This article offers a conjunctural analysis of the financial and political crisis within which Brexit occurred with a specific attentiveness to race and racism. Brexit and its aftermath have been overdetermined by racism, including racist violence. We suggest that the Leave campaign secured its victory by bringing together two contradictory but inter-locking visions. The first comprises an imperial longing to restore Britain's place in the world as primus inter pares that occludes any coming to terms with the corrosive legacies of colonial conquest and racist subjugation. The second takes the form of an insular, Powellite narrative of island retreat from a "globalizing" world, one that is no longer recognizably "British". Further, the article argues that an invisible driver of the Brexit vote and its racist aftermath has been a politicization of Englishness. We conclude by outlining some resources of hope that could potentially help to negotiate the current emergency.

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BackgroundSelf-management of hypertension, comprising self-monitoring of blood pressure with selftitration of medication, improves blood pressure control, but little is known regarding the views of patients undertaking it. AimTo explore patients' views of self-monitoring blood pressure and self-titration of antihypertensive medication. Design and settingQualitative study embedded within the randomised controlled trial TASMINH2 (Telemonitoirng and Self Management in the Control of Hypertension) trial of patient selfmanagement of hypertension from 24 general practices in the West Midlands. MethodTaped and transcribed semi-structured interviews with 23 intervention patients were used. Six family members were also interviewed. Analysis was by a constant comparative method. ResultsPatients were confident about self-monitoring and many felt their multiple home readings were more valid than single office readings taken by their GP. Although many patients self-titrated medication when required, others lacked the confidence to increase medication without reconsulting with their GP. Patients were more comfortable with titrating medication if their blood pressure readings were substantially above target, but were reluctant to implement such a change if readings were borderline. Many planned to continue self-monitoring after the study finished and report home readings to their GP, but few wished to continue with a selfmanagement plan. ConclusionParticipants valued the additional information and many felt confident in both self-monitoring blood pressure and self-titrating medication. The reluctance to change medication for borderline readings suggests behaviour similar to the clinical inertia seen for physicians in analogous circumstances. Additional support for those lacking in confidence to implement prearranged medication changes may allow more patients to undertake self-management.

Undergirded by the perspective of historical materialism in dialogue with black Marxism and Marxist feminism, this article constructs an account demonstrating the significance of racism to the making of modernity. The analytic returns of unthinking Eurocentric sociologies in favour of a more unified historical social scientific approach include the unmasking of the intimate relationship between capitalism, class struggles and racism, particularly how capitalist rule advanced through a process of differentiation and hierarchical re-ordering of the global proletariat. From the 17thcentury colonization of Virginia to Victorian Britain and beyond, racism formed an indispensable weapon in the armoury of the state elites, used to contain the class struggles waged by subaltern populations with a view to making the system safe for capital accumulation. Additionally, situating an account of racism within the unfolding story of historical capitalism as against the postcolonial tendency to locate it within the civilizational encounter between the West and the Rest helps make transparent the plurality of racisms, including the racialization of parts of the European proletariat. This explanation of the structuring force of racism and the differentiated ways in which the proletariat has been incorporated into capitalist relations of domination has important implications for emancipatory politics. A race-blind politics risks leaving untouched the injustices produced by historic and contemporaneous racisms. Instead, an alternative approach is proposed, one that invites movements to wilfully entangle demands for economic justice with anti-racism and thereby embrace and demystify the differences inscribed into the collective body of the proletariat by capitalism.There is a powerful origin myth produced by, and on behalf of, sociologists which tells a rather comforting story about the discipline's inherent radicalism and critical outlook. We are all familiar with Becker's (1967) refrain 'whose side are we on?', which long ago suggested sociologists instinctively take the side of the underdog, while in a recent edited

ObjeCtiveTo assess whether using intensive blood pressure targets leads to lower blood pressure in a community population of people with prevalent cerebrovascular disease. DesignOpen label randomised controlled trial.