P. W. Preston: Britain After the Five Crises, Gebunden

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The period 2008-2022 has seen the British state / government embroiled in a number of full-blown crises, each impacting the fundamental operations of the state and demanding, therefore, urgent responses from the government of the day. In the first case, the 2008 near-collapse and partial nationalization of the banking system consequent upon decades of irresponsible credit creation coupled to permissive regulation; in the second , the migration crisis of 2015, which saw waves of refugees moving through Europe, provoking anxious responses from European Union member states and opening-up related political debates in Britain; thus, third , the 2016 referendum in regard to membership of the European Union, which the London-based elite clearly thought they would navigate easily before, to their evident shock, losing, an event itself precipitating further extraordinary Westminster manoeuvring; and then fourth the 2020 Covid- 19 pandemic, met with an initial casualsangfroid before the government, its actions informed by epidemiological modelling, made an abrupt shift to lockdown , with dramatic social and economic consequences. To these episodes, whose impacts run down to the present, could be added, fifth, the 2022 disaster in Ukraine where the British state / government has chosen to involve itself by supporting one set of combatants in a conflict where presently, after more than a year of fighting, there is little sign of a means to the resolution of the violence. This book examines the crises and tracks how each developed; how state/ government failings in one case were rehearsed in the next; and, more generally, how these crises have been amplified by the decades-long celebration of globalization theory; and, finally, at how following the most recent crisis the future might unfold, hence the ideas of deglobalization, resilience and, more speculatively, the possibilities of democratization.