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Fact 1: Without #austerity and without #FPTP, there would not have been an #EUReferendum to begin with.

Right wing commentators or right leaning political scientists have been attempting to dismiss my work, pushing distracting narratives. The key constituency that drove the #EUReferendum in favor of #Leave was a protest vote - and #austerity induced dislocations were the main driver of that vote.

I summarize my work here https://mastodon.social/@fetzert/110678279035836684

And here
https://twitter.com/fetzert/status/1091359096555667461?s=20&t=3gQsgEqILi4L-MtM1xm6mg

Now...

Fact 2: The protest and discontent that #austerity created was crucial to channel the marginal #Leave vote in 2016.

To do that, the disingenuous campaigning of the #Leave side had to really expand making #Brexit appealing for as many people as possible by basically being something different for everybody.

The purpose of the campaign was to tap into discontent. And the 350 million #NHS pledge was most salient as it resonated with peoples perceptions that #austerity had gone too far.

A great example of some quite blatant misreading of data is posted below.

This was in 2019. Rob Ford claimed that classic #Brexit voters and supporters - UKIP voters - wanting more #austerity

This is just false. As I explain at length here (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/10/17/long-read-debunking-myths-on-links-between-austerity-and-brexit/)
#UKIP voters, to a tiny extent disliked #austerity a bit less than the rest.

Misreading data and quick analysis can lead to such wrong conclusions producing noise that benefited those behind #austerity and #Brexit project.

Fact 3: There never was a plurality of die-hard Brexiteers. The vote was carried by a sizable protest vote. Most political science research has characterised the part of the #Brexit vote that is basically dying out.

Its a classic fallacy in data analysis. Looking at levels versus changes. The political scientists have focused on the "levels". Characterising people that would have always voted for #Brexit.

What drove the referendum result was "switchers"... those were mostly protest voters.

Now there is many ways to characterise these protest voters. I do a ton of that in my work on #austerity. But these two graphs point out the most ridiculous #Brexit voters (who probably feel a ton of shame).

This is a tricky one to explain so feedback is appreciated. This is coming from a set of #Tweets from 2019 and uses data from the #BritishElectionStudy (see here https://twitter.com/fetzert/status/1092043111604387841?s=20&t=ffHujApr9L2glhTgYynAxQ).

The #BES asked people prior to the #EUreferendum what do they think is the chance #Leave will win.

This is: they asked the voters their expectation of a #Leave victory. We can break this down by those that actually voted for #Leave by deciles. That is plotted on the vertical axis here.

So in the first decile means 10% of #Leave voters thought the chance of #Leave winning was less than 20% (horizontal axis).

This is data from Wave 7/8.

Now the same people (because I care about switchers) were asked in later waves about #Bregret.

Now there is this interesting group of #Leave voters who disproportionately express #Regret #Bregret among those who did not expect #Leave to win (i.e. those that thought chances of Leave victory were low).

My interpretation is that these are basically people who thought "their vote doesnt matter" but "wanted to send a message".

Some would call this a good definition of a #protestvote.

If this group had not voted or not "protested", #Remain would have won.

Its the "ridiculous" #Brexit.

Fact 4: Fundamental support (the stock/average supporter) of #Brexit is dying out. @simonjhix has a nice write up here https://euideas.eui.eu/2022/12/14/will-support-for-brexit-become-extinct/

But it goes a bit further than this. The main question is "why" has support for "implementing #Brexit" remained high.

Well, there is a lot of people who voted #Remain that wanted to adhere to the democratic principle that the vote should be implemented.

In the second phase of #Brexit - the shape of #Brexit - this group gave the Tories a carte blanche.

Fact 5: Support for #Brexit collapsed quickly after the #EUReferendum.

The protest vote that drove #Brexit (which is the vote that matters) collapsed in a very predictable fashion almost immediately after the #EUReferendum

I wrote a paper about this: Who is NOT voting for #Brexit anymore...

https://tinyurl.com/45bz4tz8

The biggest declines in #Brexit support were coming from the places where the #ProtestVote was highest... not surprisingly.

Here is a short write up
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/is-the-uk-having-a-rethink-on-brexit/

Now it is NOT surprising that support for "implementing #Brexit" is collapsing.

This support was upheld by the #Remain voters who turned to "support #Brexit" out of their wish to adhere to democratic norms.

This is what the YouGov figures reveals as fundamentally #Brexit never had a broad genuine mandate.

It was the political and media shaping of the narrative around #Brexit to which some of my academic peers contributed that enabled #Brexit to be implemented in its current form.

Now what is really important is to understanding the timing.

Why does the "penny" drop?

Many protest #Leave voters, as I showed, were ahead of their #Remain peers.

For Leave voting areas we know that this may be because #Brexit is hurting them the hardest.

I show this in:
"Measuring the Regional Economic Cost of #brexit

https://tinyurl.com/mu3xrcp3

Check out the interactive visualization

https://brexitcost.org/

(unfortunately ESRC/Warwick do not think its impactful to update this)

Speculation: I think the penny is finally dropping on the #Remain voters turned #Brexit implementation supporters that have enabled the hard #Brexit we are seeing.

The pandemic (mis)management, the #Ukraine war, the obvious #austerity-induced fragility of public services & the climate crisis that requires decisive action has exposed the frailty of our democracies. People want to be heard.

And #Brexit, no #austerity, in the UK, is the original sin.

We need to clean up our act at home.

The radicals driving Brexit are also behind attempts to hollow out democratic norms with attempts to bring about #VoterSuppression, the outright #corruption, the undermining of academic freedom, the politicisation of the civil service, and the undermining of the #ruleoflaw

The penny is dropping on those "good meaning people" that voted Remain that supported #Brexit to be implemented to adhere to democratic norms when the very same are being eroded from within.

Solutions: The UK's root problems are deep. There are no quick fixes. Quick fixes can produce huge levels of instability.

The UK requires an institutional overhaul that should involve

a) smart decentralisation with more funding for last mile delivery but open shared platforms

b) more transparency

c) proportional representation possibly using a voting mechanism similar to the German one.

d) financial sector reform to encourage more long term investments

e) more immigration

My opinion: The Brexit experiment never made sense and wont make sense. Life is tough.

The current geopolitical context is one that forces the US to becoming more European, while the EU is becoming more American.

The UK was the classical interlocutor and is now being sidelined. They are starting to feel it.

A tilt to Asia may have longer term benefits but raises huge concerns from a geopolitical dimension and the UK is just small fry in all this.

The UK is between a rock and a hard place.

Now I should add -- as this adds to the dodgy -- that UK #opinionpolls are a bit strange, especially the YouGov surveys...

I just leave this here:

https://www.trfetzer.com/opinion-polling-and-biases/

Its a bit techy but important IMO.

@fetzert It's important to differentiate between opinions on the success of Brexit and consequent ideas of whether we should have left the EU, with the desire to rejoin the EU.

There's been relatively recent polls that show that although the populace aren't happy with Brexit, neither do they wish to rejoin the EU quickly.

I don't think the base problems in the population have been addressed, & these can't just be blamed on austerity. Austerity simply makes things more apparent.

Although the last general election happened prior to the Brexit implementation date, the pandemic, completely predictable Ukraine war, and on-going climate crises occurred since then, the population doubled down on Business As Usual (since 2010) by voting for the Tories in droves.

This can be summarised as 'less institutional corruption, greater education of the population needed'. Neither tend to go down well with the self interest of the people involved.

@syllopsium Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree, there is a huge laundry list of issues -- in the paper, I described it as the welfare state expansion was the band aid, "austerity tore that dressing from the wound" -- but the wound was still there.

@fetzert I think you have a point there, but it affects more people than those on welfare.

Unfortunately my current opinion is that the UK population either (taking the generous view) don't care about anything except money, or less generously are somewhat more right wing than many are willing to admit. This isn't helped by the government deliberately increasing division and targeting minorities.

Given that Labour aren't much better here, it's my belief they also think the general populace are relatively right wing, and are doing whatever is necessary to get into power. I dearly hope they improve if they win the next election.

@syllopsium @fetzert They won't. If Labour win from their current position of being a (very slightly) lite version of nasty Tories then they will conclude that that worked, so therefore they have to continue to be nasty Tories in order to win the following election.

@keplerniko well, I think the timing would have been off. But an "implementation" or a choice over the actual options of the "shape of Brexit" would have revealed to many that the status quo wasnt actually that bad.

@Janeishly just done it, sorry, I thought I had -- thanks for flagging this up!