British serrata sounds like it could be a dodgy cows milk soft cheese made in the outskirts of Coventry. Or, and perhaps more usefully for my argument, a term that describes the ‘closure’ of Britain that’s happened since 2012, borrowing the name from Venice’s dramatic tumble from global preeminence in the first half of the 14th Century (as recounted in Why Nation’s Fail).
The Venetian City republic was the richest city in the world in the 1200s. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean, this was a trading nation, open to all and outward-looking. The Doge (the Venetian’s head of state) has his wings clipped in 1036, ending a hereditary absolute monarchy, and allowing wealthy merchants to take political power. A brilliant legal innovation, the colleganza, was one of the first examples of a joint stock company, helped finance risky trade missions. This was a limited company created to finance specific expeditions, with wealthy passive capital provider splitting profits with adventurous entrepreneurs. Capital gushed into the city, creating the beautiful buildings that we know today. However, those who trade had made into the wealthiest families, tried to pull the drawbridge up after them. In 1297 the governing Great Council started to concentrate powers in the hands of increasingly few families – creating a new Venetian nobility that hadn’t existed before. Borders came up and the rot started to set in – as the book points out, extractive societies are doomed to fail.
Britain in 2012 was arguably at the peak of its post-WW2 powers. Hosts of the well-executed Olympics, the nation was still revelling in its Cool Britannia moniker. The country was riding high, and London in particular was attracting European and global talent. Britain’s serrata, like Venice’s, was a misguided attempt by a group of ideologues to draw up the drawbridge and preserve the country in aspic. With Brexit it wasn’t the Great Council, but a murkier amalgam of offshore money men worried about European transparency rules, nativist politicians sensing an opportunity to whip up hysteria and promote divisions, right-wing media Barons nervous of Europe and an easily-swayed, manipulated and disgruntled portion of the electorate, keen to send a message that the status quo wasn’t working for them.
While the motivations and context were very different the outcomes will be similar – a gentle -, or rapid – slide from relevance, a brain drain as global talent moves elsewhere, new economic barriers, and an overall reduction in vibrancy, energy and global standing. The impact is already being felt in tragic ways that few would have envisaged; a mediocre cabinet, chosen for fealty over competence, has bungled a pandemic response resulting in 65k deaths so far, more than Germany, France and the Netherlands combined. With a massive electoral victory owing more to the unelectability of Corbyn than a belief in Johnson’s Way, even the pandemic’s eye-popping death toll has not slowed the momentum towards a disastrous, no deal Brexit.
In Vence’s case, the closure took centuries and the city gently glided to today’s status of a floating museum, allowing those who make their money elsewhere to see a glimpse of an exotic former world. Britain’s serrata will likely have more damaging, short-term consequences, coinciding with an existentially challenging pandemic that requires powerful international collaboration and open markets to grow our way out of. Alas, we won’t even have Cornettos to show for it.
