Page - 7 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

DOI: 10.25364/05.05:2019.2.1 Alexander Darius Ornella Editorial The UK Parliament prorogued, a UK Supreme Court judgement declaring that Parliament is not prorogued, a po- litical (far) right-wing shift sweeping across Europe, the Amazon rainforest on fire, heatwaves across the world and predictions that climate change is reaching the point of no return, the United States on the brink of a trade war with China, speculations about a recession in Europe, ongoing protests in Hong Kong: the events of 2019 so far seem to suggest that the social fab- rics of societies are rupturing and what we have seen in 2019 might merely be a taste of what is to come in 2020. At the time of writing this editori- al, for the author, the immediate day of reckoning seems to be 31 October 2019 when the United Kingdom will leave the European Union (or not) with a deal (or without one). And a day of reckoning 31 October became when Boris Johnson had Brexit count- down clocks installed in 10 Downing Street and the Tory Headquarters (fig. 1).1 Waiting for this day of reck- oning feels, at least for me as an EU citizen living and working in the United Kingdom, a bit like being stuck in limbo, where eternal salvation, prosperity and imperial glory (if Johnson’s fantasies become true) and eternal doom and a plunge into insignificance are competing narratives on the horizon of contemporary UK political and popular culture. 1 Cf. Clark 2019a; Clark 2019b. Fig. 1: The Conservatives, BREXIT Countdown Clock, tweeted 31 July 2019, https://twitter. com/ Editorial | 7www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 7–14