Abstract
This paper, taking Linda Colley's work on the formation of British identity in the eighteenth century as a starting point, argues that the essentials as she delineated them (of Britain as at once island nation, imperial metropole, trading and naval power, and Protestant society, and in all these antithetical to continental Europe), while considerably and sometimes awkwardly adapted, have endured down to the present. In considering this the focus is on how the neo-liberal (and neoconservative) turn of British politics in the Thatcher era and after reinforced a version of this conception of British identity, and its distinctness from Europe, with implications for economic and social attitudes, and plausibly factoring into the support for British exit from the European Union seen in the historic 2016 referendum.
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