If Boris Johnson wins a clear majority on 12 December, it could mark a big turning point in British history. The brakes will be off for the United Kingdom to formally leave the European Union by 31 January 2020. Then the new Tory government will decide how radical its future relationship with the European Union and the rest of the world should be. Make no mistake: this election matters and will be talked about in years to come.
World war one and two both wrought significant change to Britain. So, too, did the 1956 Suez debacle, which drained British self-confidence to such an extent that the country lurched into over-reliance on the USA and then the European communities. It led ultimately to 1973’s European Communities Act that sealed British EEC membership. But far from being a panacea, this sequence of events gradually fractured Britain’s politics and eventually its society. The 1982 Falklands war primed Margaret Thatcher for radical transformation of Britain.
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