Ten years ago this week, Britain voted to leave the European Union. Today, it is moving on to its seventh prime minister since that vote. Seven leaders in ten years, in a country that gave Thatcher and Blair more than a decade apiece.
I keep coming back to one image from Monday. As Starmer announced his resignation outside Number 10, protesters nearby were blasting "Ode to Joy," the anthem of the European Union he was elected, in part, to make peace with. A decade on, and the argument is still loud enough to play over the prime minister's own exit.
There is a tidy story people tell about this, left and right, depending on who they blame. I am less interested in the blame than in the churn itself.
Something happens to a place when it loses the thread of its own story. The leaders cycle through. The slogans change. The anger stays. And underneath it all is a quieter loss, the slow draining away of the belief that anyone in charge can actually move the thing they were put in charge of moving.
I have watched many organizations go through their own smaller versions of this. A founder leaves. A new one arrives. A strategy gets announced, then reversed, then announced again under a different name. Everyone is busy. Nothing compounds. The people inside stop believing the next announcement before it is even made.
The thing about a Brigadoon, the place idyllic and unaffected by time, is that it only stays magical because it knows what it is. Britain spent a decade trying to decide what it is and is still deciding.
When the upheaval comes for you, and it will, do you know the story you are telling well enough to keep telling it after the applause stops?
-Marc
Brigadoon | Know What's Next.
