In the years since the Brexit referendum, many have felt deceived or misled on what exactly they were voting for. New data reveals that 60% of British gen Z-ers want a new vote on rejoining the EU. We spoke to experts to find out what impact Brexit has actually had on Britain.
A lesson from the missing youth vote
Knut Roder, Associate Head of Institute of Law and Social Sciences
One of the most striking features of the Brexit referendum was the missing youth vote. While the overall average UK turnout was 72.2% of registered voters, a lower number – estimated around 64% – of those aged 18 to 25 participated in the referendum. This may have had a significant impact on the referendum’s outcome, as a large majority of 71% of young voters who did take part voted to Remain in the European Union. In contrast, older voters – particularly those aged over 65 – were much more likely to support Leave, with 64% voting for Brexit.
So why did 18–25-year-olds shun the Brexit referendum? While low youth participation is often attributed to political disengagement or lack of knowledge, recent research suggests that Brexit created strong “issue-based social identities”. This not only reduced a highly complex issue such as EU membership to a binary choice, but also tended to favour higher turnout among voters with long-standing and emotionally entrenched views.
The result was largely predictable. Many young people lacked the certainty needed to take a firm stance and were less able to express a clear preference at the ballot box. This was in contrast to older voters, who more readily formed strong views that were reinforced and amplified by the Brexit campaign. Younger voters tended to be more cautious and less confident and were therefore far less driven to take part in the vote, as they were largely less emotionally invested in the issue. And although young voters had the potential to influence the outcome, they ultimately did not do so.
Young protestors took to the streets in 2016, after the referendum result was announced. DrimaFilm/Shutterstock
For today’s 18–25-year-olds who were too young to vote, as well as those now aged 28-35 who missed the referendum, the economic effects of Brexit have been especially significant and continue to negatively shape their opportunities. The UK’s economy is estimated to be 6-8% smaller than it would have been without leaving the EU, meaning less job opportunities. This has translated into lower investment, slower wage growth and fewer jobs than would otherwise have been available. This has disproportionately affected younger generations entering the labour market.
For this reason, it is not surprising that recent polling suggests that around over 80% of voters aged 18 to 25 would vote to rejoin the European Union if given the opportunity. As a lesson for the future, it will be vital to to recognise and represent the interests of younger generations. They are now paying a large price for a referendum that ultimately failed to serve or enhance their interests.
Europe – what is it good for?
Simon Usherwood, Professor of Politics & International Studies
Given how much of the past decade has been spent talking (and arguing) about Europe, it’s not immediately obvious how little has changed in the way British politicians and the public talk on the subject. The level of understanding of how the EU works and what it wants remains very poor in political and media circles. There is a strong sense that “Europe” is somewhere far away from the UK and strangely unknowable. Consider how invested and detailed debate has been about American politics, when the EU is as important in geostrategic, political and economic terms.
The unfurling of the withdrawal process is readily understood in these terms. “Get Brexit done” was a winning slogan in 2019 not only because Boris Johnson was suggesting a way through seemingly intractable barriers in parliament, but also because it came with the suggestion that the UK would not have to think about the matter any more. Job done, move on.
This continuing failure to internalise the European question into political debate means that much of it is couched almost exclusively in terms of what the UK wants, or more precisely, in terms of narrow party political advantage; witness the mild obsession of some MPs and Lords with making it easier for artists to tour the EU. This is rather than any sense of how it might be sold to EU counterparts: the recent proposal for a single market in goods was no more warmly received in Brussels than when it first come up in immediate aftermath of the referendum.
In the broadest terms, neither British politicians nor the general public are any closer to knowing what our European relations are for, and how they embody a vision of Britain’s place in the world, than they were in 2016. And as a result, the UK is likely to continue being reactive and uncertain about how to handle one of its most important international relationships.
In an age when geopolitics looks ever less stable, this imposes an additional burden on a government that needs as much stability as it can get in order to tackle the bread-and-butter issues that will generate public approval.
The invention of a new political identity
Sara Hobolt, Sutherland Chair in European Institutions
The Brexit referendum did more than redefine Britain’s relationship with the European Union. It created two new political tribes: Leavers and Remainers. Ten years on these identities remain powerful and widely held. Almost two-thirds of Britons identify as either a Leaver or a Remainer and these new attachments are often stronger than people’s traditional loyalties to political parties.
The party Reform UK has made Brexit central to their messaging and ideology. M. W. Hunt/Shutterstock
The Brexit divide exemplifies something rare in politics: the birth of new political identities. Before 2016, nobody thought of themselves as a Leaver or a Remainer, and most people in Britain held only weak or ambivalent views about the EU. Yet the act of choosing in the referendum transformed a policy preference into something more deeply felt.
As we show in our new book Tribal Politics: How Brexit divided Britain, Brexit identities continue to shape how people view themselves, each other and the world around them. These identities have created not only a sense of belonging with those on their side, but also hostility towards the opposing group. For example, people consistently ascribe positive traits, such as intelligence and honesty, to their own group, whereas they label the other side as hypocritical, selfish and easily fooled.
Leavers and Remainers are also deeply divided in their assessments of Brexit’s consequences, despite sharing the same economic and political environment. When it comes to perceptions of the economy, for example, Remainers are generally pessimistic, while Leavers tend to be optimistic. Moreover, Remainers are more likely to blame Brexit for economic downturns, whereas Leavers tend to attribute them to other causes. Because perceptions are filtered through this Brexit lens, the biases do not merely reflect tribal divisions; they continue to reinforce them. Politically, this matters too. British politics may appear fragmented and volatile, but Brexit identity continues to be a powerful predictor of how voters move between parties.
Ten years on, Brexit remains a powerful reminder that political identities can outlast the events that created them, and that the question of Britain’s relationship with Europe has therefore not been fully settled.
Conformity, not economy
Paula Surridge,Professor of Political Sociology
If economic factors are the “first” dimension of political values – having dominated post war politics in the form of the traditional left-right divide – the way in which people voted in the Brexit referendum brought the politics of the “second” dimension into the foreground. This second dimension is related to ideas of authority and tolerance of difference. Critically, in the UK in 2016, voters who supported leave were more likely to favour obedience and conformity while those who supported remain were more likely to favour freedom and difference.
The Brexit referendum did not create this divide, but it brought to the centre of British political discourse and gave people the labels of leave and remain – alongside left and right – as shortcuts to describe and understand both their own political values and those of the parties seeking to represent them.
Read more: Ten years on from the Brexit vote, the UK is still a country of Leavers and Remainers
Ten years on, party competition has been fundamentally changed by the prominence of this non-economic divide, as it crosscuts traditional political debate creating distinct positions within the electorate that lacked obvious party representation in the two party system.
For Labour and the Conservatives, this became a particular challenge as both parties had previously held their coalition of voters together with competition on the left-right economic divide. But both were divided into Leave and Remain parts (or in the language of values authoritarian and liberal parts). Meanwhile challenger parties such as Reform UK on the Leave side and the Green party (as well as the Liberal Democrats and the SNP) on the Remain side have been able to pull apart the old party coalitions along this divide, leading to a fragmenting electoral landscape.
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