Why Britain voted to leave (if it does...) by Charles Grant
At the time of writing, neither side has a clear advantage in Britain’s referendum campaign on EU membership. The British could easily vote for Brexit. If they do, this is the story to be written on June 24th. The zeitgeist was hardly propitious for a referendum campaign on the EU. In many parts of Europe and the US, immigration and trade had become unpopular causes. Globalisation was thought to benefit elites but worsen inequality and threaten the livelihoods of poorer people. The financial crisis had made people think that whereas they paid for the losses, fat cats did nicely. Thus support for populists like Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage grew. Many Europeans viewed the EU as the friend of establishment interests. So when, during the UK referendum campaign, the IMF, the OECD, the Bank of England, the G7, five former heads of NATO, the US president and a lot of men in dark suits told the British that the EU was good for them, it made little impact. George Osborne, the British chancellor, had tried to dissuade Prime Minister David Cameron from promising a referendum. But Cameron was right that sooner or later there had to be one. Given the increasing EU-phobia within the Conservative Party, nobody could have succeeded him as leader without making such a pledge. So in February 2013 Cameron promised a referendum before the end of 2017. He had principled justifications: as long as the British voted, as he expected, for
continuity, the referendum would resolve tensions in the UK-EU relationship and enable Britain to play a more constructive role. And less principled reasons: the promise would (he prayed) keep the Conservative Party together, and limit the defection of its voters to UKIP. Cameron assumed that, during a referendum campaign of a few months, he and other Remainers could overcome the hostility of British voters to the EU. But that euroscepticism was deeply engrained, having been reinforced over decades by slanted stories in newspapers and by politicians (and not only Tory ones) who saw knocking the EU as a vote-winner. Few political leaders had dared to make the case for the EU. And during the five years of the Cameronled coalition government, most Conservative ministers had spoken negatively about the EU. The government’s review of EU competences, carried out in 2012-14, was a missed opportunity. This serious exercise, involving outside experts (including the CER and eurosceptic think-tanks), sought to establish whether the EU’s various powers harmed or helped British interests. The review’s 32 reports concluded that the balance of competences between Britain and the EU was about right. Cameron could have used the review