Imagining Brexit, reimagining Britain

Abstract There are times in the political life of any nation in which its imagining and reimagining become more intensely political, more conscious and more consciously intersubjective. Brexit has provided, provides today and will surely continue to provide a series of such moments. In and through a critical appreciation of Benedict Anderson’s famous reflections on the nation as an ‘imagined community', I consider the (necessarily) imagined character of Brexit and the reimaginings of Britain that its imagining envisaged. I reflect on whether—and if so how and in what ways—‘actually existing Brexit’ is likely to pose a reality check on imagined Brexit, exploring in the process some of the wider political implications.