11th August 2022
As I am working on a couple of longer posts posts for this blog – and they often take longer than I originally anticipate – this is a just a short post on my long-awaited Brexit book.
The book is still coming on, slowly – and I am grateful for the patience of those who are patient.
In its current form the book is both an account of how Brexit came about and an assessment of its significance.
The book starts with the referendum, and explains how we came to have a referendum and what it meant for this issue to be determined by such a device.
I have two models for the approach I am adopting.
(I am afraid these models come from someone who was taught and studied history in the late 1980s and 1990s – and I am conscious that these models will be sneered at by some, but they are – because of my academic experience – part of my mental architecture, and I have to work with what I have got.)
The first is, of all people and things, G. R. Elton’s book Reformation Europe, which starts with the theses being nailed on that door.
Elton then explains each thing as he then gets to it in his story, thereby balancing exposition and analysis with narrative.
As Elton explained in The Practice of History:
“[Reformation Europe] avoids the customary scene-setting at the start. Instead it goes straight in the story of Luther’s rebellion, which naturally calls for some description of the man; this introduces, as a matter of course, the points of theology over which he rebelled. Once the narrative is well under way, it demands some understanding of Luther’s success in the circumstances of time and place….”
And so on.
(I am aware of Elton’s many limitations, but his approach to narrative is thought-provoking.)
The other model is that of Conrad Russell, whose Ford Lectures on the causes of the English Civil War were an attempt to explain a sequence of seven “effects” – events and non-events – which led to the conflict:
“These, then, are our effects: the Bishops’ Wars, England’s defeat in the Bishops’ Wars, the failure to reach a settlement, the failure to dissolve or prorogue the Parliament, the choice of sides, the failure to negotiate, and the problem of the King’s diminished majesty. It is surely clear that nothing except Charles I can be likely to have been a cause of all seven of these […] The removal of any one of these seven things could have prevented the Civil War as we know it.”
What would be the comparable sequence of effects that would explain Brexit as we know it?
Would they be questions like: Why did the United Kingdom have a referendum on this question in 2016? What explains the result? What explains how May’s government interpreted the supposed mandate? What explains how the European Union prepared for the departure process?
Other questions?
Russell emphasised that you can only explain causes if you are clear as to the effects you are explaining.
Breaking the topic into a sequence of smaller questions and answers is, I think, a good way to tell the story – for noting was inevitable in what happened.
But.
Mere narrative – even balanced with exposition and analysis – is not enough.
For to understand the significance of Brexit – that is, the significance of the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union – you also have to understand and assess what it meant for the United Kingdom to have been a member of the European Union and its predecessor communities.
And this is where an understanding of law and policy comes in.
For an understanding and assessment of what has changed (and has not changed) by Brexit in turn explains a great deal of what is going on (and not going on) now.
The question is how best to set this out.
*
A great deal of the relevant materials and documents are in the public domain, supplemented by witness evidence and informed commentary.
The task is harnessing this material for it to be a book which is worthwhile to write and worthwhile to read.
It is also important to be alert to partisanship – and it should be a book that is partisan neither for Remainers nor Leavers, though I suspect this may be a difficult goal in our polarised political culture.
*
The story of Brexit is a fascinating and important.
But it is difficult to work out how to tell it best….
***
Comments Policy
This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.
Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.
The comments policy is here.
Good luck.
I look forward to your book and hope you are getting fulfillment as you see it take shape. ‘Alert to Partisanship’. I have spent a lot of mental energy trying to understand the grassroots level for being pro Brexit and have failed miserably so I hope your balanced efforts will help further me along into a Brexit awakening. Maybe then I will stop being so angry. Good luck.
my wife and I were just today talking about Taiwan and China, and I proposed that islandness (being an island) was very relevant to Taiwan’s hope of avoiding being successfully invaded. Similarly indeed, our UK islandness (geographically narrower than Taiwan’s) helped us in WW2. But the latter example of useful islandness does seem to have turned sour in the case of Brexit. You are looking for rational explanations of Leave support in 2016, but islandness does seem to be relevant (if not rational)
Certainly our avoidance of fascist occupation in ww2 was helpful in constructing the myth of us being Superior. Crucially in addition, it also meant that learning to recognise and reject fascism failed to become part of education and culture. Obviously I’m grateful we weren’t invaded back then, but I can’t help wondering if we would’ve set out on quite a different path if we had.
And should you find any benefits of Brexit, I trust you will share them with your loyal readership!
Chapter 1: How 52% of 72% becomes a resounding majority.
I don’t see how 37.5% could become a majority of any kind, resounding or otherwise. Counting on the relative innumeracy of the population?
Can I suggest the “Moby Dick” model?
For the main body of the book you have the narrative (say, the period leading up to and after the referendum), interspersed with chapters on history (such as the UKs relationship with Europe, the EEC and EU) and chapters explaining some of the technical details (for example, what some laws and regulations actually mean and how they work (in reality and how well this was understood, or mis-represented, in the UK)).
Before anyone thinks this is a bit mad, it seems to me this is the model Michael Lewis adopts in his (generally excellent) books.
I look forward very much to reading the book when it emerges. The potential application of Conrad Russell’s approach is particularly interesting to me, as he was one of my tutors in the mid-70s when I was studying the period leading up to the Civil War.
I would hope there would be a thorough investigation of the funding of the leave campaign. The participation of the Russian state, and the inexplicable actions, of one of the leading Brexiters, conceding, in the early hours.
My take on Brexit is: Why is the UK different in its attitude towards the EU than other member countries? This benchmarking exercise is fascinating. A similar type of exceptionalism existed in Spain, which a Spanish historian friend has labelled the “hidalgo complex”. It took Spain a long time to grow up, a period including a vicious civil war and a long dictatorship. Happy days.
Reading around decoloniality in Latin America a comment stuck with me that Spain also managed to decolonize itself. This is something the English(and possibly the Dutch) have singularity failed to do as yet.
Good luck.
I wonder if mention will be made in the book of the Tufton Street thinktanks and the information contained in the online Baker Street Herald.
I see this as a story about two political parties who were more interested in internal matters than national matters. Cameron and Co. being more interested in emasculating the UKIP vote and bringing a large number of frothing types back into the fold. Corbyn being unwilling, and possibly even unable, to motivate his party to talk to the country seriously about what the implications were, and why it would take several decades to lose the bathwater without taking the baby with it. A story about political failure on all fronts. A story about lions lead by short sighted middle management. A story about those promoted above their competency levels having too much clout.
The names Elton & Russell bring back memories of A-Level history for me. That introduction to 16th & 17th century European & English history taught me a great deal. I have often found myself thinking of Brexit as a kind of godless rerun of the Henrician reformation: “England is an empire”, asserting absolute sovereignty and repudiating the claims of a continental jurisdiction, which in practice means a power grab by the executive and lots of juicy plums for its Jack Horner hangers-on.
I hope the book goes well. I’m pretty much brexited out, but would certainly buy it, as your commentary here is consistently lucid and informative, even for us non-lawyers.
Do you want to write a ‘sort of’ academic account, perhaps not aimed at an academic audience .. or do you want to tell a story? I don’t mean in the sense of fiction. Maybe a good model there would be Lawrence Wright’s ‘The Looming Tower’, about 9/11 and associated intelligence failures. Or consider the way that some of our excellent current legal writers (no names, no pack drill) illustrate dysfunction in the justice system by telling stories. This is much more than simple ‘anecdote’.
Stories are (should be) more engaging for general readers, and there’s no reason why a story-telling approach can’t be intellectually rigorous. Much of our knowledge of past eras comes to us via stories. Not that I’m advocating fiction, but consider how well Jarndyce, in Bleak House, describes the dysfunctional state of Chancery in Victorian England.
The critical difference is the way that story and discursive writing do exposition. Story works by juxtaposing events and letting the reader draw the conclusions, telling the story on the cut. Discursive exposition tells the reader what the writer is going to tell the reader, then tells the reader what the writer wants to say, then explains how what’s just been said amounts to what the writer said initially they were going to say. A, therefore B, therefore C.
I’d vote for story every time, but, perhaps like you, I was brought up to be discursive and logical and to show my working, and that instinct is hard to lose. If you do choose to go with storytelling as the model, there’s plenty out there by way of advice on how to do it. And, you are actually quite a good story-teller, even if you do come from Birmingham.
And also read Sathnam Sanghera’s Empireland for the saturating influence of Empire on this country. E.G. “With the twenty-first century triumph of Nigel Farage, who routinely cites Enoch Powell as a hero and inspiration, you could even argue that Powell has been one of the most influential political figures of the modern age, helping to inspire Brexit.”
I look forward to reading your book!
Your reference to G R Elton hits me like a blast from the past even predating the 1980s !
I was taught British History alongside European History in the same school with for good measure two separate teachers, one for each subject.
Although it is a long time ago I recall when it came to British History one question at least had to be related to Welsh History in particular although you were still allowed to answer in English.
What went on in Scottish and Irish schools I know not.
I have no idea what any of these random points prove but trust that they may help your deliberations.
In any event I look forward to reading your book when finished.
Where to start this sad story is tied to any assessment of its underlying causes. For example, the refusal of the UK government to attend the Messina conference of 1955 which ‘kicked off’ the EEC in 1957 showed that UK leaders of the time did not think they were part of Europe.
A more murky non-milestone is the failure to instal a written constitution with a predefined process for handling such a major decision: what other country could allow this to go through based only on a 1 time 52-48% vote ?
Good luck sir!
How exciting. Really looking forward.
I’m always intrigued to know what motivates people to do what they do – it can be for multiple reasons including setting out the truth as the author see’s it – it can also be an act of catharsis including self righteousness. We write things for a myriad of reasons.
I’m genuinely intrigued as to what you will get out of it, if you’d care to share it ? Looking back we can learn lessons, equally it’s still the view from the rear mirror.
You finish your post by writing:
“The story of Brexit is a fascinating and important.”
I’ve always viewed Brexit is a process – much like joining the old EEC, EC and finally the EU.
Maybe considering Brexit ( the process) as a journey that is nowhere near finished could be a start? Just an idea,?
I really struggle to see how (or why) partisanship should (or can) be avoided, if this is to be an honest assessment of the unholy mess that is Brexit.
(“Unholy mess” is far removed from the description I would use, if blunt “adult” language wasn’t frowned upon…)
It’s a huge task because, like the reformation in a different era, it touches on everything about the UK, postwar, at least. Are there two fundamental questions, I wonder? 1) Was the 1975 referendum electorate ‘mis-sold’ membership? Factually it was not, but the presentation by politicians of the EU as, overwhelmingly, an economic not a political venture helped sow the seeds for disenchantment during the Delors years. As someone who worked in the field in London and Brussels, I felt that sense of UK ‘semi-detachment’ often. For other member states the political nature of the union was never really in doubt, even if it was questioned. 2) What possessed the Conservative party to become at first sceptical and then (mostly) rabidly hostile? Was it simple narrow political advantage or something more romantic/bonkers* (*depending on your point of view).
“1) Was the 1975 referendum electorate ‘mis-sold’ membership? Factually it was not, but the presentation by politicians of the EU as, overwhelmingly, an economic not a political venture helped sow the seeds for disenchantment ..”
This debate rages on in this blog and others.
Many brexit supporters see the Brexit process and unfolding implications as merely correcting an historic anomoly – I do sometimes wonder if Heath back in 1973 had offered the UK with an entry referendum ( not the faux renegotiations of 1975) then matters would be very different?.
If but part of this question could be answered, the forthcoming book will be very worthwhile.
As a history and political science student I too studied G R Elton, both his Tudor studies and his historiography. History is so much the asking of the question “why?” as well as questioning Kipling’s other five servant men. I was taught that the study of history is the search for patterns. In the UK those patterns follow a familiar trajectory from Venice, Portugal, Spain, Netherlands etc: the search for a post imperial role; the national cultural, economic and social displacement following loss of maritime power and empire, the casual racism, the unease with immigration from in the UK “no dogs no Irish” to the xenophobia against white European gastarbeiter with EU freedom of movement, an ageing entitled richer population cohort. All have precursors in modern and ancient history. Will we learn? I doubt it. Historians are aware (despite their propensity to view history through their own contemporary lens) that unless you know where you are and from whence you have come, you can have no idea how to get to where you want to be. That is why this administration’s willingness to undo the GFA for part political gain, amongst its many other foolishnesses, fills many of us students of history with so much dread for the UK and England’s future.
Given …
…that Brexit was for it leave supporters a ‘cultural achievement of unprecedented magnitude to secure the future identity of ‘the nation’ for future generations’; and for remain supporters an economic and political disaster of unprecented scale…
I will verily look forward to your explaining and reconciling the multiple forces behind these schismatic views! I think Thucydides would blanch.
I suspect the magic word might be ‘insecurity’, but … we wait!
“But he [or even she] that desires to look into the truth of things done, and which (according to the condition of humanity) may be done again, or at least their like, shall find enough herein to make him think it profitable.”
Of your excellent commenters I feel Alan @18:18 comes close to my feeling on Brexit. To my mind the Brexit story is unsatisfactory – so far – because it has a hollow core – why do such a foolish thing is unanswered.
One can easily see the long term Eurosceptic influence and the frustration with ongoing declinism and the malign influence of the housing market and the lack of (or impossibility of) an industrial policy aided and abetted by effect of immigration. But no one put Leave to the question ‘how will this actually work?’ Parliament failed – probably because Remain had no good answers either and short term electoral influences took over.
What we saw was the huge success of the media and the spin machines. All that was necessary was to wind up some clockwork spin merchants and set them going. The machinery worked very well but there was never any thought – is this a good idea? Brexit had its own momentum.
But the hollow core is still there. Johnson could only offer bluster and Messrs Truss and Sunak can see they neither have any good options. But the core drivers of Brexit – Redwood, Rees-Mogg et al are still there aided and abetted by a friendly media. Yet none of them will tell us what the intellectual roadmap into Brexit looks like, they remain silent on the ‘how will this work’. Why, because I am sure the hidalgos have no idea either, the core concept is hollow.
Essentially a book about an empty space.
“How will this work?” was occasionally asked. Leavers replied: Simple. We will be just like any other non-EU country…Japan, USA, Canada etc, who are doing very well outside it. We will actually do even better. As close neighbours & former members we will have a trade & cooperation agreement that keeps all the advantages of membership. What’s not to like?
Win a popular opinion poll with a 1-2% majority? Easy.
I have been looking forward to your book for a long time. I hope it does not become one of the great never-finished masterpieces!
I’m not a lawyer nor a historian, so even vicarious thoughts of writing a book about Brexit give me the horrors. Apart from identifiable events, laws and the weight of history, I wonder if there are other influences. I don’t know if these are false perceptions, but it seems that many now become MPs for different reasons to past times, as if it’s a career path to power and/or money; there is much less ‘intellectual’ coherence in party policy and strategy; a big move away from governing in the country’s interests to governing in the party’s interests. Also, as citizens, do we, in present times, sufficiently interrogate the issues or passively accept the information we are given more than in previous times? Are we more or less altruistic? It’s not that I think these are the direct causes of Brexit, but I do wonder if they are partly responsible for the outcomes.
The reason I was so profoundly disturbed by the ‘14 referendum was that it messed with my identity: my idea of who I am. British, and Scottish too. I had hoped one day enough folk would feel European (not necessarily “EU-an”) and British. In ‘16 the rift was/is still so deep due to opposing views on who we are and want to be. Until ’16 we had planned to come home and were even looking at houses. France was to have been the last leg of our travels. But we are still here; what happened to what we thought was home? Where now is home? If civilisation involves solidarity and common cause (both much diminished in the UK at present) then confusion comes when the boundaries are unclear: village- city- country- continent (?). Where are our kin and those of like values? Folk will be motivated if they are interested- in both senses.
One direct cause was clearly Cameron’s breathtaking insouciance. But in part that came from the carelessness of most of the electorate, where there has been a dumbing down in my lifetime. Reading my dad’s Daily Mirror, I came upon serious questioning articles by Pilger and others: views that were discussed by workmen in the backs of vans when showers interrupted work. Then came Murdoch & Maxwell, tits & titillation. The electorate has now evolved to talent shows and Love Island, hoping as Jamie Oliver says, not to learn to cook, but to get on tv. Brits may mock the ignorance shown in the following clip, but they are surely almost as bad. The press are partly to blame and it will take the work of a generation to fix.
“The press are partly to blame ”
I think you’re massively understating the extent and significance of the malign influence of The Fourth Estate there, Guy,
I’d be interested to know why those “Euro sceptics” and the promoters of leaving the EU were so determined that they poured vast amounts of money into it. They obviously expected to gain from it, they certainly didn’t see it as a noble cause.
It’s your book and all that, but why start at the referendum? The hijacking of the Queen’s speech deserves a mention.
Thank you for undertaking this. I look forward to buying, reading and discussing your analysis. Ideally it would be published several months before the next general election, in order to improve the standard of debate around the topic. No pressure – but it will be invaluable if you can finish it within this timeframe.
Why did the UK vote to leave the EU in 2016? You can take this in a narrow sense – perhaps starting with Cameron and his misguided attempt to resolve internal party divisions and outflank Farage and UKIP. Why did the Leave campaign get so much traction?
Or you could look progressively wider.
You could push back to Maastricht, or the Single European Act, when the EU managed to overcome some of the eurosclerotic paralysis of the 1970s and 1980s. The creation of the single market, was largely driven by the UK. Why have we cut ourselves off from that?
Why indeed did the UK join the EEC on 1 January 1973?
But why did the UK fail to join at the start, when it would have been able to use its significant power to shape the form and development of the EEC, rather than leaving it to France and Germany and Italy and the Benelux countries? And then increasingly regret that failure through into 1960s.
Was it an overhang of the Empire and the Commonwealth, when the UK was still a major industrial and military power? A failure to recognise the reduced position of the UK after the Second World War, and the realities that became painfully apparent at Suez?
Churchill had spoken of the need for a “United States of Europe” in 1946, and the Council of Europe was founded in 1949. The European Coal and Steel Community was formed in 1951, and Churchill supported that, but was against the UK joining. Is this all a legacy of Churchill’s imperialism?
You ask some excellent questions.
Going back to the beginning really is a good place to start.
To better understand the motivations of Monnet, Schuman and let’s not forget the civil servant Sir Arthur Salter – their idea that the nation state was/is the progenitor of wars is interesting – the solution, to incrementally obviate the nation state and have a grand europa free of nationalism is fascinating.
Maybe the current member states especially those in the Eurozone still believe in this centralised mantra & nostrum – be interesting to read what the author has to say about the founding fathers objectives and whether, in the limit, the UK could or would ever subsume itself into a supranational entity & fully federal United States of Europe.
More like centuries of imperialism. I recommend again Sathnam Sanghera’s Empireland, in which he shows how we are all in GB shaped by Empire. Yet sparsely taught about it, even subject to one’s age.
Many of the comments refer to the UK’s outcome of the referendum or the UK’s attitude to Europe/EU or the importance of being an island for the UK. It is important in my view to distinguish between various parts of the UK. I’d like to add a bit of info to your deliberations from a Scottish point of view, because I think it differs in a number of important aspects.
It is part of our consciousness that we are a small country. And indeed a promotion campaign a few years ago called ‘Scotland the best small country’. As such we are aware that we have to have relationships with others and there have many relationships, from trading links to the Baltics to the ‘Auld Alliance’ with France, from connections during the Enlightenment to ERASMUS. And many many more.
The MEP Alyn Smith in his last speech in Strassbourg said that Scotland is part of the family of European nations and if there was no such thing as the EU, then Scotland would be in the front row of trying to establish it. (I am quoting from memory).
One other anecdote to show a difference of attitude north and south of the border are the remarks the FM made on the morning after the 2016 referendum. She looked as if she had had no sleep during the night, but she made a point of saying that EU citizens living in Scotland were part of the community and that Scotland was their home. That was during the time when a London-based politicians called EU citizens ‘bargaining chips in the up-coming negotiations’.
Some of these differences might not be obvious to people living outside of Scotland; maybe my comments are helpful in providing a more rounded picture of what was/is going on in the UK?
You are adopting the right historical approach, (Elton & Russell).
Would you consider putting pictures in the book, to make such a difficult topic a bit less “headachey”, to read?
Also, if your publisher can afford it, would you include humourous cartoons? I find when reading & trying to understand legal stuff, I need some sort of chuckle.
All the best in completing your book.
With all good wishes,
Nat
The downside of a (the) book on Brexit is that it has to be unremittingly about ‘Failure’. At every level, national, local, personal, intellectual, cognitive, ethical, economic, political et al.
Spread over as many years back as you care to look.
Adam Smith was of course right to say ” “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation” but we (the UK) have encompassed that and, like both Spain and Portugal will end up impoverished.
For the author there’s no harder row to hoe.
Best Wishes, Good Luck
Depends upon optics – sure, we got a harder brexit than some of us wanted ( I liked EFTA/EEA). The good news is that we did get Brexit – as opposed to the half baked Brexit in name only that May /Robbins first negotiated in her original Withdrawal Agreement 1 ( inc backstop/all UK in EU customs union).
Brexit is a process in my view – the benefits always would play out over time – 5-10 years.
We’re effectively transitioning from one from one state to another – recent analysis even shows that UK GDP has outgrown most of the EU members states since 2016 especially Germany.
Agreed, that we’ve also had Covid/Ukraine post ‘Brexit’ and the consequences for supply chains, commodities etc is easily forgotten – Europe is sadly at war – some folk are even blaming the current water shortage on the EU! We’re even selling electricity to France/NL/Belgium – who’ d have thought this possible?
One of the slower burn benefits of Brexit as published in my letter to the FT on 3rd August is our new found freedom to jointly regulate World Trade at the WTO, WCO, UNECE, ICAO etc – we now do this with our own voice & vote – something that we will learn to use & to the UKs advantage as the EU rightly does for itself.
Finally the gloom & doom and hundreds & thousands of jobs ( c. 7k in reality) that was to befall the City didn’t happen – new regulations in MIFID/Basel 2 look likely to be enacted to support & sustain the City’s locus as a global financial power house.
The UK might be having a tough time currently – but looking at the EU, it’s hard to see any member state really doing much better than us.
The book that DAG is writing is going to huge challenge – the fact that he’s doing it, is still a good thing in my view.
That is a heartening response and pulls me back up the slippery slide into despair.
Another model to consider might be that of Fantasy, specifically the Discworld universe.
A group of people (some of whom are being manipulated as to what is really happening) come together to summon a great power by the invocation of the magic wotsisname. They don’t really know what they have summoned and and things rapidly spin …
In the this model the story would start with the invocation of Article 50. (It would have been more convenient if the Roman Numeral for 50 was “D” because then the result of the invocation could have been anthropomorphised as The’d).
The Roman numeral for 50 is L, so invocation of Article 50 is the descent into L.
Part of the back ground to Brexit was James Goldsmith and his Referendum party. One of the friends of Boris turns out to be Zac Goldsmith.
One of the questions I would wonder about is the attitude of key movers in Leaving towards rules and policies. It seems to me that there is a theme of pushing against rules.
People like James Goldsmith were quite happy to operate outside the rules. In modern times entities like Uber seem to come into being because they enable a way to get around rules. Recent social media platforms can do things which traditional media are constrained from (make money from nazis for instance).
There is a category of rule -breaker that recognises that they can gain an advantage by rule breaking so long as others are governed by the rules. the question would be- how much did that provide a motivation for Leavers, and are they happy with the way Leavin has gone.
Creative non fiction websites may have some ideas e.g. https://jerichowriters.com/non-fiction-what-is-creative-writing-in-non-fiction/
Longformblog too for styles although I appreciate they are essays.
No-one mentions the USA. Britain’s post-WW2 subservience to the USA and its “predicament” of having instigated military conflict as its primary economic driver and modus operandi has, in my view, been a major influence on pro-Brexit actors in contrast to the stated aims of the EU of avoiding conflict in Europe.
In addition to the good points made elsewhere, some aspects you may wish to consider, please excuse any repetition:
– has there been a dumbing down of politicians and/or of the electorate (or indeed of any other players); when/how/why, who benefited ?
– roads not taken : euro; flags; full metrication; armed forces integration (D&S); languages;
– role of other nations, within & without EU; and non-nation-state actors;
– Lisbon Treaty;
– bothsideism, false media balance, no media balance;
– lack of survival challenge events in previous 40-years as reminder of why European project is relevant (Ukraine has come too late) and UK is inextricably bound by geography;
– intent of others to use UK wedge to break apart EU as a viable competitor hegemon;
– belief that GFA meant NI is ‘over’ / of course it isn’t;