What gets lost in these debates is the actual evidence. Contrary to rumour, Brexit was supported by a broad and fairly diverse coalition of voters; large numbers of affluent conservatives; one in three of Britain’s black and ethnic minority voters; almost half of 25-49 year-olds; one in two women; one in four graduates; and 40 percent of voters in the Greater London area.1 Brexit appealed to white pensioners in England’s declining seaside towns but it also won majority support in highly ethnically diverse areas like Birmingham, Luton, and Slough.
Nor did these voters suddenly convert to Brexit during the campaign, which is another common misconception. One point that is routinely ignored is that British support for radically reforming or exiting the EU was widespread long before the referendum even began. Britain’s National Centre for Social Research recently pointed out that levels of British support for leaving the EU or radically reducing the EU’s power “have been consistently above 50 percent for a little over 20 years.” This is what the ‘short-termists’ cannot explain. If Brexit was an aberration, a by-product of wrongdoing, then why were so many people unhappy with this relationship long before the Great Recession, or the arrival of Twitter or Facebook? The currents that led to this seismic moment were decades in the making.
“We are one people in Europe,” proclaimed Natalie Nougayrède in the left-wing Guardian newspaper during the 2016 referendum. Yet the reality for most voters was altogether different. When asked how they thought of their identity, between 1992 and 2016 an average of 62 percent of Brits said they were ‘British only.’ Only 6 percent prioritized a ‘European’ identity.
During the 2000s, many working-class voters had started to drift into apathy, losing faith in politics. This was the canary in the Brexit coalmine. In more northern and industrial communities, working-class voters provided isolated pockets of support to a small far-Right party, but most simply stopped voting altogether. Debates about turnout routinely focus on differences between the young and old but many observers missed a more important gap in turnout among the different social classes.
One person who had noticed was the political scientist Oliver Heath, who noted that until the 1980s there had been little difference in the rates of turnout among the working-class and middle-class (less than 5 points). Yet, by 2010, this gap had widened considerably to 19 points, which made it just as significant as the difference in turnout between young and old. Whereas in earlier years the working-class and middle-class had been divided on who to vote for, now they were divided on whether to bother voting at all.
Though some journalists would later contend that voters were swayed by misleading economic data or social media campaigns, the reality is that Brexit was a natural extension of their pre-existing values; a vote to tip the scales back toward order, stability, and group conformity, and an attempt to defend the wider community that was seen to be under threat. Not every Leaver felt this way, but many did. This is why, though controversial, the anti-EU slogans of “Take Back Control” and “Breaking Point” (a reference to immigration and the refugee crisis) were not only emotionally resonant but more in tune with what was occupying the minds of voters—and had been for some time. Remainers did not even try to win these sceptics over. Instead, they focused almost exclusively on a narrative that was rooted in rational choice—transactional and incredibly dry arguments about economic self-interest.
When it came to Brexit, 70 percent of Leavers felt that exiting the EU would be ‘safe’ while only 23 percent saw it as a risk. But when it came to remaining in the EU, 76 percent felt that was a risk while 17 percent felt it was safe. This was the big miscalculation.
Re: EXIT NEGOTIATIONS
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
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