The long & winding road to Brexit

Abstract

After nearly five decades of membership, the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union was less a sudden aberration than the political crystallisation of deep-seated class and identity cleavages within British society. Although the 52 per cent vote to leave in June 2016 was widely portrayed as an unforeseen rupture, it reflected long-standing tensions in Britain’s uneven incorporation into European integration, as well as fractures within the country’s governing elites. This chapter approaches Brexit as the outcome of a reconfiguration of social forces. It first traces Britain’s historically ambivalent relationship with Europe from the post-war settlement through the neoliberal turn, highlighting how successive governments mediated competing fractions of capital and labour. It then analyses the referendum conjuncture itself, focusing on party strategy, intra-elite conflict, and the mobilisation of popular discontent. The final section places particular emphasis on the interaction between material grievances and identity formation, arguing that rising inequality, regional marginalisation, and the erosion of social protections created fertile ground for narratives centred on sovereignty, nation, and belonging. Brexit can thus be understood not simply as a revolt against Brussels, but as a moment in which underlying class grievances were channelled through nationalist and cultural frames.