Why Britain chose Brexit

None of us will easily forget the emotional response to the Leave vote in 2016, the national and international lamentation and the angry reproaches and insults, heaped on the majority: they were ignorant losers, white, old, xenophobic and stupid, ‘gammon’ who would be better dead or disfranchised. But leave aside the arrogance and snobbery; more fundamental was the basic ignorance of Europe shown by these zealous Europhiles. They mistook Brexit for a British, or English, aberration. In fact, it was the manifestation of a pan-European disillusionment with the ‘European project’.

Popular support for that project peaked 40 years ago, and has been in decline ever since. The French only just voted for the Maastricht Treaty even in 1992, the heyday of integration. In 2005 both the French and the Dutch voted against the draft EU constitution — a result Neil Kinnock (anticipating Remainer bile) described as ‘a triumph of ignorance’. Britain was due to vote too, but Tony Blair was able to cancel the referendum, with opinion polls showing a huge majority against, on the pretext that the constitution was defunct — ‘I was off the hook’. The country was not, however. Arguably, from that point on, Britain’s membership depended on British governments avoiding any EU referendum. In the view of Helen Thompson, professor of political economy at Cambridge, ever since 2005 ‘a No vote would have been likely whatever the question on the ballot paper’.

The primary cause was economic decline. In 20 of the 27 present EU members, economic growth actually fell after they joined. As many economists had warned, the introduction of the euro in 1999 brought negligible benefits, major disadvantages and huge dangers. Far from accelerating trade between eurozone members, one of its main objects, that trade stagnated from the early 2000s onwards. Economic advantage therefore meant shifting trade to other continents.