A new book co-authored by the University’s Professor Matthew Goodwin provides the first comprehensive and objective study of the UK’s historic vote to leave the European Union.
Through the book, Professor Goodwin and his co-authors Professor Harold D. Clarke and Professor Paul Whiteley show that, although arguments about national sovereignty were prominent themes in the Leave campaign, strong public concern over the large number of migrants entering the country was front and centre to the Leave victory.
They also discuss how Boris Johnson in particular had a significant, positive effect on the vote to Leave, helping to mobilise ‘polite Eurosceptics’, and the significant effect of UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage on the Leave vote.
Their book, entitled Brexit – Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union (Cambridge University Press, Published in the UK on May 4th), is based on extensive analysis of more than 10 years of survey data on more than 150,000 voters. It also draws on an innovative pre and post-referendum panel survey and a unique survey of UKIP members.
The book shows how:
- the underlying forces that led to Brexit had been operating in the UK for more than a decade before the referendum, and are also visible across much of Europe today
- public attitudes toward the EU have been volatile over many years and were shaped by people’s assessments of how the governing parties had performed on immigration, the economy and the National Health Service
- worries over how immigration had been managed, alongside worries about a loss of economic control to Brussels, cultivated a pool of potential voters for Brexit long before the referendum itself
- people who felt ‘left behind’ and wanted to reduce immigration were significantly more likely to turnout on polling day and less likely to view Brexit as a risk
- the vote for Brexit was not driven by ‘one factor’ but rather by a ‘complex and cross-cutting mix of calculations, emotions and cues’, some of which had been ‘baked in’ long before the referendum was called
- large majorities of the public remain deeply concerned about ‘rapacious banks’, ‘corporate greed’, economic inequality, social injustice and the prospect of being ‘left behind’ by the transformation of the country
- how most people concluded that the UK would be better able to control its borders and counter terrorism if the country were outside of the EU.
In conclusion, Professor Goodwin and his co-authors state that the unintentional ‘dual campaign’ of the official Vote Leave and the unofficial UKIP Leave EU turned out to be an act of ‘inadvertent campaign genius’. It enabled the two camps to leverage the populist power of the immigration issue while simultaneously rallying middle-class Eurosceptics who kept a ‘safe distance’ from the UKIP camp.