The Suez crisis in 1957 was the end of the road for Britain’s 200-year role as a global rule-maker. From then on, it became a rule-taker. The recent political nostalgia for a different England pedalled by Brexiteers, that elegiac world of warm beer, sandwiches and Spitfires, was the world before Suez. The crisis was a monumental cock-up involving Britain, France and Israel, and a botched attack on Egypt to ensure European control over the critical Suez Canal.