1. The Brexit referendum was called by Prime Minister Cameron to appease Eurosceptic MPs, not expecting Leave to win. Neither side had plans for the outcome. 2. While some were critical of EU features, Remain supporters believed the UK would retain EU problems and create new ones by leaving. 3. The Leave vote was driven by misinformation, economic disaffection especially in peripheral areas, and an English delusion of lost empire grandeur. However, the results will damage the UK economy and influence. 4. A quick US trade deal is unlikely to offset EU trade losses. The US prioritizes "America First" and would exploit a weak UK position. Overall Brexit has left the

1. BREXIT: TRIUMPH OR
CALAMITY?
Professor dr. Brendan McSweeney,
Royal Holloway, University of London

2. AN ACCIDENTAL OUTCOME
• The referendum was called by the UK Prime Minister to
appease a cabal of xenophobic/lost-empire-lamenting
MP’s in his own party.
• Previously called ‘the bastards’ by UK Prime Minister John
Major.
• BREXIT was not the outcome intended by Cameron. He
(and just about everyone else) thought Remain would win.
• Neither Remain or Leave camps had plans for anything
else.
• For the Government there was no Plan B and for BREXITERS

3. THE EU HAS BEEN GOOD FOR
THE UK
Many
Remainers did
not dispute
that the EU had
unsatisfactory
features, but
they believed
that a post-
Brexit Britain
would retain
many of these;
would destroy
of the
attractive ones;
and create a
host of

4. WHAT PERCENTAGE VOTED FOR 1.
HARD BREXIT? 2. TO LEAVE
EURATOM?
0% - the decisions were not on the
ballot paper.

5. WHO voted
remain/leav
e?

6. THE “WILL OF THE PEOPLE”?
• Only 37% of the electorate
voted to leave the EU.
• A majority of voters in Northern
Ireland, Scotland and English
cites such as London,
Cambridge, Canterbury,
Liverpool, Manchester voted
for Remain.

7. WHO COULD VOTE
• British: Most, but not all,
British Citizens
• Non-British:
Commonwealth citizens
from 54 countries -
including Australia,
Canada, India, Pakistan
and Nigeria - could join
the electoral roll as long
are they were residents
in the UK (approx. 1
million).
• Citizens from other European
countries - apart from Ireland,
Malta and Cyprus – resident in
the UK did not get to vote
(approx. 3 million)
• 16-17 year olds;
• a large tranche of British
expatriates;
• All three categories above
could vote in the Scottish
independence referendum.
WHO COULD NOT VOTE
A GERRYMANDERED VOTE

8. COULD VOTE
• An Australian on a two year
working holiday in UK
• My Dentist: Dutch citizen; 20 years
in UK; employs 10 people; pays
substantial amount of personal and
business tax
COULD NOT VOTE
SO, FOR EXAMPLE …

10. MORE SEGMENTATION
No Gender division, but there were ethnic and religious
divisions were, and these were fractured
• Two-thirds (67%) of those describing themselves as Asian
voted Remain
• As did three-quarters (73%) of black voters.
• 7 (seven) in 10 (ten) Muslims voted Remain.
• Nearly six in ten (58%) of those describing themselves as
Christian voted Leave.
• Source: Lord Ashcroft Pools.

11. STILL MORE SEGMENTATION
• Amongst Leave supporters there was an
ideological division between uber-nationalists
(anti-immigration; protectionist) and numerically
a much smaller portion of globalist libertarians
(e.g. The IEA) who believed the opposite - that
the EU was constraining globalisation and free
markets.
• The marriage of these strange bedfellows will
not survive long. The influence of the latter is
likely to be overwhelmed by i. the dominance of
the former amongst leave supporters AND 2. the
geopolitical move to protectionism thanks to the
election of Donald Trump.

12. REMAIN ALSO A COALITION
• Remain voters were united in rejecting the aggressive nostalgia and
nationalism of many Leavers and, even if critical of aspects of the EU, in
believing that BREXIT would be much worse
• Although most Remain voters are cosmopolitan, they are divided into (i) those
indifferent to the adverse effects e.g. on traditional jobs and the creation of
greater inequalities, of ‘globalisation’ and (ii) those who were unhappy
with/opposed these effects.
• Indeed, the great majority of those publically calling for, or campaigning for, a
less unequal society even before the referendum campaign, were Remain
supporters.
• The Leave campaign, however, labelled/labels ALL Remain supporters as being
of, or supporting, the ‘elite’.
• There were/are ‘people of power’ indifferent to the plight of those ‘hung out
to dry’ on both sides.

13. • LEAVE – INDIFFERENT REMAIN - INDIFFERENT
• LEAVE – CONCERNED REMAIN - CONCERNED

14. UNQUANTIFIED SEGMENTATION
• Degrees of stupidity?
• Extent of naivety
“An irate local farmer told me he voted to leave as a
protest against EU bureaucracy that delayed payments of
his subsidies. He thought Defra was an EU department. He
didn’t realise it was The Department for Rural Affairs and
that the EU had fined our [UK] governmental department
for its incompetent administration of subsidies” (The
Independent, 2 February 2017)
On the BBC’s Question Time a woman stated that she had
changed from Remain to Leave because an EU regulation
now required all bananas to be straight. No such
regulation exists – it was one of the many falsehoods from

15. NO SINGLE EXPLANATION –
BROADER THAN THE ‘LEFT-
BEHINDS’
• The Leave vote was most
concentrated amongst those with
the least economic resources.
HOWEVER, almost half of those
who said they were ‘doing all right’
financially and almost 40% of
those describing themselves as
‘middle class’ also voted for Leave.

16. FALSELY BLAMING THE 65+

17. WHY?

18. 1. MISINFORMATION
• Decades of anti-EU propaganda
• Equivocal Labour Party leadership – Corbyn – a closet BREXITer
• Cunning, Dishonest, Leave campaign
• Inept, Visionless, Remain campaign
2. ECONOMIC ALIENATION
• Peripheralisation by 1. internationalisation; 2. technical change/automation
plus 3. continuity of neo-liberalism since 1979 – but blamed on
Europeanisation
• Failure to acquire skills/qualifications
• Despair – nothing to loose
• Giving ‘them’ a good kicking
3. AN ENGLISH DELUSION
• A crisis of identity resulting from a failure to come to terms with the loss of
empire
• Aggressive nationalism
• Intense nostalgia
• Hubris

19. 1. MISINFORMATION

20. NEWSPAPERS

21. INDIVIDUALS TEND TO BELIEVE
PROBLEMS ARE MORE PRONOUNCED
NATIONALLY THAN IN THEIR LOCAL
AREA.

22. 2. ECONOMIC ALIENATION
Many who did well out of globalization –
often with little justification - paid far too
little attention to those who did not.
Financial institutions and subservient
politicians created a financial crisis – but
they have not suffered the consequences

25. UK WAGES
• Since the global financial crisis, real wages have fallen in the
UK.
• Over 2007-15 the drop has been 10.4% - the worst, along
with Greece, among the leading OECD countries.
• By 2015 around 20% of jobs in the UK are paid less than the
voluntary living wage.
• In UK 800,000 workers are on zero-hour contracts –
increasing by 100,000 per annum.
• Over the same period in Germany real wages have risen
23%.
• The OECD average is 6.7% growth.

26. 3. AN ENGLISH DELUSION
To reduce the referendum result
to “ a howl of pain at austerity”
ignores the reality that another
major category of ‘leave’ voters
was the xenophobic affluent,
predominantly English, middle
class.

27. SIGNIFICANCE OF AFFLUENT
EUROSCEPTICS

28. EUROPHOBIA IS A SPECIFICALLY
ENGLISH PSYCHOSIS

29. "I get down on my knees every night and
thank God for making me an Englishman.
It is the greatest honour He could bestow.
After all, he might have made me a
chimpanzee, or a flea, a Frenchman or a
German!"

31. ULTIMATELY DESTROYED BY WAR
DEBT AND THE US AFTER WWII

32. BUT THE PSYCHIC LEGACY OF EMPIRE HAUNTS
THE ENGLISH TO THE PRESENT DAY, IN THE
ILLUSION OF GREATNESS AND ITS RIGHT AND
CAPABILITY TO PLAY A MAJOR GLOBAL ROLE
• The UK has “the finest
intelligence service, the bravest
armed forces, the most effective
hard and soft power ...” Theresa
May, February, 2017

33. WHAT HAS
HAPPENED?

34. • Decline in value of GBP
• Rise in prices of imports
• Increase in xenophobic attacks
• Damage to UK image for tolerance
• Demoralization of many in UK’s 3 leading sectors:
Arts, Universities, Finance Industry
• Demotivation of professional class which
ironically will be required to implement BREXIT.
• Reduction in applications by EU students
• Fewer EU applicants for UK specialist jobs
• Rise in applications for ancestral passports –
including Jews seeking German passports
• Increased dismissal of experts’ views
• Threats to leave UK by a range of firms
• Reduced levels of investment
• Utterances of extraordinary ignorance of basics
of law and trade from BREXIT aristocracy e.g. Ian
Duncan-Smith and David Davies.

35. UPSIDES?
• For those not paying from GBP funds – cheaper fees!
• That’s it!
• But what about sovereignty?
• “Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our
membership of the EU”, UK government’s White Paper, February
2017.
• The Leave aristocracy have continuously sought to
prevent discussion and scrutiny of BREXIT by the UK’s
parliament

36. WHAT
MIGHT/WILL
HAPPEN?

37. • Are BREXIT (37%) and Trump (3m votes less
than Clinton) sufficient evidence of new
post-neo-liberal era?
• As in the 1930s, are we entering a new era of
aggressive nationalism?
• This time the UK is comparatively much
weaker economically and politically and
• We know from history that aggressive
nationalism starts with hope and ends in
tears.

38. • It is impossible to predict with
certainty what the outcome of
the negotiations with the EU
and other countries such as the
US will be – will discussion take
place in a benign, or a confused
environment or with daggers
drawn? And when will it
happen?
• BUT based on what is known
here are some of my

39. • Less, not more, international trade
• More, not less, trade ‘red tape’
• Dilution of employee, consumer, and environmental protections
• Higher prices – therefore lower real income for most
• Diminished NHS
• Greatly reduced FDI – attracting the rentiers; discouraging the innovative
• Tarnished image of UK as open/tolerant
• A nastier, sadder, more divided place to live
• Some hurried and disadvantageous deals e.g. with US
• Travel restrictions to EU countries
• Acceleration of break-up of UK
• In short, prolonged chaos and inevitable decline: “Contrary to the beliefs of
some, free trade does not just happen”
• Replacement of EU immigration with increased immigration from Indian
continent and Africa?
• Major splits within Conservative and Labour parties?
• Reemergence of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland?

40. RARELY HAS THERE BEEN SUCH A
CONSENSUS AMONGST ECONOMISTS,
AS THERE IS ON THE DAMAGE BREXIT
WILL WREAK ON THE UK ECONOMY

41. BUT WON’T THERE BE A HUGE REDUCTION IN
WITHIN COUNTRY ‘RED TAPE’?: NO – EXCEPT
OF EMPLOYEE AND ENVIRONMENT
PROTECTION – AND TRADE ‘RED TAPE’ WILL
MUSHROOM

42. BUT THE WHITE PAPER SAYS THAT
THE UK WILL “PROTECT AND
ENHANCE WORKERS’ RIGHTS
• I don’t believe this. Why not?
• 1. Why have they not done so before?, and
• 2. This is what leading BREXITers have said in the past:
“British workers are the worst idlers in the world. Once
they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst
idlers in the world.” Elizabeth Truss, Secretary of State for
Justice and Lord Chancellor and Priti Patel, Secretary of
State for International Development

43. • But ‘Change Britain’ claims that leaving the EU
and striking trade deals with eight
countries/blocks would create 400,000 new
jobs in the UK.
• In short, this claim (and the report) is garbage
– deeply ignorant and deliberately misleading.
• See:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan
/03/brexit-create-4000000-jobs-economist-change-

44. BUT AFTER BREXIT WON’T THE UK
BE ABLE TRADE WITH THE REST
OF THE WORLD?
• Myth that the EU constrained UK exports: For 43 years the UK has
been a member of the EU which has just concluded a free trade deal
with Canada, has dozens of multilateral and bilateral trade
agreements, boasts the United States as its top trading partner, takes
some 44 percent of British Exports, and accounts for 22% of world
economic output. Pretty global.
• “Global Britain” is baloney (realitätsblind) from Theresa May in
Wonderland.
• Weak foundations: There are fewer than 2000 factory
establishments employing more than 200 workers in the UK. The
average manufacturing firm employs less than 10.

45. The fault is not in those stars, but in
ourselves (with apologies to William
Shakespeare)

46. WHAT ABOUT A US-UK TRADE
DEAL?

47. What is it about ‘Buy American,
hire American, America first”
that the BREXIT cabal don’t
understand?

48. • Donald Trump has rejected one of the few
things that neocons, realists, and liberal
internationalists have agreed on: that the
global economy is not a zero-sum
competition, but a mutually beneficial
growth system built on open trade and
investment.
• His views on economic policy – and
international relations more widely (views he
has consistently expressed since 1987) is
close to that of Charles Lindbergh and the
American Firsters’ 1940s admiration for
dictators and the mercantilist and isolationist
policies.
• The fantasy US-UK ‘special relationship’ will

49. A RAPID AND FAVOURABLE US-UK
TRADE DEAL WOULD NOT COME CLOSE
TO MAKING UP FOR LOSS OF FREE
TRADE WITH EU - IN ANY EVENT THE
DEAL WILL NOT BE FAVOURABLE

50. US-UK TRADE DEAL?
• Tariffs on EU (including UK) exports to US are mainly
very low – so what would a bilateral deal achieve?
• Trump’s ‘America First’ has disincentives to
remove/reduce these tariffs – given past history of
US/UK deals (e.g. extradition) - it is possible that the
UK will lower/remove tariffs on (largely agricultural)
US produce with an unequal change from the US.

51. US-UK TRADE DEAL?
• Trade deals aren’t just about tariffs. Trade deals often seek to
remove regulations.
Likely outcomes:
• Removal of bans on importing (and use in UK) of: crops
sprayed with any one of 82 pesticides which are banned in the
EU on health and environmental grounds; crops with more
than maximum residue levels; chickens disinfected with
chlorine i.e. end of hygiene from farm to fork; unlabeled GM
crops; use beef and pork infused with synthetic growth
hormones; livestock fed with animal byproducts. Unrestricted
use of antibiotics.
• Accelerated privatization of the NHS
• Emasculation of any UK industrial strategy
• Other countries will demand same concessions

52. NOT THIS THIS
BUT SURELY A MAJOR UPSIDE WOULD
BE GREATER EXPORTS OF UK
MANUFACTURED CARS TO THE US?

53. UK – EASY PREY
• A quick trade deal with the US would be trumpeted as the
(re)arrival of the UK as a new trading partner on the world stage
and a triumph for BREXIT, but …
• Even before the arrival of President Trump, the US had a record
of making, quick deals - averaging one and half years of ‘talks’.
• That is, capitulation by the other side masquerades as
negotiations.
• A quick UK-US deal would reveal and signal that the UK is easy
prey.
• All of the evidence indicates that the BREXIT aristocracy,
including the UK’s unelected Prime Minister, is prepared to
sacrifice the economy (growth, jobs, etc.) to maintain political

55. AN ALLIANCE OF XENOPHOBES AND
TURKEYS VOTING FOR CHRISTMAS HAVE
PRESSED GANGED THE REST OF THE UK
ONTO A SHIP OF FOOLS

56. BRITAIN – AN IDIOCRACY

57. FURTHER READING AND
VIEWING
•
Discussion forum in Socio-Economic Review (2016,14.4)–
https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/doi/10.1093/ser/mww0
43/2896901/Brexit-understanding-the-socio-economic-
origins
• Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy’s depiction of individuals
who both relentlessly pursue their own self-enrichment, and
yet regularly engage in actions that are both inexplicable and
self-destructive.
• 1984, George Orwell
• http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/parlaiment
s-brexit-shame.html
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38813629
• http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-mp-ken-clarke-
tears-9728434
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfqSFQlDae8