The idea was met with blank stares from the team. A Labour win, however sweeping, wasn’t going to erase the decade-plus of backsliding people had lived through. The idea felt dissonant. What, really, was there to be happy about? What’s so great about Britain?
Of course, that spiky reaction became the basis of this whole edition, which sits somewhere between an exploration, an interrogation and a celebration. Right now, there’s plenty to feel cynical about, angry about, dismayed about: there’s a loud, xenophobic national discourse, there’s outrage over Britain’s complicity in what dozens of institutions and many more scholars are calling Israel’s genocide in Gaza, there’s a wild cost-of-living crisis, and a widened wealth gap. All that being true – and forgive my rather foreign optimism – I believe there’s…
