Keep qualms and carry on: a decade after Brexit
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What triggered the Brexit referendum and how did the vote tally?
The Economist.
Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Blore. Today we're devoting our show to the moment ten years ago that changed Britain.
The total number of votes cast in favour of remain. was sixteen million one hundred and forty one thousand two hundred and forty one. The total number of votes cast in favour of Leave was seventeen million four hundred and ten seven hundred and forty two. This means that the UK has voted to leave the European Union.
In the referendum of June 23, 2016, Britons voted for Brexit by 52% to 48%. Those who campaigned to leave the European Union promised a future free of external interference, ripe with opportunity. Those who wanted Britain to stay part of the EU, including us here at The Economist, warned of disastrous economic damage. Ten years on, how have those predictions fared? And with the impact still very much being felt, and Britain about to get a new Prime Minister, where does the country go from here? Helping me answer those questions is Daniel Franklin, one of our senior editors. Hello Daniel.
Where is he?
Daniel, it's already been a tumultuous week in British politics. Does the fact that we're about to get our seventh prime minister in a decade have anything to do with how destabilizing Brexit has been?
Well, it's ironic, isn't it, that Britain is in a way becoming more European. Here we are with our seventh Prime Minister about to come into office and we're sort of becoming Italy. And meanwhile, Italy looks an oasis of stability. But seriously, I think it has a lot to do with the specifics of Sakir Starmer. But it doesn't help that the legacy that Britain has had from ten years of Brexit has made governing Britain so much harder. And so to some extent Brexit hasn't helped and does, if you look at it collectively, certainly account for the fact that we've had quite so many changes of leadership over the past ten years.
We'll come on to the impact in a minute, but just tell me what you remember about that day ten years ago and th when the votes were then coming in.
Well, I was actually out of the country, wasn't in Britain, I was in France. And it was surreal. I remember very clearly when the results started to come in and it became, I think, quickly clear which way the vote was going. And then I remember that there was a sense of shock. Certainly it was not an outcome I had wanted. And the next day you had to carry on. I was chairing an event and you had to carry on as if nothing had happened except something extraordinary had happened. And at least one of my panelists on the panel I was moderating pulled out because there was no corporate line yet on Brexit.
I too was out of the country. I was reporting in China at the time, and I remember just busily refreshing and refreshing that BBC page, hoping those votes would shift, but of course they didn't. Now the Economist, of course, voted to remain at the time we wanted to stay as part of the European Union. Just explain that.
I think we saw it and still see it as a great act of self harm and monumental folly. It was a very strange moment in British politics. A sort of perfect storm of things that combined to make both in the political leaderships of the various parties, in the state of the economy, and in the state of Europe, frankly, that meant that this was a very bad moment to have that referendum. The results which we'll talk about were not as immediately dramatic as perhaps many people predicted, but cumulatively it's been a painful process and one that's led to a lot of inward focus in Britain over a time when we really needed to be coping with what was happening in the real world beyond us.
So we'll get to that cumulative effect in a minute, but in the meantime, Jason has been looking at what led up to that seismic vote.
The real starting gun for Brexit was a speech in January of twenty thirteen by then Prime Minister David Cameron.
We will give the British people a referendum. With a very simple in or out choice, to stay in the European Union on these new terms or to come out altogether.
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