ᠠᠩᠭ᠍ᠯᠢ ᠶᠠᠭᠤᠨ ᠳᠤ ᠡᠸᠦ᠋ᠷᠦᠫᠡ ᠶᠢᠨ ᠬᠤᠯᠪᠣᠭᠠᠨ ᠠᠴᠠ ᠰᠠᠯᠤᠨ᠎ᠠ ᠭᠡᠰᠡᠨ ᠪᠤᠢ （ᠠᠩᠭ᠍ᠯᠢ ᠬᠡᠪᠯᠡᠯ） Brexit.pdf

1 1 1 Brexit Introduced On Thursday 23 June 2016, 26.3 million people in the United Kingdom headed to their nearest polling station to cast a vote in a national ref- erendum. Another 7.2 million had already cast their ballot by post. When voters looked at their ballot paper they would have read the following question: ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’ That this was a question that aroused strong passions in the electorate was reflected in the fact that, at 72.2 per cent, turnout at the referendum reached the highest level of any political contest since the general election in 1992. The 2016 referendum was not the first time that the people were asked for their view about their country’s relationship with continental Europe. In 1975, at the first ever referendum to be held in the United Kingdom, an earlier generation of voters had been asked whether they wanted to stay in what was then called the European Community (the Common Market). In that earlier referendum the people had voted by a margin of two to one to stay in the European Community. Although public support for EC membership seemed commanding, it is impor- tant to keep it in perspective, as academics David Butler and Uwe Kitzinger (1996: 279) observed at the time: ‘It was unequivocal but it was also unenthusiastic. Support for membership was wide but it did not run deep.’ The decision to stay had been influenced by two factors. The first was a stagnating national economy that had left the UK as the ‘sick man of Europe’, a country that was grappling with what was then called ‘the British disease’ – a pernicious combination of steep inflation, high unemployment, low productivity and industrial unrest. Not surprisingly, the UK looked at the economies across the Channel with envy. The second factor was a relatively strong and widespread sense of loyalty to the main political parties (Clarke et al. 2004), which were competing in a stable party system, enjoyed support from what was still a largely deferential public and which had collectively recom- mended that the people vote to stay – which they did. terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316584408.002 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 80.82.77.83, on 19 May 2017 at 15:36:38, subject to the Cambridge Core Brexit Introduced2 2 At the referendum in 2016, however, both the result and wider con- text were entirely different. The country’s Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, had initially promised to hold the referendum during his so- called ‘Bloomberg speech’ in January 2013, a move that many interpreted as an attempt to fend off growing pressure from a group of backbench Eurosceptic MPs and the sudden rise of a new Eurosceptic party in national politics, UKIP. The latter was drawing much of its voting strength from disgruntled Conservatives who opposed EU membership (Ford and Goodwin 2014). Standing in the London headquarters of Bloomberg News, Cameron began his speech by outlining a European continent that looked fun- damentally different from that which the UK had looked towards with envy during the 1970s. By 2013, the EU had enlarged from nine countries in the 1970s to 28 member states, some of which had much weaker economies than their West European counterparts. Beginning in 2008, the continent had been hit hard by the Great Recession and a major debt crisis that was especially severe in southern EU mem- ber states such as Greece, Spain and Portugal. Unemployment and sovereign debt reached disturbingly high levels, while the continent struggled to revive economic growth, pay down debt and implement necessary reforms. In sharp contrast to the picture that had confronted Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1975, Cameron now talked of a con- tinent that was blighted by a lack of competitiveness, excessive regu- lation, a deficit of democratic accountability, and that had taken too many powers away from individual member states. Cameron, who less than 10 years earlier had warned the Conservative Party that its tendency to ‘bang on about Europe’ had alienated voters, now committed his party to holding a referendum on the country’s EU membership should it form a majority government after the next general election in 2015. When that contest arrived, the Conservative Party asked the electorate for a mandate to negotiate a new settle- ment with the EU, after which it would hold an ‘in or out’ referendum. Cameron stated: ‘It is time for the British people to have their say. It is time to settle this European question in British politics. I say to the British people: this will be your decision.’ 1 Cameron had always been a gambler. Ever since rising to the top of the Conservative Party in 2005, his political legacy had been defined by a series of gambles – that he could ‘modernize’ a party that put a pre- mium on tradition; that after the election in 2010 he could successfully terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316584408.002 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 80.82.77.83, on 19 May 2017 at 15:36:38, subject to the Cambridge Core Brexit Introduced 3 3 lead the first Coalition Government in the country for nearly 70 years; that in 2011 he could convince voters to retain the ‘first- past- the- post’ electoral system in a national referendum on electoral reform; that in 2014 he could preserve the United Kingdom by winning a referendum on Scottish independence; and in 2015 that he could not only return to power but deliver to Conservatives something they had not had for nearly 20 years, a majority government. By promising a referendum on EU membership, a move that could potentially and profoundly alter the UK’s place in the world, the youngest prime minister for nearly 200 years had gambled once again. Although Cameron would not have known it at the time, by com- mitting the country to a vote on its EU membership he had set himself on a path that would leave him as the third prime minister in post- war Britain who would forever be remembered for only one thing. After Anthony Eden and the Suez crisis in 1956, then Tony Blair and the war in Iraq that began in 2003, Cameron’s legacy would soon forever be associated with the result of the 2016 referendum. But all of that was yet to come. At the time of his Bloomberg speech the young leader believed that his lucky streak would continue. As Tim Bale, a leading authority on the Conservative Party, observed: That belief stemmed, at least in part, from his natural self- confidence: so many of his gambles over the years had paid off, and he was far surer than he should have been that he would be able to extract the kind of eye- catching concessions from other EU member states that would persuade a majority of British voters (if not the diehard sceptics in his own party) that he had achieved a fundamental change in the UK’s relationship with ‘Brussels’. (Bale 2016) Cameron placed his bet. It would be his last. Many expected Cameron to win. During the campaign one ‘expert survey’ of nearly 600 journalists, academics and pollsters asked them to share their predictions of the result. Overall, some 87 per cent thought that the country would vote to remain in the EU and only 5 per cent predicted a Brexit (the remainder thought that both sides had an equal chance). 2 This widely held belief that, in the end, people would vote to remain in the EU had, in turn, been driven by an assumption that they would choose the least risky path and side with the status quo. The idea was terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316584408.002 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 80.82.77.83, on 19 May 2017 at 15:36:38, subject to the Cambridge Core Brexit Introduced4 4 supported by what we call ‘LeDuc’s law’, a regularity in people’s vot- ing behaviour in referendums discovered by Larry LeDuc (2003), a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. After study- ing referendums around the world, events that are characterized by high stakes and abundant uncertainty about the consequences of the different outcomes, LeDuc noted that while people often expressed support for the ‘change option’ at the start of the campaign they would increasingly side with the status quo, the less risky option, as the campaign progressed. They would, after a period of indecision, bet on ‘the devil they knew’. In the UK, this belief in aversion to risk and bias towards the status quo had been further cultivated by the outcomes of both at the 2011 referendum on changing the electoral system and the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence. As the country hurtled towards the 2016 referendum this consensus was reflected in an assessment made by The Economist’s Intelligence Unit that outlined why the status quo would prevail. One factor was Cameron himself, the nation’s newly re- elected leader, who only eight months earlier had won a majority government and was about to throw his full weight behind campaigning for Remain. Then came the voters; while they looked restless, the analysts concluded there was ‘little risk’ of an anti- establishment backlash. ‘Although it is true that anti- establishment feeling is running higher than usual in the UK, and that much of it is directed – albeit in a rather inchoate way – towards Europe, we do not believe that it is strong enough to sway the final result’. In the end, they would side with the status quo. ‘As is often the case when a constitutional referendum is held, defending the status quo is easier than arguing for a radical departure from it.’ 3 But the pundits were wrong and David Cameron lost his wager. When the ballots were counted on the night of 23 June, 51.9 per cent of the electorate had voted to leave the EU, a figure that jumped to almost 54 per cent in England. The result sent shockwaves around the world. As we will see in this book, despite being confronted with an avalanche of advice from national and international figures to vote to remain, and apocalyptic warnings about the consequences that would follow a Brexit, a majority voted to leave the EU. By doing so, they chose to reject the recommendations of their prime minister, most of the Cabinet, a large majority of their elected MPs and countless busi- nesses, global political leaders and international organizations, from the World Bank to the International Monetary Fund. As Bogdanor terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316584408.002 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 80.82.77.83, on 19 May 2017 at 15:36:38, subject to the Cambridge Core Brexit Introduced 5 5 (2016) observed, the vote marked the first time in the nation’s his- tory when the House of Commons would be asked to follow a policy recommendation to which around three- quarters of MPs had been opposed. All of this underscores the need for research into what led the United Kingdom to vote to leave the European Union. Since the vote there has emerged a lively debate about the drivers of the ‘Leave’ vote. Some argue that this was driven chiefly by public concerns about a perceived loss of national sovereignty to the EU. Others focus instead on an economically ‘left- behind’ section of society that saw the 2016 referendum as an opportunity to vent their deep frustration about their relative deprivation. Another view has focused instead on the role of public anxieties over immigration, which in particular since 2004 has moved to the forefront of the issue agenda. As we will see, these debates are also mirrored in academic research that has sought to shed light on the factors that influence public attitudes towards the EU and European integration. One key question that we address in this book concerns the relative importance of these and other explanations for understanding the referendum vote. Meanwhile, in recent years there has emerged a parallel debate over the role of the populist right party, UKIP, which since 2010 has actively campaigned to mobilize anti- EU and anti- immigration sentiment among the public. The presence of UKIP is another important difference from the context surrounding the 1975 referendum. Far from a fringe movement, the party has been a major contributor to the increasing fragmentation of the UK’s party system that has occurred in recent years (see Goodwin and Milazzo 2015; Clarke et al. 2016a). By the time of the 2016 referen- dum UKIP had attracted a surge of popular support, which we explore in Chapters 5 and 6, replaced the Liberal Democrats as the third most popular party in the polls, won the 2014 European Parliament elec- tions, two parliamentary by- elections in Clacton and then Rochester and Strood, and attracted nearly 4 million votes at the 2015 general election in 2015. But whereas some suggest that UKIP is an important element in the ‘Brexit story’, others argue that Leave won despite the populist right and its divisive leader, Nigel Farage. In the following chapters, we exam- ine in detail the impact of Farage and his party on the politics of the EU referendum and efforts to win a Leave majority. There are already several books that explore the referendum cam- paign, including the various personalities and groups that shaped this terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316584408.002 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 80.82.77.83, on 19 May 2017 at 15:36:38, subject to the Cambridge Core Brexit Introduced6 6 unique moment in British history. 4 Nor is this the first academic study of Euroscepticism in the UK (see Ford and Goodwin 2014; Goodwin and Milazzo 2015; Clarke et al. 2016a). But it is the first to draw on longitudinal aggregate- and individual- level survey data to examine the drivers of support for leaving the EU in a more holistic fashion, investigating each of several steps that led the country towards voting for a Brexit. Most of the data on public opinion and political behaviour that we employ in this book were gathered in a lengthy series of representative national surveys conducted virtually every month from April 2004 to the time of the EU referendum in June 2016. It should be noted that the June 2016 survey has a panel design such that respondents were contacted a few days before the referendum and then contacted again right after the balloting so that we could ascertain if they had voted and, if so, whether they had voted Remain or Leave. All of the surveys were conducted online by YouGov, plc. under the direction of the pro- ject supervisor, Joe Twyman. Funds for the surveys were provided by a series of research grants from the National Science Foundation (USA) and the Economics and Social Research Council (UK). Major funding for the June 2016 surveys was