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This week's Archive on 4 goes backwards in time to unearth some of the roots and routes of Brexit.

As part of an occasional series of Archive on 4 programmes which tell their stories in reverse, Backwards Brexit begins in the present day and picks a selective path backwards in time to illuminate and juxtapose some of the themes and sentiment that gathers about the UK's decision to leave the European Union.

It's not a news programme.

It's part satire, part polemic: a partial and imaginative accompaniment to a febrile period whose slippery discourse has drawn out magical thinking and seemingly demonstrated the ability of words to float free of meaning. It implicitly relies on a sense that, on some level, Brexit is a discussion about history.

It's made up of five sections.

The first section begins today, with the announcement of the UK's imminent departure from the EU. It then moves backwards to the 1990s, to the end of Margaret Thatcher's premiership and the period of Maastricht. From there, it moves backwards again to the 1970s, beginning with a vote to join the EEC in 1971 and a referendum to stay there four years later. After that it jumps back to the 1950s, when the foundations of the EU were built up, as the legitimacy of the British Empire was brought down. In the final section we go much further back in time and look outwards from a Northumberland shore.

The programme ends with a refrain from Harold Macmillan, a quote which might mean nothing, but in light of the mean win/lose strategising of current conversation, has the feeling of profundity: "It's a moral question, it's what kind of people we want to be."

Producer: Martin Williams

Thanks to Roger Boaden, Olivette Otele, Ailsa Rutter, Marshall Tisdale and Emmett!

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