It didn’t need a novel: even Leave voters understand the damage that has been done, as does the PM. Now all he has to do is persuade his party
Earlier this week, some people on the radio were talking about a very British dystopia. The government had disintegrated, but everyone was carrying on pretty much as they had before. Britain was isolated on the world stage and people missed Europe like hell, but weren’t allowed to visit, let alone live there.
I thought the radio people were discussing Britain post-Brexit, circa 2022. In fact, they were talking about the plot of the Booker prize-winning novel The End of Everything. Its author, M John Harrison, is renowned now for being, at 81, the oldest winner of the award, as well as the first science fiction writer to win it. But let’s also carve out a space for him on the podium of dystopian fiction, as a writer who can describe an indeterminate future in terms that are both terrifying and sound like a couple of years ago.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist