Theresa May's personality: an "anti-social" Prime Minister?

The motivations of Theresa May can be distilled down to her relationship to the Conservative Party, which has been with her from a young age. In this way, her role as leader of the country is really about her masking her inner inclinations towards the protecting the interest of her party. She is a product of her conservative background, and a dutiful servant of the Conservative Party.

These deep-set motivations explain her reasons for embracing the meaning of Brexit after the EU referendum. This allowed her to discard the "mask" she wore as part of Cameron's more centrist liberalism, and also explained her evident glee in sending George Osborne into parliamentary exile. She was able to express her reactionary, parochial instincts more freely under the cover of respecting the Brexit vote.

More tellingly, once she became Prime Minister, the more neurotic "quirks" of her personality became public knowledge.
As Home Secretary, she was known to protect her privacy fiercely, but as someone to work with, she was known to be secretive and rely on only a few loyalists (Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill in particular). One of the traits she had that became so useful to David Cameron was her reliability to master a "brief" i.e. to loyally repeat the "agreed" line. This was one of main things that accounted for her longevity at the Home Office.
Indeed, it could even be argued that the Home Office is continuing her work even after she has left it, leaving the official Home Secretary's role to often act as little more than a spokesperson for May's own strategy. In other words, Theresa May still seems in effective charge of Home Office strategy, leaving the Home Secretary to have little control over what the department's officials decide; the officials seem to be simply following the same strategy that May had when she was at the Home Office, regardless of what her successors might think. With Theresa May, Home Office strategy seems to be run almost directly by the Prime Minister.
To be fair, this isn't a new phenomenon, though: when Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister after being head of the Treasury for so long, it was well-known that his successor at 11 Downing Street had similar issues as Chancellor. But the fact the Home Office's persistence with policies that have even been criticized by the Home Secretary himself, suggests that May's psychological impact has been to turn the Home Office's staff into her personal "minions" (or "flying monkeys", if you prefer). The Home Secretary doesn't even control what goes on in his own ministry.


Interactions with the social environment

As Prime Minister, her ability to "master" a brief has since become a point of satire: turning her into the "Maybot", incapable of answering a question in any other way than the one she has learned, and equally unable to coherently answer a question that she hasn't been given advance warning about. When these things do happen, the result is as cringe-worthy as it is ridiculous.
At the other extreme, this has frequently led her to answer questions in a way that resembles crazy-making semantic nonsense. While politicians are famous for "dissemination", May's method to "not answer a question" is almost unparalleled, forming sentences and entire speeches often entirely absent of meaning. Speeches that she has given at times resemble "Vogon poetry" recitals, making them almost physically-painful to endure. You wonder if this is actually intentional; by discouraging media appearances by making them so awful to listen to, she succeeds in reducing the need to speak in public to a bare minimum.
In this way, her naturally-insular instincts allow her to rule from the bunker, unseen like an enigmatic arm-chair general. This has provided yet more satirical material, of course, but in the real world where real answers to problems are needed, her semantic nonsense has driven those that need to make actual strategic decisions to the point of madness.

That being said, while her instincts have seemed to be to reduce her public speaking engagements as much as possible, in recent months, the ever-more-chaotic turn of events (caused from her own strategic inaction) have forced her to make ever more frequent appearances in parliament: to "answer" questions to the house.
But again, she seems to have lately developed an almost masochistic pleasure in this experience: mechanically responding to questions with crazy-making semantic nonsense. Literally hours and hours of parliament's time has been eaten up in this way, as she eats up time by wasting parliamentarians'. It's hard not to get the impression that the more time she spends formulating different ways of saying nothing, she is privately enjoying the practice it allows her to hone her semantic-nonsense-making skills. To borrow the "Maybot" analogy, it's as though each three-hour-long session of speaking to parliament without saying anything allows her semantic-nonsense-making software to be upgraded yet further. Parliament can never win, because her "semantic software" is always one step ahead of them. The fact that such parliamentary sessions thus resemble a form of psychological torture is something that May seems to have little concern about.
This "semantic software" has also been shown off to Brussels, as well, as has been reported, in cabinet itself.

Apart from May's idiosyncratic "speaking skills", there are also more overtly-displayed traits of social dysfunction.
 Her lack of even basic social skills is now well-documented. She famously doesn't "do" small talk. It's as though she simply has no idea what to say to people beyond some basic phrases she may have learned through experience. This indicates a kind of personality that struggles to understand some of the basics of human interaction.
More generally too, this feeds through to her inability to make people feel comfortable in her company; in fact, it appears she has no instinct to want to make people feel comfortable. There are anecdotes of her having meetings with colleagues where almost nothing is said on her part - either in words or in meaning. It is this that also makes spending time with her socially feel like a form of torture. Her stilted mannerisms and frosty demeanor give the impression of someone who simply doesn't like social situations or human interaction at all. This seems more than just "introversion"; it seems like something bordering on pathological. It's as though, at a fundamental level, she doesn't understand people.


Cognitive understanding

When it comes to decision-making and issues of cognition, there are also indications that Theresa May's judgement and sense of perspective is lacking at some critical level.
As said before, there have been plenty of occasions where it appears she has an inability to relate to others; both in terms of social interaction, but also in terms of cognitive understanding. In other words, it's as though she lacks the ability to relate to another's perspective. Either she seems unable to see when others are bored to death by her inability to answer a question, or she can see it but doesn't care. Either one of these would indicate some kind of deeper issue of lacking empathy. More seriously, when real-life situations (such as the Grenfell Tower fire) intrude, her inability to relate to others' feelings has been painfully-clear to see.
One can speculate where this comes from; whether it is just the way she is as a person, or was something that happened as a result of personal experience (and her life has been touched by family tragedy). Regardless, it poses serious questions about how she makes decisions that affect the whole country. And the way she has handled Brexit is a clear example of that: she has been determined to stick to her own interpretation of the vote regardless of what effect it has on others.

Theresa May's (robotic) ability to learn a "brief" as Home Secretary leads on to her bloody-minded obsession with immigration; both in sticking to the target of reducing immigration numbers even after it was clearly impractical, and also in counting international students as "immigrants". Her obsession with immigration demonstrates her blinkered (and neurotic) tendencies, which are a further sign of a perspective on others that appears "anti-social" in its origin. Her inability to see things from another's point of view - a key attribute of empathy - seems missing when it comes to immigration. This is true of her stance on social issues in general, but her rigidity on immigration is the most glaring example.
It is her self-evident obsession with immigration that led to her "red lines" in the Brexit negotiations with the EU. It was "immigration" that led to her interpreting Brexit as the necessity to leave the single market and customs union, which is what led to the infamous "back-stop" (a British idea, it should be remembered). Thus many of the chaotic shenanigans over the British negotiating position have been due to May's own inability to see Brexit as anything other than a vote against immigration.

As has been seen, as reality has shown many of May's political "stratagems" to be ever more absurd, her inability to change political tack and semantic rigidity have made her look like an increasingly-surrealist figure. But on the point of being able to think how others' would see her, she is either cognitively-incapable of this, or absent of any shame.
Either one of these explanations would point to an "anti-social" aspect to her personality. The truth may be a little of both, as we have already seen that she seems to lack empathy; while her apparent shamelessness at simply disseminating, or repeating the same plan as before even after its flaws have been exposed, indicates a bloody-mindedness that is pathological. She will continue with the same approach until it succeeds, regardless of the wider effect.
In this sense, she doesn't care what others think. This attribute was inferred even when she was campaigning for the leadership: that she wasn't interested in (and actually reviled) the superficial "popularity contest" aspect of modern politics. This was demonstrated by her decision to interpret the Brexit result as being an anti-immigration vote, regardless of any wider contributing issues. Her tendency to operate in a "bunker mentality" also supports the view that she would make decisions regardless of outside voices' advice.
While this approach can have its advantages at times, the fact that it is May's "default setting" tells us that she is someone who wants to close-off the outside world, making decisions that affect millions behind closed doors, deep in her "bunker" with a small circle of trusted advisers. This is the mentality of the "anti-social" autocrat; of a ruler safely separated from the ruled.

So Britain has come to be led by someone whose tendencies are anti-social in their nature; who seems to have a problem understanding people, and whose approach to politics seems to lack empathy.

Theresa May's "personality void": her inner psychology and the effect of Brexit

There are two common comments that have been made about Theresa May's personality, by both outside observers and those that have had direct interaction with her: one is her apparent lack of an easily-identifiable personality, and the other is her social awkwardness.

To be fair, there are those - her supporters, for instance - who would dispute these two characterizations, but that's hardly surprising. This simply supports the notion that May is only comfortable around people who she knows like her, or are like her: in other words, when she is in her "comfort zone". To have a fair understanding of someone's personality you need a sense of objectivity to have a have a proper sense of perspective. The vast majority of observations by those outside her loyalist circle have highlighted either one, or both, of the above characteristics.

Dealing with the first of these issues in this article - May's apparent "lack of personality" - is easiest when we look at what we know of her interests and what motivates her.


A personality void

Her motivations seem to stem (unsurprisingly) from how she was brought up. Being raised in the traditional values of "Middle England" of the 1950s as the single child of a vicar (with her mother working as Conservative Party activist), it is not hard to see where she gets her conservative values from. In these highly-specific circumstances of time, place and parentage, it would he hard to be raised in these surroundings and not have conservative values subconsciously instilled in you.
In her interviews, one of the main words May uses to describe her morality is the sense of "service". She has talked in the past of how various people in her family and in past generations have worked in roles that have involved a service element to them, either morally or functionally. In this way, her family background is typical of the ambitions that still embody a traditional English deference to social hierarchy. Due to her family background and history, she has thus been instilled with an innate sense of modesty and self-sacrifice, as well as a sense of duty.

An added element to this which is crucial is how she got involved with the Conservative Party from a young age due to her mother's local connections. This emotional attachment to the party from a young age proves critical to understanding her motivations and well as her interests, because both become fused together in her relationship to the Conservative Party.
Her relationship to the party evolved as she spent time at Oxford University, where she met her husband (again, through their respective connections to the party). Thus it's not hard to an emotional connection to the Conservative Party become even more intertwined from her own mother's initial connections as well as her husband's. In this sense, she might emotionally connect both her parents and her husband with her own ties to the party.
Then, within a few years of her graduating both her parents died in differing circumstances, and by now she worked with the Bank Of England, joining her husband's pursuit in the financial sector. Her steady rise up the Tory ranks followed. Her psychology of "duty" and "service" therefore can be understood in the context of how, after her parents died, the Conservative Party was perhaps the one tangible thing that still kept her emotionally connected to her past. Her motivation was for the service of her party; both as a continuation of the morality of "service" that had been instilled in her from childhood, as well as out of a genuine emotional attachment she may have had for its values. It could be argued then that - in some psychological manner - her interest in the party compensated for the loss of her parents.

In this way, the accusation that Theresa May has no identifiable personality stems from the sense that her devotion to the party is there instead of any identifiable personality. To outsiders, she might seem like a personality void - an empty vessel - because her motivations and interests primarily revolve around her emotional connection to the Conservative Party. This point becomes key to understanding the way she had handled (and politically exploited) Brexit, which we'll look at a little later.

What are her interests, at a personal level? To outside eyes, Theresa May seems insufferably "boring". Her leisure pursuits seem mundane in the extreme: cooking at home and walking in the mountains seem to be the only obvious ones: the kind of things that associated with highly-traditional cultural values. It's hard to think what she and her husband talk about to pass the time, except for issues of politics and values. They appear like a cut-out "Mr and Mrs Middle England"; banal, wholesome, unimaginative and utterly two dimensional. Their personas seem designed to bore you into submission.
It is this lack of depth to both their personalities that feeds the sensation that their personas are masks; psychological "shells" that hide some deeper persona. Can they really, truly be that boring?

From what can be gleaned, the only interest that has been consistent over the years has been Theresa May's consistent interest in the Conservative Party. The "boring" aspect to Theresa May's psychology can be explained by both her stiflingly-orthodox background, and if we see her necessity to emotionally identify with the Conservative Party is because of deeper insecurities.
In this sense, May seems to live and breathe the traditional values of her party; her ideas in that sense may not be seen as her own, but those of her party that she identifies with emotionally for her own reasons. Her party acts as both a kind of emotional "comfort blanket" and as a kind of intellectual "inner voice". Her rhetoric to the party conference is thus her refracting back to the delegates what they want to hear, because what they want to hear is what she wants them to hear, and what she wants to hear herself. Her rhetoric in these "closed spaces" is thus an act of intellectual co-resonance: both her and her party's delegates in a mutual feedback loop. She is to be seen as "one of them" and "they" as part of her.

The understanding that May's core values come from her identification with the Conservative Party is what allowed her to become so popular within the party. Apart from the "Nasty Party" speech early on in her life as a parliamentarian, she has appeared as a living distillation of her party's moral values. The fact that she kept her life private and her thoughts to herself while she was a politician added to an air of mystery, allowing others to distill into her persona the positive attributes that they were looking for in a potential leader.


"The Will Of The People"

Theresa May's evident lack of personality was therefore an advantage when it came to the party leadership election after David Cameron's resignation. Having long instilled a sense that she was, as far as the party members went, "one of them", it was relatively easy to gain the backing of other members of the parliamentary party when the time came.
One of the innate problems of her "personality void" is that she has no natural charisma. Boris Johnson, the other main contender (and favorite) for the leadership, had it in spades; but what he had a surfeit of in charisma he lacked for when it came to willpower and tact. While May lacked charisma, she was able to exude an air of calm competence: she was able to offer the reassuring "comfort blanket" of a Thatcher of the 21st century, seeing in Brexit an act of moral duty to implement the "will of the people". For her, it was not about charisma, but simply one of service to the nation.

In implementing Brexit, Theresa May thus morphed her persona from being simply a servant of her party to being a servant of the country. For a time after her rise to power, her leadership of the country was portrayed as being almost above party politics. Exploiting the personal popularity she had with the electorate (under the same spell her party had been, it seems) her government was now "Theresa May's team". For a time, it didn't matter that she wasn't naturally charismatic or rarely made public appearances; this was excused by the public as she had "more important things to do", and represented a more workmanlike approach to politics that May encouraged. The politics of charisma was over; the politics of duty was back in fashion.
This was how May came to become a kind of Brexit "avatar": in her ideological and moral embrace of the meaning of Brexit, she sought to identify with the motivations and values of those who had supported it. She portrayed her role not really as a "typical" politician, but as someone whose duty was to be the servant of Brexit; through her role as Prime Minister, Brexit's meaning would be done. This explained the seemingly-meaningless semantics of "Brexit means Brexit"; to her, it wasn't meaningless, but perhaps beyond meaning. Brexit's meaning to May was self-evident, and her years of service to the same morality that Brexit represented gave May the self-belief that it gave her some special insight.
While we can only guess at her innermost thinking, it's not hard to imagine that her background made her think she was uniquely-able to meet the challenges of the task, as though Brexit were the task that she had been specially-suited for in life, and that her career had been leading to this moment in time: that a strange kind of fate was at work. At a more human level, even her husband is said to have told her that when it came to the premiership, her years of service to the party demonstrated that she "deserved it". In this sense, her role as leader of Brexit was both an ultimate act of service and the ultimate prize. This contrasting dichotomy of simultaneous great sacrifice with great reward can be seen as a morality whose heart is in the founding ethics of her upbringing.

Prior to the referendum, her support for the EU had been functional if anything; her instincts were in truth as parochial and as culturally-insular as those in Middle England that supported Brexit. Thus, it would have took little effort for her to emotionally identify with the cause, and to want to ensure that she embodied their values. For in reality, Brexit's values were also her own.
The rhetoric she used at the the first party conference as leader demonstrated this, and her determination that Brexit had to be done in a way that was loyal to the vote demonstrated her own psychological desire to continue the same morality that had been with her from a young age: for Theresa May, it wasn't about what she wanted, it was about being loyal to the people; the same morality that is repeated in her loyalty to her party. The referendum could not be ignored; it was her duty to carry out "the will of the people"; she had been chosen as the person with this responsibility; she knew what the people wanted as she was "one of them". These four tenets of belief seem to be the things that are understood like articles of faith by May. Anyone who challenged them would be seen as undermining people's faith in democracy, and by extension, May's own internal belief system. 
That belief system appears to be what is driving her on in the absence of personality.


"I feel sorry for her"

The "personality void" that has been talked about seems to now have been filled by Brexit.

Brexit has become May's raison d'etre. Although when she became leader she talked of her social program, there are few reasons to think that was serious talk; given her record as Home Secretary, more likely this future action was just humanistic "window dressing" to make her seem moderate - part of the "mask" - to hide the empty shell of her persona beneath.
Brexit has consumed May's personality like some kind of esoteric "force of nature". While it acts as a symbolic "talisman" that gives her strange powers of political fortitude and persuasion, its greater chaotic energy is ripping the social fabric of the country apart. Brexit's deeper power is only to corrupt and destroy.

What's more, while Brexit has given Theresa May a kind of political invincibility, it has warped her sense of perspective. Allowing the meaning of Brexit to consume her, all other decisions have to be taken in respect to Brexit. In this way, the government has become the political undead - kept alive by Brexit, but incapable of doing anything else. All the other problems of the country are allowed to deteriorate, leaving the impression of a country slowly falling to pieces, disintegrating socially, as the government is only interested in Brexit.
And even on Brexit itself, because its ultimate meaning is destructive in its nature, it seems to have a strange ability to promote discord among Britain's political masters. As no-one can decide what Brexit means beyond unreal abstractions, the onset of time pushes the country towards the most destructive path of all.
This is the path that could, if continuing discord allows it to happen, ultimately lead to Britain's self-destruction, socially and economically. The horrid irony here is that Theresa May, whose inner psychology is about duty, loyalty and service, will be indirectly responsible for it. It is her personality, and her neurotic loyalty to her party and to Brexit, that is to blame.

Those that see Theresa May on the television have witnessed her physical deterioration over the last two and a half years because of Brexit. It almost seems to sapping the human energy out of her as it yet protects her from her political enemies.

"I feel sorry for her" some have said.
But that sentiment is only a symptom of the wider problem: by choosing to allow the destructive energy of Brexit to guide her, she has abdicated responsibility; she has allowed Brexit to unleash both her inner demons, and the demons that lie within all those seduced by its power.

Brexit's esoteric symbolism: the power of beliefs, and the far-right's "Aryan resurgence" fantasy

It has been blatantly-apparent since the EU referendum that Brexit has opened a "Pandora's Box" of social issues in Britain, that has been exploited by opportunists on both the far left and far right. Furthermore, it has even been promoted by movements outside of Britain to promote a wider, destructive agenda: Brexit Britain has thus become a kind of exemplar, a standard-bearer for other like-minded movements to follow. We'll explore the deeper symbolism of this a little later.

One of the most striking aspects of the EU referendum and how it was won was the use of emotive arguments over factual analysis. It was a case of the heart winning over the head; the power of belief over the power of argument. That has remained the same ever since, with those still determined to leave the EU basing this solely on the force of their beliefs. While the "remain" side used facts to demonstrate the basis of their beliefs, for the "leave" side the most important thing was the power of the beliefs themselves to win others over.
In this very concrete sense, the "remain" side lost the case because they didn't know who or what they were arguing against. In the same way that an atheist can never use rational argument to convince a religious fanatic of the irrationality of their beliefs, the same was true of the EU referendum. You cannot use rational argument against an irrational belief.

The power of belief versus evidence-based analysis is historically the story of how mankind advanced its understanding of science. It is also the main thing that separates traditional, theocratic ideology and concrete materialist thinking.
Put in this deeper perspective, Brexit and the "belief system" that goes along with it follows a trend of conflating globalization, materialism and liberalism with a wider rejection of cultural identity. We could also argue that the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) was the real turning-point in this trend: both the Brexit movement gained traction in the UK (particularly non-metropolitan England) in the years that followed, while Donald Trump's rapid rise was really following-on and exploiting the rise of the TEA Party movement that was instigated by the Koch brothers in the same time-frame.

Modern far-right movements across Europe, and more widely "Populist" movements in various high-profile countries today, all share the same skepticism of "global" values. It seems to more a collective rejection of the values that led to the GFC, which they have conflated with the materialist and heterogeneous values of social liberalism.
The problem is that we've been here before, following a earlier financial crisis: the Great Depression. Unlike in the 1930s, we don't have strongmen with private armies; with technological advances, we instead have online armies of "trolls" to intimidate virtually (with their anonymity arguably making them just as effective a force of dissuasion). Their ability to guide the direction of discourse and subvert the democratic process is similar to the tactics used by authoritarians in the 1930s; the only difference is how technology has changed their capabilities. While there are gangs of thugs to intimidate people as well (while claiming the right to free speech that their despised liberals so value), much of their real influence and "nudging" is done online, by exploiting the weak controls of social media.

In this way, the rise of Populism and the far-right since the GFC mirrors much the same trajectory of the 1930s, albeit over longer time-frame. If the banks hadn't been bailed out in 2008, the GFC would almost certainly have been a "Second Great Depression", rather than the drawn-out downturn and stagnant economies that have transpired in reality. A "Second Great Depression" would doubtlessly have led to a sudden surge in extremist politics in a very short time; what we have had instead is a "slow-burn" effect of far-right values slowly seeping in to mainstream discourse as people get more and more wearied of the seemingly-endless slog towards an ever-receding sun-lit horizon.


Brexit as an "Aryan Resurgence" fantasy

Relying on the power of beliefs, culture and spirituality is the classic reaction against materialist liberalism. In the eyes of Fascist theorist Julius Evola, this was part of a historical trend where scientific rationalism and materialism had led to a collapse in the moral values of hierarchy and a deeper spiritualism. He saw Fascism as a justifiable reaction against society's moral decay.
We can see many of today's authoritarian leaders using the same kind of rhetoric to justify their actions. In the Anglo-sphere, both Brexit and Trump supporters talk about the morality of their cause, seeing in their movements a deeper meaning: where the potential for chaos is seen as justifiable, and the threat of violence is never far from the surface. To borrow a phrase, Brexit and Trump are both a "Triumph Of The Will", to be enforced through mob rule if necessary.

In the eyes of Evola, Fascist ideology is in a battle for the restoration of ancient civilization i.e. the morality of the warrior. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were, in his eyes, attempts to restore the "natural" racial hierarchy that he believed existed before the rise of Christianity in Europe. Pagan "Warrior races" like the Germans and the Romans had proved their superiority in battle in the ancient battles they had fought to dominate Europe. Bringing this rationale to the 20th century, Evola then used this to justify Germany and Italy's carving up of Europe, with the ultimate expunging of liberal thought and the subjugation of inferior races. When the Nazis applied this to its "logical" conclusion, it was about the elimination of the Jews entirely.
As a matter of record, Hitler wanted an "understanding" with Britain, as he saw Anglo-Saxon culture as a fellow Aryan tribe. Hitler's fantasy was the German domination of the European continent from the Atlantic to the Urals, while leaving the British Empire intact. As we know, Churchill was having none of it, Nazi Germany over-reached with its invasion of the Soviet Union and was defeated.

The following post-war period was one of radical strategic realignment. To Fascist die-hards that lived through the post-war period, the advance of Communist influence across half of Europe, with Germany itself divided, materialist America triumphant and the slow disintegration of the British Empire, meant they had only their fantasies to believe in. The emergence of the EU as a political institution, with its zenith reached with the accession of former Communist Eastern Europe countries might have been seen as the real nadir for the fortunes of the far-right. But things were soon to change.

The GFC was the turning-point for the far-right, as they saw in the economic chaos an opportunity that had eluded them.
The cultural symbolism of English identity was based to an extent on "otherness". Being apart from the continent through their island geography, they felt emotionally detached from European culture, even when they were engaged in it politically. This sentiment was picked up on by Europe itself (most famously by Charles De Gaulle, when he rejected Britain's initial attempts to join the EEC). This meant that when Britain did join the EEC, they spent most of the time complaining about it, even when they had got the best "deal" of all.
In this sense, the more esoteric argument is that the instinctive scepticism that English culture had towards European integration and culture was an inadvertent echo of the same hostility found in historical Fascist circles. By this reasoning, England's "true" cultural identity is not materialist or liberal in the European sense, but more naturally traditional and authoritarian. Following this narrative, England's desire for Brexit was the subconscious desire to "carry the torch" of far-right ideology, first by breaking away from the materialist EU culture and then to encourage other like-minded nations in Europe to do the same. The "Aryan resurgence" fantasy is thus realized by England recognizing its destiny as the liberator of a materialist, liberal Europe, with a grateful Germany finally free from the guilt of the Second World War, and Brexit Britain as the instigator and leader of this supra-national neo-Fascist movement. In this nightmarish fantasy, it is England, using the "dark power" of Brexit, that brings about the collapse of the EU and the eventual "restoration" of Fascist rule across Europe. This would be achieved not through the military might of old, but through economic warfare and social destabilization: using the modern weapons of the 21st century to turn back the clock. The signs are already there this is the path the far-right would like to take.

The primal symbolism of the St George's cross mirrors the ancient heraldry of the black cross of the Teutonic knights that colonized Eastern Europe. "Brexit" is exploited by the Fascist far-right as an opportunity to reconnect people with their "roots", and to identify materialist "Europe" (i.e. the EU) as the enemy of their culture.   
But this strategy has already been used to great effect in Russia. It is no wonder that the Kremlin should be a supporter of Brexit: they would see it as another example of exporting "hybrid warfare" even more effectively (and surreptitiously) than has already been used in Ukraine.