Inevitability and contingency: The political economy of Brexit

Abstract

Placing Britain's vote on 23 June 2016 to leave the European Union in historical time raises an immediate analytical problem. What was clearly the result of a number of contingencies, starting with the 2015 general election where we can see how events could readily have turned out otherwise and was a shock to the British government that had not prepared for this outcome might also represent the inevitable end of Britain's membership of the EU seen from the distant future. This paper seeks to take both temporal perspectives seriously. It aims to provide an explanation of the vote for Brexit that recognises the referendum result as politically contingent and also argue that the political economy of Britain generated by Britain's position as non-euro member of the EU whilst possessing the offshore financial centre of the euro zone and Britain's eschewal in 2004 of transition arrangements on freedom of movement for A8 accession states made Brexit an eventual inevitability, saving a prior collapse of the euro zone.

Political, process and programme failures in the Brexit fiasco: exploring the role of policy deception

“…That Brexit is a complex phenomenon comprising a set of highly contingent combinations of factors over an extended temporal sequence is widely accepted in the academic literature (McConnell & Tormey, 2019;Thompson, 2017). Its evaluation as a policy fiasco, however, is much less settled, either within the live arenas of ongoing Brexit politics or from the viewpoints of academic spectators.…”

“…Whether Cameron should be held accountable for the Brexit policy failure depends not on what he did but on the available counterfactuals that he did not follow. Thompson (2017) argues that Cameron's referendum decision was a gamble premised on the following assumptions. First, there was no prospect of the Conservative party winning the 2015 general election.…”

“…According to Thompson (2017), the Brexit fiasco was not the accidental product of Cameron's personal failings or the idiosyncrasies of his judgement in relation to his party. At some point before the planned 2020 election, it was probable (but not inevitable) that the issue of EU membership would need to be addressed within the Conservative party.…”

“…At some point before the planned 2020 election, it was probable (but not inevitable) that the issue of EU membership would need to be addressed within the Conservative party. Although Cameron used a risky strategy to solve this problem, Thompson (2017) suggests that the problem was not with his judgement but with the fundamental political weakness of Britain's position inside the EU. In other words, the counterfactual situation would probably have resulted in a fiasco of some description or other, albeit at a slower pace.…”

It's Still the 2008 Crash

“…Put more schematically, it became an election borne of the extraordinary consequences of the 2008 crash and what they have entailed for intergenerational conflict in an ageing society. Although Brexit has its own historical origins, 1 it is also a singular contingency in a political world that is being shaped by structural forces set in place by the policy response to 2008. In this political world, politicians cannot frame what elections will be about-even when the stakes are as high as they are for Brexit.…”