Liam Fox confirms that Britain now has a nationalist government

Unlike the boss, I thought Liam Fox’s comments on fat and lazy British businesses that could be exporting more but aren’t because, well, an afternoon on the golf course is more comfortable than striving for Britain were deplorable. But they were also telling.

Because they were a further confirmation that the United Kingdom now has a nationalist government. The liberal Toryism of the Cameron era is gone, sunk with a whimper in record time. In its place is a Conservative nationalism that envisages SS Britannia buccaneering its way across the world’s oceans. This, after all, was the animating spirit of what we might call the Brexit campaign’s more cheerful wing. Well, it’s a nice idea even if it’s also one that, despite its apparent thrusting modernity (Out and Into the World and all that jazz) is also tinged with a certain nostalgia.

But then that is the way with nationalism; it simplifies things wonderfully. That’s one of the reasons it is always so appealing.