Prof Dorling (Uni of Oxford) - Brexit and the End of the British Empire

A Grand Challenges lecture at Keele University by Professor Danny Dorling, the University of Oxford.

Find out more about Keele University at keele.ac.uk.

From Brexit the British may learn a great deal about themselves as a result of having voted to 'Leave'. Not least that Britain, and even Brexit, has its roots in the British Empire.

Traditionally British Geography, a subject that was partly born in its current form in Britain due to Empire, has not been very good at explaining what the Empire was and why it mattered so much to Britain.

Brexit may well be the point at which the English, in particular, finally learn about the importance of geography.

Geography is central to Brexit - from the Irish border through to the modern day priorities of India. In hindsight, living with the highest rate of income inequality in Europe was arguably the real problem for the British, rather than being in the EU per see.

The source of British woes was not immigrants or some perceived lack of sovereignty, but of their own making, and possibly (at least in part) an outcome of having so recently been at the heart of the largest empire the world has ever known.