Why did Brexit Happen - When it is Not So Popular?

A look at the factors behind Brexit. Levels of migration, Local democracy, Leave and Remain campaigns. Different personalities. Effects of austerity.

About

[bullet]

I love UK.
Lived there for 11 years.
Huge part of my life.
Left there many friends (all nations), and even more good memories.
Sadly, now Im living in Netherlands, which I like as well, but it is nothing like UK.
Brexit was one of the reasons.

BTW. I'm Polish.

[alanjewell]

As an electronics engineer, I would regard the referendum result as remain, or to be more accurate 'no change'. This is because of what we call 'noise', which is spurious transient fluctuations around a true value. The 'noise' prior the the referendum was around +/-2%. In engineering you never allow a state change 'in the noise ' as it can't be related upon to represent a genuine shift. Hence you either time average it out (smooth it), or you add hysteresis. So in the case of the decision rule being 50% (that alone being very dubious for a major constitutional change), you would set the threshold at at least 52% & in the real world probably 55%.
And it was won on lies, half truths or simply no information at all but that's another story...

[henryrugeles]

I very much enjoy the intelligent analysis of your videos.

[lancewalker]

Great video on how vote leave won the referendum. However the main reason behind why some politicians wanted Brexit has a much darker basis. The UK (& in particular London-grad) had become a destination for huge amounts of Russian money. Many Russians either paid politicians or made large donations to political parties & pundits to persuade them for Brexit. They wanted much less financial regulation so they could hide or launder their money in the UK. Brexit has made a very few very wealthy individuals even richer and the rest of us poorer.

[eugeneomalley]

So much for the "advisory" nature of the vote. The illegal financial supports to the leave campaign were not investigated (e.g. Russian finance) precisely because it was an "advisory only" referendum. The decision making was delegated to parliament who pussy footed on the issue.

[piccalillipit]

*2016* "We've nothing to lose - lets vote Brexit!"

*2023* "We've nothing to eat - why did we vote Brexit?"

[normanchristie]

There was no effective opposition to Johnson who was lying in his teeth. It also showed up serious weaknesses in the Westminster system. Despite Gina Miller's success in the Supreme Court, parliamentarians didn't/couldn't rise up against Johnson. The referendum, can we actually call it that(?) was poorly constructed by Cameron rather than an independent commission as happened in the earlier referendums, didn't require a super majority and the ruling party the. Misused the result by then assuming it to be mandatory. We should have had a second vote.

[operationgoldfish]

So, what about the fact that the government's claim that leaving the EU was 'your choice' was illegal (Supreme Court - Miller vs UK Government 2017), because *such a decision can only be made by Parliament?* And that Parliamentary decision was *never made, * which led to the High Court in 2018 (Wilson v Prime Minister 2018) ruling that *the decision to leave the EU was made by Theresa May without any direction from Parliament or the people of Britain* (because the government's QC admitted that the referendum was neither binding nor legal)?

Brexit didn't happen because of the outcome of an illegally manipulated advisory pundit. *It happened because a pernicious Tory cabal (AKA the 'European Research Group) seized power and fought tooth and nail, sinking millions of taxpayers money into preventing the illegal and anti-constitutional nature of their actions being made clear.* The referendum was nothing but a means to wrangle power out of the hands of Parliament and destroy Britain for their own purposes. The legal history of Brexit and the prelude in Hansard makes it perfectly clear what the Brexitraitors, backed by Russian money, had in mind from the start. Don't make it out to be so squeaky clean. It had nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with privilege and treachery.

[nigelbriggs]

The economic consequences of leaving the free trade block were patiently obvious to all but the most economically ignorant, regrettably many of those were elected.

[lostintashkent]

Nice video! 1 further reason is that most Brits didn't properly understand how the EU actually works. My brexit voting relatives were quoting all sorts of make believe as a reason to leave e.g. commissioners enjoy lifetime tenure, the Eu-parliament is unelected, the EU Court of Justice stipulates our treatment of prisoners etc.

[thaumaturgeishere]

Cameron was so confident that he failed to brief the PR firm the Government appointed to manage the Remain Campaign! Hence the largely one-sided messaging in favour of Brexit.

[Detector]

The biggest issue was that leave somehow managed to blame all the ills on the EU. ALL other EU countries have issues BUT people there knows deep down that the domestic politicians are to blame for those issues and not the EU.

[OmarKhan-tmcn]

I hope that the outcome of the Brexit ref. serves as a reminder to everyone that their vote matters and can have dire consequences for the country. I hope the country makes educated choices detached from emotions going forward. Hopefully each party's manifesto takes centre stage in next year's election!

[ejtattersall]

Thank you for being one of the few who places proper blame on Cameron. Boris would have had nothing were it not for Cameron's reckless, incompetent decisions.

[petermartin]

In a democracy, the uninformed, unintelligent and unwise all get a vote, and self-serving politicians exploit that. Leaving the EU threw an humiliating spotlight on the sorry state of Westminster politics and the media.

[carolewood]

The rabid right wing press played an important role in bringing the disaster about.

[Cancun]

Without listening I already know he's not mentioning Cambridge Analytica even one single time.

[derekwhyle]

The only mistake was not to insist on a referendum “ super majority” of 60% for such a momentous decision. I blame the spineless Cameron for that.

[JoeMcnicholas-kivt]

Great analysis.
Another great analysis was done 5 years ago By Fintan O'Toole in his book:
"The Politics of Pain".
Mr. O'Toole won both the European Press Prize and the Orwell Prize for his writings on Brexit.

Fortunately, he was interviewed in depth about that time, so we don't have to read the whole book.
There are some really insightful points raised in this interview.

[guyh]

The British have a history of completely reversing foreign policy every few years depending on who is PM or which party is in power: Imperial Defence in 1909, Balfour declaration in 1926, Empire trade preference in 1932, Europe First in 1942, East of Suez in 1968, applications to join EEC in 1962, 1966 and 1973, Brexit in 2018 and Global Britain in 2020.
It makes it very hard for friends and allies to keep up. The Australian government is as skeptical of Britain's commitment to the Indo-Pacific as they were in 1942 and 1968. A future Labour PM is just as likely to declare that Britain's future lies with Europe as Harold Wilson did in the 60s.