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Three years after the vote, the U.K.
remains in pieces By Jonathan Coe
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 mil-
lion 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. It’s very hard to articulate a reso-
nant, complex vision of your own national identity without re-
sorting to cliché, but the creators succeeded that night. They
did it by using humor—by deploying witty and creative use of
British icons such as James Bond and Mr. Bean, by digging deep
into our great cultural and political heritage. The fact that au-
diences in other countries were bemused, apparently, by some
of the more specific cultural references only confirmed the
ceremony’s determination not to project the well-worn, flag-
waving, red-London-bus version of Britishness that the rest of
the world was used to seeing. As a result, millions of Britons
went to bed that night fired up and inspired, proud to be part
of such a confident, inventive and quirky country.
Fast-forward to just short of four years later: Thursday,
June 16, 2016. It’s one week before voting in the Brexit ref-
erendum called by David Cameron primarily to heal long-
term splits within his Conservative Party. A national debate
Essay