The Leave vote gave voice to those whose dissatisfaction had been muted by the rules of UK electoral politics. It represented, amongst other things, a howl of protest from people who had given up on the political process and who turned out to demand that they should no longer be overlooked. In so doing, they transformed our politics. The referendum catalysed a division in British politics which, while not new, had hitherto not structured party competition decisively. That role had been played by class. As Peter Pulzer famously put it, ‘class is the basis of British party politics; all else is embellishment and detail’. However, the 2016 vote saw similar proportions of left- and right-wing voters opt for Leave (52% and 48%, respectively). People were divided not by class but by social outlook, with 72% of social conservatives but only 21% of social liberals voting to leave.

This chapter offers a detailed reading of Sophocles’ Trachiniae. It begins by analysing the characters’ use of theological and philosophical discourse in the tragedy’s first half, paying close attention to its function and its relationship with its broader dramatic context. It then focuses on the scenic experiences and trajectories of the characters (in particular Deianeira), demonstrating that the play, through its presentation of the interplay between knowledge and ignorance and the experience of reversal, dramatises traditional Greek notions of vicissitude and short-sightedness. Finally, the chapter attempts to trace some of the broader patterns and forces underlying and shaping the play’s events, the means by which these patterns emerge and the characters’ efforts to understand them. It argues that the characters are all, in their own way, pitiful victims of a shifting world that cannot be bent to their will, and is governed by distant, uncaring gods.

Parliament is the central institution of UK democracy. It is both a representative body, reflecting the diverse views of the nation, and its senior decision-making forum. In the years after the Brexit referendum, when both the public and the governing party were deeply divided, Parliament struggled to navigate these representative and decision-making roles. The arguments, both inside Parliament and about Parliament’s role, were frequently heated and controversial. Many Brexiteers had argued in favour of boosting Parliament’s sovereignty, and yet the institution emerged battered and bruised from the process – having been repeatedly maligned, shut down by a Prime Minister and reinstated by the Supreme Court, and described as ‘broken’ on the opening page of the 2019 Conservative manifesto. This chapter explores how such contradictions came about. It concludes that the blame laid at Parliament’s door by campaigners, journalists and politicians was often unfair, and damaging of public trust. The Brexit process left much rebuilding to be done.

Ten years on since the referendum, my feelings are bittersweet. We wrestled victory out of the jaws of defeat, but then promptly allowed it to be snatched back off us again. For a while it looked like we were heading for a true crisis of democracy, where the national institutions that campaigned against Brexit tried hard to reverse it, before another democratic event – the 2019 election – delivered a decisive second mandate for change. But, apart from those two electoral high points, many of the gains have been attritional and chipped away at over the years by the very system the supporters of Brexit wanted to change. There were times when it felt impossible, but in the end the UK did get a deal that resembled the outcome people voted for. But the change the country was yearning to see has only happened in parts, and while not all that change flows directly from the Brexit result, it comes from the same political undercurrent.

Sophocles’ extant tragedies are all characterised by a pervasive concern with the relationship between divine and mortal and with the conditions of human existence in a world dominated by powerful, inscrutable and unpredictable gods. Each play enacts this concern within, and through, its unique narrative, dramatic and communicative structures, which instantiate specific theological and philosophical questions and open them up to their audiences.

The story of Brexit in Scotland was about whether – and, if so, how – Scotland’s vote to Remain in the EU was to be acknowledged. In Albert Hirschman’s terminology, was it to be through the exercise of voice – a role for Scotland’s representatives in influencing the form of EU withdrawal and its domestic implications or through exit, by triggering a second independence referendum? In the end it was neither. The UK-wide majority to Leave the EU prevailed, with no concessions to the Scottish government’s preferred form of Brexit and no second independence referendum. This result exposed radically conflicting visions of the nature of the UK’s territorial constitution – a Union State based on Scottish popular sovereignty, or a Unitary State based on the sovereignty of the UK Parliament. A Brexit premised on the restoration of Parliamentary sovereignty and the desire to ‘take back control’ laid bare the subaltern nature of the Union-State account and the fragility of Scotland’s constitutional protections within the Union. Devolution in Scotland has been left diminished and the pathway towards independence mired in uncertainty.

This chapter analyses how attitudes towards Brexit and expectations and evaluations of its consequences have changed since the 2016 referendum. It begins by charting how people have responded when asked by pollsters how they would vote if there were another referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. It then examines how expectations and evaluations of the consequences of Brexit have evolved in respect of the three issues that were central to the choices voters made in 2016 – the economy, immigration and Britain’s sovereignty. It then further assesses how far these evaluations enable us to understand how support for Brexit has evolved over the last decade. The chapter concludes by assessing whether the 2016 referendum provided what is likely to prove a decisive and enduring outcome, thereby settling the debate about Britain’s relationship with the EU.

The ‘Remain’ reaction to the 2016 referendum vote to ‘Leave’ was extraordinary, particularly in the wealthier parts of London and in university towns: consternation, grief, anger, alarm. Even today, I get dropping into my inbox every month articles by British and overseas academics purporting to analyse and provide insights into the referendum and its consequences. Among other things, these remind me of my own naïvety. After the referendum had produced a clear outcome, I expected that, both in Britain and in Europe, those in charge of our political affairs would respect the judgement of the electorate, accept the new reality and make it work. The United Kingdom, I thought, could not be treated as cavalierly as France, Greece and the Netherlands (where referendum votes were bypassed) or Ireland (told to vote again and vote differently).

Ten years on, I’d still make the case for leaving the EU. On reflection I’m proud that a majority of voters valued democratic accountability over short-term practical and economic advantages. I regret that Leave supporters were labelled old, stupid, little Englanders. This was about identity, community and belonging. It’s better to acknowledge that this is something we all need, rather than sneer. Could we have taken a more pro-active part in shaping subsequent events? The government of the day called the referendum, and the government of the day owned the outcome. Arguably something like Change Britain might have come into being immediately after the referendum, but practically it’s hard to see how the cross-party nature of the organisation could have been maintained, or indeed financed. The EU referendum could have been planned better both before and after the votes were counted. Professor Alan Renwick at UCL convened a group of politicians, academics and practitioners to reflect on what might be considered good practice in the future. Direct participatory democracy can unleash forces which become difficult to reign in, even in mature parliamentary democracies.

Perhaps the greatest turning point for Parliamentary involvement in the Brexit process was the 2017 general election. Having won an unlikely majority in 2015, Cameron bequeathed to May a relatively functional dynamic in Parliament. But, tempted by artificial sentiment in polling, May and her team decided to call the 2017 election in an attempt to secure a greater popular mandate for her administration. That decision was fatal. The prior polling was erroneous, or at the very least misread the public appetite for an election, and the campaign May ran was self-defeating. The loss of the Conservative majority at the election left May in the treacherous position of needing a confidence and supply deal with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Even in normal times, the instability of such an arrangement creates complications and often disaster for the ruling party. When you add in the unique circumstances of Brexit, plus the fact that the Northern Irish questions in Brexit were the most difficult and contentious elements of the negotiations, May’s dependence on the DUP was fatal.

It was supposed to be a relaxing holiday, a week away cruising the Adriatic in a chartered yacht as the guest of a friend with far deeper pockets, and thus a lifestyle more sumptuous than I had ever experienced. There were just ten of us aboard, some meeting for the first time but, as one day slid into the next under the hot June sun, we started to bond, confide and laugh over the wine-fuelled meals stretching over hours. And so it was that one lunchtime, as the conversation was providing nothing more than a soft and sociable soundtrack to the stunning Croatian coastline, suddenly everything changed. Brexit came up.

Painful as it is for a Remain campaigner like me to admit, the EU has always been dire when it comes to policies for supporting innovation and technology. Even more painfully, things have worsened over the past ten years. Longstanding structural weaknesses in EU innovation policy date from well before the Brexit referendum in 2016. The European Union had dismally failed to create a regulatory environment conducive to technological innovation. As I found whenever I visited to Brussels as a No. 10 adviser under David Cameron, the policy instincts of European Commission officials were overwhelmingly rooted in market stability and risk avoidance – values that, while defensible in themselves, often produced unintended consequences for fast-moving sectors such as digital technology and life sciences. Take the EU’s data privacy rules, which were debated and developed for years before being finally implemented in 2018. As Cameron’s team repeatedly warned at the time, the compliance costs fell disproportionately on small and early-stage firms. Even before fines or litigation, the administrative burden for smaller organisations typically ran into tens of thousands of pounds.

‘The price of victory’ was how Jean Monnet, pioneer of European integration, described Britain’s self-exclusion from the foundational years of European integration. As a late entrant (1973), it was obliged to accept many arrangements that did not suit its interests. Margaret Thatcher and her successors tried to negotiate opt-outs to protect what they deemed Britain’s vital interests as the European Community developed into the European Union (EU), until David Cameron tried to resolve the issue once and for all through renegotiation and an in-or-out referendum. Cameron was outwitted by Boris Johnson – a brilliant political showman – but he in turn had no strategy for his surprise Brexit victory. The chapter explores the struggles of successive Tory premiers – especially May, Johnson and Sunak – to hold their party together and get Brexit done, without isolating Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. After the Tories lost the 2024 election, the new Labour government was left on the sidelines of the EU, trying to sort out piecemeal opt-ins – an ironic inversion of Britain’s posture when it was inside the EU.

Sterling depreciated by around 10 per cent on a trade-weighted basis immediately after the vote, raising prices faced by consumers by an estimated 2.9 per cent in the two years after, with a consequent effect on reducing real living standards. For firms, the referendum and its aftermath of political instability increased uncertainty and raised barriers to investment. We focus mostly on the longer-term consequences. We start by outlining, briefly, the key economic claims and forecasts made at the time of the referendum. These matter not just for historical purposes but because ‘consensus’ estimates and assumptions made by key policymakers, notably at the Office for Budget Responsibility, have changed little since then. We then present some of the basic data on UK economic performance over the period and draw comparisons with similar countries. We then consider in more detail what has happened to trade and business investment, the key routes through which any economic impacts are likely to have been transmitted. We briefly review claims that big regulatory changes might have had positive effects.