The outcome of the Brexit crisis has brought the very existence of the United Kingdom into question. Historians may look back on the current period as the beginning of the end for the British state.

David Edgerton’s most recent work, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation, is one of the most ambitious reinterpretations of modern British history for many years. Edgerton spoke to Jacobin about the central arguments he makes in that book concerning the development of Britain’s national economy and the light they shed on the political turbulence of the last decade.

David Edgerton is a professor at King’s College London, where his work concentrates on the histories of twentieth-century Britain and of global science and technology. This is an edited transcript from Jacobin Radio’s Long Reads podcast. You can listen to the episode here.