At the height of the Liz Truss turmoil an Italian friend of mine joked that the Brits were guilty of cultural appropriation. Changing prime ministers on a monthly basis, ministerial haemorrhaging, whiplash-inducing headlines and plummeting currency rates were Italy’s domain, she said, not Britain’s.
Europeans have watched, bemused, since 2016 as the UK has sought to manage a challenging political transition by behaving in increasingly mercurial ways. The twin desires to ‘get things done’ – Brexit, trade deals, leadership contests – and to ‘take back control’ ran up against stunningly complex crises as well as entirely predictable problems, leading the Brits to act in a decidedly un-British way.
