fed into the Brexit vote. So she appeared as a Prime Minister with these two planks to do Brexit, but also to be more interventionist in the economy, to be more caring to look after, which made a big deal around mental health. She had this range of policies, but then when the election was launched, they just didn't seem to be there. All there was was this quite antagonistic austere Brexit policy and not much else. And then when you added that in with her personal demeanor and her apparent reluctance to interact with members of the public. The campaign took on this life of its own, where suddenly it seemed that what the Conservatives were offering was very shallow. And if not shallow, just a form of pain, if you like, in terms of somehow weathering these Brexit talks well.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And again, damaging the very people she had promised to help.

[Sam Knight]

Exactly, yeah.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So what does it all mean for the fortunes of the Labour Party? If I recall correctly, after the Brexit referendum, Corbyn was criticized for being partly to blame and for leading the party, you know, too far to the left.

[Sam Knight]

I mean, Labour are benefiting from a lot of kind of positivity, but actually not too much scrutiny of their position, which is also an incredibly confused one. Corbyn personally is a longtime sceptic of the European Project and is no great fan of the European Union, and was seen last year during the referendum campaign to really not commit himself or the Labour Party properly to arguing for Britain's continued kind of membership. And Corbyn is many things, but he's, as we've seen in the recent election, he's a gifted campaigner. He can draw a crowd. He has a kind of an authenticity and a decency which really connects with people, and there was a feeling that he never brought those skills to bear when the referendum took place, and Labour went into the current election really was expected to do incredibly badly, and as part of that, has kept its approach to Brexit sort of borderline duplicitous. Its supporters in the north of the country tend to be pro Brexit and its supporters in London tend to remain London. Labour MPs will sort of have the freedom to tell them what they want to hear as well. So the Labour Party itself is incredibly and unsustainably, I would suggest, divided on quite what the outcome it wants from all this as well.

[Katie Drummond]

I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial director. I'm Michael Kollory, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspondent at Wired.

[Katie Drummond]

And our show, Uncanny Valley, is about.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

The people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.

[Katie Drummond]

And right now, Silicon Valley and Washington have never been more intertwined. So each week we get together to talk about a big story, often at the intersection of tech and politics.

[Sam Knight]

Right.

[Katie Drummond]

So whether we're talking about Trump, Coin, Doge or Elon Musk, we will always explain how these Silicon Valley forces are affecting Washington and how they affect you. Make sure you're Following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Corbyn has a big youth following and I wonder how much of that is specific to his agenda and how much reflects a broader rebellion against this backward looking nationalism and the advances of the far right.

[Sam Knight]

The youth thing is hard to get a handle on. There's definitely a youthful energy around Corbyn that really no other political figure has in the UK at the moment. When you look at the hard numbers, the actual youth turnout for the general was totally in line with the Brexit vote last year where young people were felt to have stayed away. When you actually look at the hard data, this idea of young people kind of carrying Corbyn to this unexpected. Well, everyone thinks it's a victory, but it's not a victory because he still lost by a healthy margin, but doing much better than anyone expected. It's more complicated than that. Corbyn and Labour have done surprisingly well among younger, better educated, healthier, urban. It's that coalition which is massing around Corbyn and a softer Brexit or anti Brexit, if you see what I mean.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I wanted to ask you too about Tony Blair, because I know you spoke to him recently, the former Prime Minister who in the 1990s, along with Bill Clinton, those two were the avatars of the third way, you know, this melding of progressive social policies and somewhat conservative economic policies to try to bridge the left right divide. What did Blair say this about what's going on now with Bret? Brexit and the kind of. It seems to be a pretty big repudiation of his entire program.

[Sam Knight]

Tony Blair is very clear on Brexit and like most politicians, very clear on Brexit, are not really currently active in British politics. Britain's membership of the European Union has been the way that the country has defined itself internationally for the last 40 years and the way it's also defined itself internally as well, if you like, as a European social democracy with a mixture of welfare state and open free market capitalism, which is exactly what Tony Blair represents or Bill Clinton represents and that kind of international consensus liberal democracy that we thought was here to stay and in this country that is still associated with new labor. It led to this huge crash, it led to the kind of, the moral kind of misadventure in Iraq. It's this repudiated formula which British politics is still trying to move on from and which Brexit represented a rejection of. For talking to Tony Blair, it's clear that he can't believe this is happening because he thinks he solved this.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

The Queen spoke twice this week, once to mark her 91st birthday, and then again yesterday in her annual address to Parliament. What was her mood and what did she have to say?

[Sam Knight]

So a few days ago it was the Queen's official birthday, which is a time of pomp and ceremony and flypasts and sort of British sort of feel good. And this year was very noticeable that her birthday message struck this, this sad tone because it is a sad and disorientating time for the country. And this, unfortunately for the Prime Minister, Theresa May, there was this immediate sense that the Queen was somehow plugging more into the national mood than she was. And then yesterday, rather in kind of keeping with the sort of fragile feeling of things, there was the official state opening of Parliament, where the Queen outlines the legislative agenda of the new government. And this was also a low key occasion. It was very short. Rather than just announcing all the bills for the new government for the next year, it's actually an extended two year period because of the complexity of the Brexit negotiations and rather in keeping with the kind of thin tone of the Conservative manifesto. I think eight out of the 24 pieces of legislation announced were all related to the Brexit talks, which really is going to dominate British politics completely for the next kind of two to five years. So there is this sort of grim tone of buckling down, as it were.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And do you get the sense that May will now be correcting course just a little bit? There's talk about a soft Brexit rather than a hard Brexit.

[Sam Knight]

British politics and the media at the moment just attaching a whole load of words to the word Brexit. So you've got hard Brexit, soft Brexit, extreme hard Brexit, clean Brexit, jobs, first Brexit prospect. There's no question that however you want to read this election result, on June 8, it stepped away from what is colloquially called the hard Brexit, which is the UK not only withdrawing from the European Union, but withdrawing from the single market and the Customs Union. Currently you've got 27 members of the EU, but you have countries like Switzerland and Norway which have a foot in and a foot out. They're not officially in the European Union, but they pay billions of dollars every year to gain access to the single market to allow them to trade freely. And in return for that, they accept free movement of EU citizens to come and work in their countries. And that's what they mean when they say soft Brexit. They want the UK to withdraw officially, but really we're still getting a lot of the benefits from being inside, but without the say in making those rules.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

You know, it strikes me that we've gotten through this entire conversation without mentioning the American president. There was speculation when the queen did not mention Trump's planned trip in her speech on Wednesday that this trip is just not going to happen. Trump supports Brexit, and there was that photo of him holding hands with May on the White House lawn in January. How is Trump being received, by and large by British voters?

[Sam Knight]

Well, I guess it's sort of one of the few saving graces of the last terrible weeks is that Trump has not been uppermost in our minds. But he look, I said a few minutes ago that thing about going to bed at night and sort of dreading looking at your phone again in the morning. If you're any senior official in the British government at the moment, the last thing you want is an email from the White House trying to fix this trip. You don't want to be clasping Donald Trump's hand in Downing Street. Sidi Khan, the mayor of London, and the president have had this running feud. I don't really want to say feud because Trump has picked on him, but Khan hasn't really kind of picked on him in return. It would be, in the current atmosphere in the uk, an explosive visit full of protests, and I can't believe anyone would come out of it enhanced.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Thank you so much, Sam.

[Sam Knight]

Pleasure.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Sam Knight is a New Yorker contributor who lives in London. This has been the political scene. You can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app and find more political analysis and commentary on newyorker.com feel free to rate and review the political scene on itunes. This podcast is produced by Alex Barron for newyorker.com with help from Hannah Wilentz. I'm Dorothy Wickend.

[David Remnick]

Right now we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Charlamagne, tha God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Sam Knight]

From prx.