As it faces the pandemic crisis, while still mired in Brexit talks, Britain today is no longer a country divided by left vs. right or new vs. trad. Instead, this is a nation split between the Won’t-Be-Tolds and the Will-Be-Tolds. The 52 percent who voted Leave in 2016 knew the post-Brexit promises were lies and it didn’t matter. What does matter now to half the country is the chance Never To Be Told, either by experts or anyone else, let alone Johnny Foreigner. This may look akin to American-style libertarianism—the sort of self-assertion that refuses face masks or seeks to “liberate” Minnesota or Michigan—but this British strain is more snobbish, less anti-government, and, arguably, more anti-intellectual for the sake of being anti-intellectual.
