This paper examines the effect of post-Brexit UK trade agreements on devolved regulatory autonomy. It does so by: (i) carrying out a comprehensive mapping exercise of the overlaps between such agreements and devolved matters; (ii) analysing the domestic legal framework for the implementation of international trade commitments in devolved law; and (iii) identifying the extent to which trade agreements have affected devolved competences and/or caused substantive changes to devolved legislation. The paper demonstrates that UK trade agreements have rarely resulted in significant changes to devolved legislation. This outcome is attributable not only to the limited regulatory ambition of the agreements concluded so far, but also to the distinctive role played by UK domestic implementing legislation in shaping the scope of devolved autonomy. In particular, it shows how the interaction between international trade commitments and the UK’s implementation framework operates as a ‘double bind’ on devolved autonomy.

A growing number of governments are seeking to return control from supranational authorities to the state. Many of them wish to do so without sacrificing the benefits of deep international cooperation. But this desire to increase national control while maintaining cooperation – which we term ‘sovereigntist internationalism’ – is often frustrated in practice. We argue that this is due to a ‘trust paradox’ these governments face when their ideological commitments push them towards trust-based institutional arrangements while simultaneously rendering them less trusting and less trustworthy. We illustrate our argument with a case study of the Brexit negotiations during Theresa May’s premiership from 2016 to 2019. Drawing on elite interviews, we show how the UK government sought to transpose existing forms of economic cooperation into looser institutional arrangements but failed to convince the European Commission that enough trust could be generated to make the continuation of deep cooperation viable without strong control mechanisms. Our argument advances debates in International Relations (IR) by, first, explaining governments’ sometimes contradictory preferences for institutional designs; second, showing that different actors need different levels of trust to achieve similar levels of cooperation; and, third, improving our understanding of how populist actors view international institutions.

Depression is the most common mental illness and its profound impact on cognition and decision‐making has implications for political judgement. However, those implications are unclear in the case of referendums offering a choice between status quo and change. On one hand, one component of depression is the kind of life dissatisfaction associated with voting for change. Yet cognitive models also portray depression sufferers as biased towards the status quo: they are less inclined to research change, more pessimistic about its benefits and more likely to exaggerate its potential costs. In this paper, we use data from Understanding Society to examine the impact of those cross‐pressures on support for Brexit. Prior to the referendum, while life dissatisfaction and generally poor health predicted support for Leaving the European Union (EU), those diagnosed with depression were disproportionately likely to support Remain. Supporting our claim that the latter was a sign of status quo bias, this difference disappeared once the result was in and leaving the EU had become the widespread expectation. The study highlights the unexplored importance of mental health for political judgements, emphasises the multidimensionality of conditions like depression and illustrates the psychological role of status quo bias in referendum voting.

Public support for Brexit has declined since the 2016 referendum. We argue that part of this decline is due to cohort replacement where many older voters (who support Brexit) have passed away, while younger voters (who oppose Brexit) have entered the electorate. Using a series of original YouGov surveys from 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022, each representative of the UK electorate, we first demonstrate the large and stable differences in Brexit support between younger and older voters. Next, we employ demographic decomposition calculations to estimate that cohort replacement alone accounts for approximately one third of the decline in aggregate Brexit support in just 6 years (with two thirds of the decline being explained by within‐cohort changes). Furthermore, by combining our data on Brexit support with Office for National Statistics cohort projections up to 2030, we derive testable hypotheses about the pressure that cohort replacement will continue to put on Brexit support over the next decade across a wide range of potential scenarios. Altogether, our study demonstrates the powerful role that cohort replacement plays in shaping British (and European) politics in the post‐Brexit world.

Mass emails are frequently used by advocacy groups to mobilise supporters to lobby legislators. But how effective are they at inducing constituent‐to‐legislator lobbying when the stakes are high? We test the efficacy of a large‐scale email campaign conducted by the UK's main anti‐Brexit organisation. In 2019, the group prominently displayed a ‘Write to your MP’ tool on their website and assigned 119,362 supporters represented by legislators with incongruent views to one of four email messages encouraging them to write to their MP or a control condition (no email). Messages varied across two factors: whether the MP's incongruent position was highlighted, and if urgency was emphasised. We find that 3.4 per cent of treatment subjects contacted their representative, compared to 0.1 per cent of those in the control, representing an additional 3,344 emails sent to MPs. We show that there was no substitution away from the most frequently used online legislator contact platform in the United Kingdom. While, on average, position and urgency cues had no marginal effects above the standard email, the most engaged supporters were more mobilised when informed that their MP held incongruent views. This study shows that advocacy groups can use low‐cost communication techniques to mobilise supporters to lobby representatives when the stakes are high.

To explain political divisions within British society, the current scholarship highlights the importance of the ‘winners’ and ‘left‐behind’ of political economic transformations. Yet, the impact of widespread absolute intergenerational social mobility in the past half century, which resulted in socio‐economic gains or losses for many, has not been systematically addressed. Our paper assesses how intergenerationally mobile voters’ positions in the Brexit referendum differ from their non‐mobile counterparts. We differentiate between the effects of social origins, social mobility and destination position. To do so, we model data from Understanding Society with a diagonal reference model. We show that origins are nearly as important as current socio‐economic positions for predicting the probability of voting to ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ in the Brexit referendum. We find that a first‐generation graduate would be up to 10 percentage points less likely to vote ‘Remain’ than a graduate whose parents also went to university.

Affective polarization is increasingly evident around the world. This has been attributed in part to residential segregation by partisanship. The ‘Big Sort’ has meant that neighbourhoods in the United States, and elsewhere, have become more homogenous in terms of vote. Yet there is little systematic evidence on the relationship between homogenous partisan neighbourhoods and affective polarization. Does living among fellow partisans make people more negative towards the other side? In this Research Note, we use unique data from Britain to show that while people accurately recognize that their local area is more or less politically homogenous, neighbourhood political homogeneity is not correlated with any measure of affective polarization. These findings are robust to the type of political divide (partisanship or Brexit identity), the level of geography, length of residence and controls for ideology and social characteristics. We therefore suggest that while geographical sorting is an important phenomenon, it is unlikely to be a major cause of affective polarization.

A close connection between public opinion and policy is considered a vital element of democracy. However, legislators cannot be responsive to all voters at all times with regard to the policies the latter favour. We argue that legislators use their speaking time in parliament to offer compensatory speech to their constituents who might oppose how they voted on a policy, in order to re‐establish themselves as responsive to the public's wishes. Leveraging the case of Brexit, we show that legislators pay more attention to constituents who might be dissatisfied with how they voted. Furthermore, their use of rhetorical responsiveness is contingent on the magnitude of the representational deficit they face vis‐à‐vis their constituency. Our findings attest to the central role of parliamentary speech in maintaining responsiveness. They also demonstrate that communicative responsiveness can substitute for policy responsiveness.

What does Brexit really mean? We examine what people expect from the Brexit deal, highlighting three key findings. First, while trade is the key policy priority among the British electorate, opinion is divided on whether the UK should leave the customs union. Second, the public is split on the potential trade-off between remaining in the European single market and the ability to control free movement of people across the borders. Third, Britons are opposed to sharing welfare benefits with others, but tend to support EU citizens living, working and doing business in the UK. However, they expect greater access to welfare for UK citizens in European countries compared to EU citizens in the UK.

This article suggests that common arguments questioning the legitimacy of the first Brexit referendum prove flawed, as do certain others supporting the legitimacy of a second referendum. A different case for a second referendum is offered that would have added to the legitimacy of the first, but the opportunity for which has now passed. Nevertheless, it might be legitimate to overturn the first referendum through a normal parliamentary process should there be a significant level of Bremorse among the public, or a general election supporting a change of policy.

Racism and xenophobia are no longer isolated issues affecting only small portions of a society. Rather, these issues are now at the forefront of debate and have assumed a position on the frontlines of political warfare. In 2016, both the UK and the USA found themselves embroiled in bitter battle, a battle wherein the citizens themselves became their own worst enemies. The Leave/Stay campaigns in the UK and the 2016 US presidential campaign precipitated a rebirth of nationalism, reinvigorating entire populations and charming even the casual observer into political action and discourse. Yet in both cases, what began as an endeavour to serve the needs of the citizenry morphed into a battleground of derision and division. As this article reveals, the parallels between campaigns are not merely provocative they are disarming.

This article compares the formation of national preferences and interstate bargains for the two historical decisions on British membership, the accession of the UK to the European Communities and British exit from the European Union. While both resemble in their procedure to overcome intra-party division by announcing a referendum about the outcome of interstate bargains, the closer inspection suggests a transformation from a socioeconomic toward ideological foundation of the national preference on British membership and from intergovernmental bargaining effectiveness toward two-level game (in)voluntary defection.