To many people around the world, the United Kingdom’s vote, on Thursday, to quit the European Union came as a great shock. But the result, with fifty-two per cent of voters in favor leaving the E.U., shouldn’t have been such a surprise. … The Guardian has published some telling charts […] Read more »
How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday … and why
The UK has voted to leave the European Union. On referendum day I surveyed 12,369 people after they had voted to help explain the result – who voted for which outcome, and what lay behind their decision. CONT. Lord Ashcroft Read more »
The tea party spirit crossed the Atlantic during the Brexit campaign
… The winds of populism are sweeping across the Western world, and there was little reason to suppose that even an ancient and stable democracy such as Britain would develop an immunity to this pandemic. The mad-as-hell populism that in large part inspired the “leave” vote was instinctively nativist and […] Read more »
The Brexit referendum: Britain between the past and the future
… The referendum was sparked by demands from segments of the Conservative political elite for relief from the regulations of the E.U. in the name of national sovereignty. But focus groups organized for the vote revealed that most ordinary people had no idea what sovereignty actually means. Instead, the issue […] Read more »
What explains Britain’s Brexit shocker?
The result of the U.K. referendum on European Union membership has been a surprise and massive shock to so-called “expert” opinion. And not just to academic opinion: The betting markets, which are supposed to be inhabited by experts at setting odds, were assigning just a one-in-seven probability to a majority […] Read more »
Is ‘Brexit’ the Precursor to a Donald Trump Presidency? Not So Fast
Britain’s vote to withdraw from the European Union sent a shudder through the capital on Friday as the forces of economic nationalism and working-class fury forced American political leaders to wonder: Could it happen here? Driving the “Brexit” vote were many of the same impulses that have animated American politics […] Read more »