Britain Alone

A magisterial and profoundly perceptive survey of Britain’s post-war role on the global stage, from Suez to Brexit.

How might we celebrate Britain’s undoubted strengths while accepting that we have slipped from the top table? How can we act as a great nation while no longer pretending to be a great power? How might we be European and global?

In 1962 the American statesman Dean Acheson famously charged that Britain had lost an empire and failed to find a new role. Nearly sixty years later the rebuke rings true again. Britain’s postwar search for its place in the world has vexed prime ministers and government since the nation's great victory in 1945: the cost of winning the war was giving up the empire.

After the humiliation of Anthony Eden’s Suez expedition, Britain seemed for a time to have found an answer. Clinging to its self-image as a great island nation, it would serve as America’s best friend while acknowledging its geography by signing up to membership of the European Union. Never a comfortable balancing act, for forty years it appeared to work. In 2016 David Cameron called the Brexit referendum and blew it up.

Award-winning journalist Philip Stephens paints a fascinating portrait of a nation struggling to reconcile its waning power with past glory. Drawing on decades of personal contact and interviews with senior politicians and diplomats in Britain, the United States and across the capitals of Europe, Britain Alone is a vivid account of a proud nation struggling to admit it is no longer a great power. It is an indispensable guide to how we arrived at the state we are in.

About the Author

Philip Stephens is an award-winning journalist and chief political commentator at the Financial Times. He was previously director of the FT's editorial board. Throughout his career, he has had unique access to foreign policymakers in Britain and around the world. Stephens won the David Watt Prize for Outstanding Political Journalism; the UK Political Studies Association's Political Journalist of the Year; and Political Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards. He is the author of Politics and the Pound and Tony Blair.