The result in favour of Brexit of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum is one of the most significant political events for Britain during the 21st century. The debate provoked major consideration to an array of topics, argued up-to, and beyond, the referendum on 23 June 2016. The referendum was originally conceived by David Cameron as a means to defeat the anti-EU faction within his own party by having it fail. Factors in the vote included sovereignty, immigration, the economy and anti-establishment politics, amongst various other influences. The result of the referendum was that 51.8% of the votes were in favour of leaving the European Union. The formal withdrawal from the EU took place at 23:00 on 31 January 2020, almost three years after Theresa May triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty on 29 March 2017.
Sovereignty
On the day of the referendum Michael Ashcroft's polling team questioned 12,369 people who had completed voting. This poll produced data that showed that 'Nearly half (49%) of leave voters said the biggest single reason for wanting to leave the European Union was "the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK". ("in the UK." meaning: "by the UK." logically implying: "on behalf of 66 million UK citizens not 508 million EU residents.") The sense that EU membership took decision making further away from 'the people' in favour of domination by regulatory bodies – in particular the European Commission, seen as the supposed key decision-taking body, is said to have been a strong motivating factor for leave voters wanting to end or reverse the process of EU influence in the UK. Immediately prior to the vote, Ipsos MORI data showed that the European Union was the third most highly ranked problem by Britons who were asked to name the most important issues facing the country, with 32% of respondents naming it as an issue.
Two years later, in December 2018, pollsters from Survation asked 1,030 people whether they approved or disapproved with the Brexit deal negotiated by EU leaders and the British government in relation to sovereignty. 35% of participants approved while 24% of participants didn't, leaving 41% either neutral or didn't know. This suggests that the majority of people either had no opinion on the issue, or could be fed up with the Brexit process dragging on.
However, Pollsters from 'UK in a Changing Europe', which conducts independent and authoritative UK-EU relations, conducted a poll in July 2018 which surveyed over 7,000 participants showing the differences between Conservative and Labour's Remain and Leave forces within the party. Leave voters, for the most part, regarded control of British laws and regulations as the most important factor in the next 5 years, with the ability to strike trade deals independently as the second most important factor. Leave voters would prioritise control and trade over immigration by 67% to 33%, and 59% to 41% respectively. They also preferred control and trade over strong economic growth by 69% to 31% and 61% to 39% respectively.
Immigration
Michael Ashcroft's election day poll of 12,369 voters also discovered that 'One third (33%) [of leave voters] said the main reason was that leaving "offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders.. According to Goodwin and Milazzo, remain voters were also more likely to decide on a vote for leave instead of remain when made aware of the 2014-2016 rising immigration.
In the decade before the Brexit referendum there was a significant increase in migration from EU countries, as outlined by the Migration Observatory: 'Inflows of EU nationals migrating to the UK stood at 268,000 in 2014, up from 201,000 in 2013. EU inflows were mainly flat for the 1991–2003 period, averaging close to 61,000 per year.' Immediately prior to the referendum, data from the University of Oxford's The Migration Observatory stated, "between June 2015 and June 2016, immigration was consistently named as the most salient issue facing the country, peaking at 56% in September 2015"
In 2015, net immigration to the UK from other EU countries was approximately 172,000, compared to 191,000 from non-EU countries. The population of the EU was around 500 million at the time of the referendum while the population of the world was 7.4 billion. Based on these figures, a mere 6.7% of the world's population accounted for 47% of immigration to the UK (or 49% according to a BBC report from 2016). Commentators have pointed out that this is unfair on non-EU immigrants, since it caused the UK Visa and Immigration service to bring in restrictions on non-EU immigration in order to keep immigration to a manageable level.
According to The Economist, areas that saw increases of over 200% in foreign-born population between 2001 and 2014 saw a majority of voters support Leave in 94% of cases. The Economist concluded 'High numbers of migrants don't bother Britons; high rates of change do.' Consistent with that notion, research suggests that areas that saw significant influx of migration from Eastern Europe following the accession of 12 mainly Eastern European countries to the European Union in 2004 saw significant growth in support for the UK Independence Party and more likely to vote to leave the European Union. Academic research investigating differences in Brexit vote among local authorities concluded that the Brexit vote was bigger in areas that had seen a large rise in the proportion of immigrants between 2004 and 2011. Similar to this, Corby, which is a relatively small town in Northamptonshire, had their non-UK-born UK population estimated to be around 25% in 2018. Concluding this, Corby only had 36% remain vote in June 2016
Goodwin and Milazzo said that "in areas where there were previously few migrants, increases in immigration will have a more noticeable effect – and will be more likely to influence political behaviour" whereas ethnically diverse areas will perceive additional immigration as having little effect. They go on to explain that the non-British population of Boston in Lincolnshire became 16 times larger between 2005 and 2015, rising from 1,000 to 16,000. Boston also had the highest vote in favour of 'leave' in the UK, at just over 75% in favour of leaving the EU, which they believe is due to the effects of immigration seeming sudden and intense. They also argue that their data suggests that if Boston had experienced the British average level of demographic change then the vote in favour of 'leave' would have been reduced by nearly 15% and they even suggest that areas such as West Lancashire may have had a majority for 'remain' if residents had experienced the average rate of demographic change.
Goodwin and Milazzo found that more than 50% of those voting leave believed that immigration negatively impacted the welfare state, economy, and national culture. Furthermore, immigration has long been a contentious issue in Britain, with scepticism over the inherent value of immigration going back to well before the UK joined even the European Economic Community in 1973 (which would later be incorporated into the EU in 1993). Britain had faced a surge in immigration in the post-war period due to the influx of people arriving from former British colonies (immigration rules had been relaxed as a way of increasing the labour supply after the war). By the mid to late 1960s, there was concern from some people that the new immigrant population were arriving in excessively large numbers and were not integrating into British society sufficiently well. This concern is most widely recognised in former British MP Enoch Powell's famous Rivers of Blood speech made in 1968, in which he warns of the dangers of mass immigration. Powell's subsequent surge in popularity is often seen as a contributing factor in the Conservative party's surprise victory in the 1970 general election. Powell was influential on prominent Brexiteer Nigel Farage, who lists the politician as one of his political heroes. although he specifically stated that it was not Powell's rivers of blood speech that inspired him. The UKIP leader told the Press Association: "You can agree or disagree with much of the Powell doctrine, but his belief in the state having less of a say over our lives, in us not having our laws made in Brussels and having sensible controls over our borders – whilst his language may seem out-of-date now, the principles remain good and true."
Demographic and cultural factors EU integration
From the early days many in politics in the UK have been unsettled and skeptical of how integrated the UK should be in the European Project and the effect it would have on UK sovereignty. According to Denis MacShane, author of Brexit: How Britain Will Leave Europe, "No one could decide if Britain should join a limited Europe, at best a common market but not a union or accept the full implication of sharing sovereignty. Thus, since 1945, there has never been a moment when leaders of British politics or the formers of public opinion have been calm and settled on Europe."
At a macro-level avoiding demographics, the United Kingdom was widely considered to be more detached from European Union than other countries for a number of reasons. This manifested in terms of geography as an island country with few shared land borders, numerous opt-outs (such as currency and Schengen), historical links to the Anglosphere and Commonwealth from which diaspora had settled in the UK. For these reasons, the UK would always be an "awkward partner" in the European Union and which filtered into the mentality of voters.
Academics James Dennison and Noah Carl argue that "the most important phenomenon to be explained vis-à-vis the referendum result in our view is that a sizeable Eurosceptic faction has remained extant in Britain over the last four decades". Using data from the Eurobarometer survey they showed that fewer Britons considered themselves European than any other EU nationality. Furthermore, they show that British trading patterns, capital flows and emigration patterns were the least Europeanised of any EU member state.
John Curtice says that if voters "felt that membership of the EU undermined Britain's distinctive identity were more likely to vote for Leave" and goes on to report that the same was true for voters "with a weak sense of European identity". Such research implies that how attached voters felt to either Britain or to the EU influenced their decision, voting in favour of whichever identity they felt more strongly attached to.