How Brexit Broke Britain and Revealed a Country at War With Itself

On a Friday evening in July 2012, 80,000 people gathered at the Olympic Stadium in East London to watch the opening ceremony of the 30th Olympiad. Some 27 million British people watched it on their televisions, and many more around the globe. Expectations were sky-high and tinged with skepticism. Many of us sat down to watch the ceremony in that typically British frame of mind--ironic, self-deprecating, pragmatic--which did not predispose us to be impressed.

But impressed we were.

On a Friday evening in July 2012, 80,000 people gathered at the Olympic Stadium in East London to watch the opening ceremony of the 30th Olympiad. Some 27 million British people watched it on their televisions, and many more around the globe. Expectations were sky-high and tinged with skepticism. Many of us sat down to watch the ceremony in that typically British frame of mind--ironic, self-deprecating, pragmatic--which did not predispose us to be impressed. But impressed we were.