Understanding Brexit
option open , Theresa May , of course , needs first to exploit all pathways for a successful hard Brexit . This seems to imply that a debate in the Parliament about Brexit and the modalities for leaving the EU will not take place .
Brexit : The Who and The Why
The UK was a latecomer to the EU , not least due to the politicalideological heritage of its imperial past that dominated thinking in the early 1950s . The main reason for its early skepticism toward European integration can be seen in the British liberal economic narrative where it needs simple trade arrangement in order to achieve economic growth and prosperity . Given that the EU , with the Treaty of Rome , more or less began already as a customs union rather than as a free trade area , it was thus no real surprise that the British political class did not opt to join this newly created club at the very start . In this sense , the UK ’ s decision for a strong EFTA rather than for a customs union was nothing other than an early indication that the UK was not interested in giving up parts of its sovereignty in exchange for an open trade area . Skepticism toward the project of European integration was not a monopoly of one political party but for a while widely shared across the party spectrum . Unlike in the cases of Labour and the Liberals , though , skepticism and open rejection of European integration found a comfortable home in the Conservative Party . The strong , very vocal , and for the government indispensable critical minority of Conservative MPs never hesitated to utter their hostile views , thus fostering a line of British nativism that eventually could successfully be picked up by UKIP . What was for a long time a rumbling concern about the too big bureaucracy in Brussels , which intruded on British sovereignty , quickly centered on a radical anti-migration stance that saw the influx of foreigners as the ultimate cause of unemployment , welfare state failures and an overall feeling of a loss of social and cultural security . And yet , immigration may have topped the public debates but it was not highly relevant for the actual voting decisions : The connection between the number of immigrants in the overall 380 local authorities and the number of leave-votes is rather loose and not at all significant in a statistically meaningful way ( Johnston , Jones , and Manley 2016 ). As a matter of fact , immigrants tend to be attracted to relatively dynamic regions , and those regions / cities overall tended to have high remain-vote shares .
According to Google Trends the second most searched question in the UK following the results of the vote was “ What is the EU ?”, followed closely by “ Which countries are in the EU ?”. This flashlight is as funny as it is disturbing , and nourishes the interpretation that voters used the referendum as a welcome opportunity to express their frustration and rage about a loss of faith in their future . That the EU is a well-known object of rejection and even hatred is not unique to the UK ; as a matter of fact , the EU ’ s own Eurobarometer only recently published data that show that only a third of Europeans have trust in the institutions of the European Union ( 33 %). Meanwhile , trust in the national political institutions is even lower ; only 28 % of Europeans tend to trust their national parliament . Interestingly enough , the share of UK citizens who trust the EU
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