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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
Welcome to the People Power Politics podcast brought to you by cedar, the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham. Welcome to the People Power Politics podcast brought to you by cedar, the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham. My name is Tim Horton and I'm a Professor of Comparative and European Politics at the University of Birmingham and a Deputy Director of cedar, and I'm going to be the host for this episode. It is my great pleasure to welcome Maria Sobolewska, Monika Brusenbach Maislova and Charlotte Galpin. Maria is professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester. Welcome to the podcast, Maria.
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A
Lovely to be here. Thanks Tim.
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B
Monika is Associate professor in the Department of International Relations and European Studies at Masaryt University in BRNO in the Czech Republic. Welcome to the podcast, Monika.
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C
Thank you so much for the invitation team. It's a real pleasure to be here.
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B
And Charlotte Galpin is Associate professor in German and European Politics and my departmental colleague here at the University of Birmingham. Welcome to the podcast, Charlotte.
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D
Thanks very much for having me.
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B
Anniversaries provide opportunities to take stock and reflect it is now 10 years since voters in the United Kingdom cast their ballots in a referendum on whether the UK should leave or remain in the European Union. The subsequent decade has seen much churn and change in British politics in the form of several general elections, unusual political alliances, Supreme Court battles, long parliamentary debates, indecisive votes, large scale demonstrations, a succession of short term prime ministers, the fracturing of the party system and the rise of new political parties. Some of that churn and change is linked to a global pandemic, Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine, energy shocks and Donald Trump in the White House. But Brexit has clearly played a significant and important role in in British and wider European politics. To help us better understand Brexit, the causes, process and consequences of that decision made on 23rd June 2016, I am delighted to be joined by three terrific scholars who bring a wealth of knowledge to the table. Maria's research has focused on political representation and representation of ethnic minorities, particularly in the United Kingdom. Her research is held in very high regard, well exemplified by Maria receiving the Political Science Association's Johnny Lewandowski Prize for Outstanding Professional Achievement by a mid Career Scholar in 2021. Among her many publications is the book Brexit Land, co written with Rob Ford, which won the 2022 WJM McKenzie Prize for the best book published in political science. Monica has published extensively on many aspects of Brexit in a host of academic journals including Political Quarterly, British Politics, Journal of Legislative Studies, Europe Asia Studies, the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, European Security, and the Journal of Common Market Studies. She's also writing two Brexit related books at the moment, and Monica is also the first scholar from the Czech Republic to be elected to a fellowship of the UK's Academy of Social Sciences. Charlotte's research focuses on the role of the media in European democracies, including its impact on national identities, democratic participation and EU legitimacy. She has published widely on these aspects of Brexit, including in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, the Journal of Common Market Studies, and Social Movement Studies. She is particularly interested in engendered patterns of inclusion and exclusion in public debates, including online and media abuse of women and LGBTQ people. This last theme is central to her current book project on Brexit. The key themes will, I'm sure, come up in our discussion a reminder that the back catalogue of people power politics has a wealth of discussions, including the interview I conducted earlier this year with Amelia Pallonen and Zolt Enyed on on Hungary ahead of that country's landmark parliamentary elections. We are recording this podcast on 12 May 2026, a few weeks before the anniversary of that momentous vote and on a day full of feverish speculation about the future of Keir Starmer. So I want to first turn to Maria So Maria, in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, plenty of pundits, politicians and political scientists were keen to offer their explanations for why Britain's vot to leave the European Union. A decade on from that referendum. With the passage of time and given the plethora of academic books and articles that have been published, do we have a clearer answer to the question why did Brexit happen? And if so, what explains Brexit?
- [05:22]
A
This is a really great question because I think anniversaries often offer us this unique chance to look back and think about how to organize our knowledge. And at the very beginning of process, when half of the political scientists in this country, or more than half, I think, woke up with a slight sense of surprise that the leave option has won the referendum. There have been so many ideas what happened, and all these ideas have now been ordered and kind of verified, and I actually think that most of them survived the test of time. It's just that they have now been put together in a slightly more coherent narrative. It is a complex narrative because of course, such big event, electoral event Such a big electoral upset will have very complex causes. But I think there is a story that we pretty much all agree on in terms of what went into this stew of kind of a very big surprising constitutional change in the uk. And I think one of the things that is very important to say at the beginning is that even though we all agree on the story, the large story per se, most people will have their favorite part of the story. Right? So I don't claim to represent all of the parts and answer this question comprehensively in terms of giving equal measure to everyone's favorite bit of the story. But generally speaking, the story that most political scientists would agree on is that Great Britain has been changing since the Second World War in terms of the economy, the social structures and political outlooks that people have had, but also because of the political parties and how those two political parties behaved. Right? And the story of Brexit really, really is how this change has been incorporated into politics for a very long time in this semi, orderly fashion where the two main political parties have managed to answer most of the political questions that emerged in the 50 years after the Second World War relatively well, and the voters would reward them by voting for them continuously. Right? So we see the 50 years during which more or less people choose very happily between the two main political parties. What happens is that because the electorate has been changing in terms of its demographic makeup, the political party started worrying about this changing demographic and started changing their political appeal to try to capture those very different voters. So Labour Party that has its roots traditionally in the working classes was particularly affected because of the kind of economic demographic changes meant that their original core vote has been shrinking. And this is, some people say, kind of very much the result of Thatcher's policies trying to make Britain into a very different kind of economy, relying less on manufacturing and industry. But whatever the reasons for that, the reason for the Labour Party moving to the centre has been to try to capture more voters because of the core vote has been shrinking. But of course, as they moved more into the centre, they became slightly more similar to the Conservative Party. What that caused is that some of their core electorates started disengaging. And this is a very important thing which I think will come up again and again as I speak on this podcast about not just the predeterminants of Brexit, but also its consequences today is that lack of voter loyalty towards the main political parties. Because of course, when we went into the campaign, the campaign that has been caused by trying to incorporate new political divisions around immigration we no longer have that kind of natural home for voters. And so voters didn't listen to their original two parties who said, oh, if you are against immigration, you should vote Conservative. If you are pro immigration, you should vote Labor. This has been broken, and especially after the 2010 election, when David Cameron said the infamous words that he will limit immigration to the tens of thousands. This really undoes and unpicks this reputation that the Conservative Party has that they are going to sort immigration. And immigration is a big issue for voters, especially after the Labour Party has encouraged kind of European accession, the A8, as it was called. So some of our home countries that we are here on this podcast, the immigration from those countries really sparked this debate about immigration again. And the two main political parties no longer have loyal voters who listen to them and they cannot offer a solution. David Cameron promises one and falls flat on his face, doesn't deliver. And of course, as with all political kind of narratives, into this kind of already very incendiary space comes a political entrepreneur. And this story of political entrepreneurship is a very important one of Brexit, because again, the player that plays this big role of saying, well, actually, if you're worried about immigration, you should be worried about the eu. That political entrepreneur is still upending and upsetting our British politics today. Of course it is Nigel Farage. And again, everyone agrees that without Nigel Farage, Brexit probably wouldn't have happened and wouldn't have won. And his personal impact on this story is very important here as well. So this is a very kind of quick and rough and ready story, but I think that is the story that the. Pretty much all the elements people agree on.
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B
Yeah. So I think. I mean, it's interesting. One of the things I like very much about your Brexit land book is that you talk about these long. These developments, sociological developments, particularly within kind of British society, and also how those led to certain issues becoming dominant in discourse. But also, you're absolutely right that it then needs a particular politician or two to kind of activate that. And indeed, you know, talking today, very soon after the recent local election, which of course, reform led by Nigel Farage did extremely well. So absolutely I think you're right that it's the combination of different factors and also that everyone has their own little preferences to place the little bit of emphasis. Let me actually now turn to Monica. So at the time of the referendum, there were many fears or hopes, depending on one's position, that Brexit might actually lead to what you refer to in a recent chapter of Yours as kind of Eurosceptic contagion. I remember at the time a lot of people talking about checksit and Frexit and nexit and Grexit, all of these neologisms that were coined. So why didn't that happen? Or perhaps we might reframe that question as why that hasn't happened yet. So, yeah, why didn't we see other states following kind of Britain's lead?
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C
This is such an interesting question because, yes, immediately after the referendum there truly was this real sense that Brexit might be just the first domino. And suddenly every country seemed to have its own kind of imaginary exit sign. You know, yes, Brexit next it Brexit vexit exit, almost like the EU had turned into some kind of an airport departure board. So in the Czech case, it was Czechsit. And the biggest champion of Czechsit has been Tomio Okamura, the Czech anti immigration nationalist born in Japan. So, you know, there you go. Czech politics has a great sense of humor. But the domino effect never really happened. And I think that one of the key reasons is that Brexit simply became less a model to follow and more warning sign. So it showed that leaving the EU is not a clean, quick, heroic act as it was often presented. It's legally, very, very complex and politically exhausting, economically costly and very, very divisive and polarizing. And as you mentioned, you know, at the beginning, Tim, the UK was stuck for years in negotiations and parliamentary battles and leadership crisis and endless arguments about what Brexit. So I think that really, for many Eurosceptic parties across Europe, this was not a very attractive advertisement.
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B
And so let me turn to Charlotte. I mean, one player that some scholars see as playing a really key role in the process of Brexit was the media. And you've actually researched the role of the media in the Brexit process and contemporary European politics more broadly. Now, scholars sometimes refer to the media's role as, as that of kind of agenda setting, sometimes in terms of reinforcement. The Brexit referendum was also one of the first votes in which social media appeared to play a significant part. But it also took place in a rather fractured media environment, a very different media environment to the one in 1975 when the UK held its first referendum on membership of the European Economic Community. So I wonder from your research, what would you say are the wider lessons that we can learn from that vote in 2016 on the role the media actually plays in contemporary elections and politics more broadly?
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D
Yeah, so I think what's often kind of Overlooked in these kind of discussions about public opinion, national identity, is that these things are not kind of innate, they're not natural, they come from somewhere. And we know that they're shaped by society and the kind of environments that we exist in. And I think what's really important to recognize is that the media plays a huge, hugely important role in shaping identities and shaping kind of public opinion and also shaping kind of social and political hierarchies. And I think one thing that's really important in the kind of Brexit context is to recognize that the UK press, the nature of the UK press really sets us apart from many other European countries in terms of the nature of the partisanship of the press, the concentration of ownership in just actually mostly three major conglomerates. We know that newspaper proprietors use the power of the media to promote their own agenda with regards to European integration. So Oliver Dadow, for example, has shown how Rupert Murdoch, since the 1980s used his media empire to advance his commercial interests in opposing the eu. We also know that the Daily Express, former chairman, Richard Desmond, was a major donor to ukip. And the Daily Express has been shown to have been a crucial factor in swinging the vote in 2016. And social media has only exacerbated these things. So we know that social media exacerbates political divisions also through the sharing of newspaper and also alternative media kind of output. One thing that we saw in our analysis of online abuse directed at academics in the context of Brexit was that newspapers stage or kind evoke online abuse targeted at particular groups position as experts. And this is what we kind of argue is that this was not just about kind of slurs against individuals, but was a pattern of delegitimizing certain kinds of knowledge and removing particular people from the status of expert. And so what we've seen, I think, during the referendum and in the aftermath of the referendum, is the way in which media in the UK really is using its power to shape the nature of Brexit debates and to determine what can get talked about and to really strongly shape those kind of public opinion patterns that we talk about.
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B
That's really fascinating. So I want to turn from thinking about the causes, why that referendum turned out the way that it did in 2016, to actually turn towards the kind of presence. So reflecting now a decade or so on, so maybe I can turn first to Maria. So a number of scholars such as Sara Holbort and James Tilley, for example, in a recently published book, suggest the divide between Leave and Remain, pardon the pun here, but remains highly salient in what they dubbed the kind of tribal politics of Britain. But I wonder, from your perspective a decade on, how far does Brexit still matter in British politics? And if it does still matter, how does it matter?
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A
Again, this is such a huge topic and I think I would maybe quite like to split it up into smaller chunks to kind of enable me to think more clearly and talk more clearly about them. So maybe actually taking your first point about those identities that have formed around the referendum and how do they survive today? Well, we are recording this, what, a week, less than a week after the local elections. And you could really see the effects of those identities on the results of the referendum. When you look at geography of the very many parties who were stealing seats away from the Conservatives and Labor, you really see those remain areas, they have predominantly gone for the Lib Dems, councillors or Green councilors, and those areas that voted Leave and they predominantly departed the main political parties to back reform. And so you really see that those influences are still very influential in British politics. But I would say that that is like the kind of first point and it's the most obvious because it's so directly linked to Brexit as it is. But I think the wider point is that what we have now, this ultimate fragmentation, all this kind of very multi party politics, is also a consequence of this, of this referendum and the kind of arguments that took place after the referendum. The way I like to describe what has happened after the referendum is that two things have happened. The first one is there was an effort to realign from the main political parties around the new identities of Leave and Remain, but it was ultimately very one sided. What has basically happened is that the Conservative Party has tried to realign itself, whereas the Labour Party has pretended nothing happened. And mostly because they were so divided, I think internally about the referendum itself. They basically, I think in the book we describe it as Brexit Blairism. They were trying to, to say, well, we are the middle way, let's not argue about Brexit anymore. But actually, because they have failed to realign, they ultimately prevented this realignment from sticking. Because in a two party system, unless both parties realign, you don't have a long term realignment. And so as a result of this, we only had the Conservative Party who realigned. But of course they have then done a little bit mirror image of what David Cameron did with immigration and that infamous pledge, he said he'll fix immigration and didn't. Conservative parties in 2019 says we will deliver beautiful Brexit and it'll be great. And of course they didn't and it wasn't. And I mean, they have delivered it, but it wasn't beautiful in any particular way. Which again keeps that door open too far as to reform to say, oh yes, we are, we are going to come in here because this failed realignment and this kind of single sided realignment, what we are seeing now is that both the political parties are still actually talking to the voters who voted Leave and not at all to the voters who voted Remain. And as a result it opened room and space for new political entrepreneurs. And of course we do have, especially the Green Party really stepping into that arena. And Zach Polanski is almost matching Faresh in terms of how much disruptive influence he has on British politics nowadays. And I would say that is pretty much very direct consequence of Brexit still.
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B
So actually, can I just ask a follow up because obviously you're based in Manchester and there was a very notable by election that took place in Gorton and Denton not so long ago in which obviously the Greens did remarkably well. So you will have seen this campaign on the ground to some extent. Extent. As well as viewing it as a political scientist through the, through our usual kind of media. Did you sort of notice a kind of Brexit effect there, do you think, in that specific kind of by election?
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A
Yes, because I think the, the kind of urban seat like Alton and Denton, even though it does have, it's a. Seats are quite big constituencies, Western constituencies, so they almost always contain a mix of people. However, there is definitely that sense, the urban Manchester constituency, Manchester being quite a multicultural, multiracial and very cosmopolitan city. There was this rejection of this identity as potentially a Brexit leave area. There was definitely a rejection of the kind of ethnocentric, racial, anti immigration rhetoric. And of course there was a rejection of the candidate himself. And this candidate of course did come out extremely strongly across as a very anti Islam, anti Muslim character. And this of course was completely tone deaf because the seat is very heavy on, on the Muslim population. So I say the, the big historic surprise really is that labor didn't retain that vote because that seemed like a perfect scenario for labor to say, well, we are the traditional party of Muslims, we are the traditional party of urban people, et cetera. And so the fact that Greens could step in and persuade those voters that in fact they were the correct alternative is really historic, I think.
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B
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really fascinating. We're touching here on recent elections. There are even more Recent elections. We're recording this podcast just a few days after a set of elections that inter alia saw Labour lose control of Wales. Which means we are very likely to have first ministers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who belong to parties that advocate actually lead leaving the United Kingdom. So how far is this? Do you see a kind of legacy of Brexit or just the poor performance of the Starmer government in Westminster? I'd like to get all of your views on this, but I'll start with Maria and then come to your other two. So Maria, how far do you think this seeming kind of fracturing of the United Kingdom seems to be a product of Brexit?
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A
I wouldn't say it's a direct consequence, mostly because of course we have to remember that Wales actually did support the move to leave. And in Northern Ireland, of course we know that the, the government that took over to deliver Brexit initially was supported by the Northern Irish parties as well. So the truth is that I think apart from Scotland, that isn't really a direct link. I think this is more of an indirect effect of this fragmentation as the voters are becoming more and more comfortable with the multi party system and with the idea that it could take the voters where they are just expanding the menu of choices. And they basically chose similarly left wing parties, but ones that aren't tainted by the kind of Keir Starmer. I don't know what's tainted with what. Well, his reputation seems in such that it's difficult to choose the right words.
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B
Indeed. Charlotte, any, any thoughts that you have on these recent elections, particularly in the constituen nations of the United Kingdom and how that is linked or not linked back to Brexit, do you think?
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D
I think yeah, Maria's right, that perhaps the link is more indirect than direct. But I think what is really interesting in what we know about identity, national identities in the four nations is that whereas kind of English identity or English nationalism is strongly associated with not feeling European and supporting Leave in the other three nations, Welsh identity, Welsh nationalism, Scottish nationalism and Irish nationalism and Irish identity are all associated with a greater likelihood to identify as European and to support Remain. And I think what's really important is the context of the referendum that did not include a referendum lock for the four nations that would have ensured that a majority of the nations also supported Brexit. So you have a really English driven, England driven Brexit that was not supported by particularly the kind of nationalist parties in the other nations. And the fact that we're seeing now that kind of shift in those issues, I think is really important to recognize that that must have some roots in the way in which the other nations are feeling, not listened to, within the UK in the context of Brexit.
- [26:22]
B
That's really interesting. And let me turn to Monica. I mean, you've lived through a split in a country, so I wonder, from your kind of perspective from Moravia, how you would see the recent elections and whether you see these votes in the constituent parts to be kind of linked to Brexit, or do you see it in a similar vein to Maria and Charlotte that it's. It's there, but kind of indirect?
- [26:49]
C
Well, Brexit was such a huge and consequential earthquake that I think that it has left fingerprints really, all over the British politics. Sometimes they are obvious and direct, sometimes they are less obvious and less direct, just as Maria and Charlotte have said. In this case, of course, poor government performance matters a lot. Like voters are angry about, you know, various issues, living standards, public services, housing. The feeling that politics keeps promising change and then delivering very little. But Brexit has definitely changed the atmosphere of the Union itself, right? I mean, it made the Union feel more conditional, more contested, maybe less automatic. Like Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the eu, but left anyway. And that matters symbolically a lot, of course. I mean, it has reinforced this feeling that some parts of the UK can express a clear preference but still be easily overruled by the overall result. And also, Brexit destroyed one of the old arguments for the Union, that being in the UK also meant being in the eu. And once that link was broken, the Union itself became easier to question.
- [28:00]
B
I think that's very, very interesting. Now, I mentioned earlier that there's been an awful lot of scholarship that's been written on kind of Brexit or touches on Brexit, but it's certainly the case that it's quite uneven, I think, in terms of the coverage. And Charlotte, I know in your current book project on Brexit that you're exploring some of the more kind of under researched aspects of Brexit. You look, for instance, at the impact of Brexit on inequalities and human rights in the uk, notably related to gender and lgbtq. Q kind of issues. So can you give us a flavour of kind of what you've discovered in your research and how that helps us to understand Brexit and the impact of Brexit?
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D
Yeah, thanks, Tim. Yeah, I think Maria was really interested that you kind of talked about the stories that we have about Brexit earlier on. And there are a lot of kind of very dominant stories that explain kind of what led us to Brexit. And something that I've been trying to do in this book is to try and uncover some of the untouchable told stories. And so what I'm doing is telling a different story of Brexit. And so what the book does is explore the relationship between what I call Anglo British national identity and LGBTQ rights in the UK between 1973, when we joined the EEC, and 2017. So just after the referendum, as shaped through media narratives about the EU and about the European Court of Human Rights as well. And the starting point for this was both the recognition of the kind of gendered media abuse that I've already mentioned, as well as a realization that in the kind of immediate wake of the referendum, we started to see a kind of developing moral panic about trans people. And what I realized then was that much of the UK legislation that protects LGBTQ people actually originated in EU law and in rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. And this is something that many people don't realize because it was largely excluded from the referendum debates. So, for example, protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was incorporated into the Amsterdam treaty in 97 and then incorporated into UK law after that. Protection in the workplace for trans people was the result of a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights. Legal gender recognition was a result of ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, as was decriminalization of homosexuality in Northern Ireland, the equalisation of age consent, the overturning of the ban on LGBT people in the armed forces, all of these things came from Europe. The 2010 Equality act itself, while it ultimately went further than EU law, was initiated in order to implement EU equal treatment protections. And so the protections that we have against discrimination on the basis of sex, on the basis of gender reassignment, sexual orientation and pregnancy and maternity originated in EU law. And so what I kind of set out to do was ask different questions about Brexit. And so, given this kind of media context and given this basis in EU law, of many of these equality protections, what did the media have to say about this over time? And what I kind of uncover is that actually, years of Eurosceptic press opposition to the expansion of gender and sexual rights under the European Convention and the EU equalities framework, and that these LGBTQ rights that I mentioned were over decades opposed in order to uphold kind of traditional gender, sexual and racial hierarchies. So traditional gender roles the idea of the traditional family, as well as the defense of a very limited set of rights, rights and freedoms for people and institutions who have traditionally held social, economic and political power. And so ultimately what I find is that the media opposed not only these rights for LGBT people, but connected them to a wider opposition to the Human Rights act and with it the European Convention and the Equality act more broadly. And in doing so construct a range of different stories of Europe and national identity that positioned gender and sexual minorities as the others of the nation by delegitimizing the eu. And so what the press did was narrate the EU and the European Convention as a threat to national identity. But that national identity was embodied in white CIS heterosexual men. And that is going to have implications for British society as we kind of go forward outside of the eu.
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B
Sounds really fascinating how kind of national identity, the role of European legislation, the role of the media, aspects which have been touched on before, it looks as if you're bringing them together and exploring a really interesting and important aspect of Brexit. So we're all looking forward to reading the book when it gets published in a year or two's time. So let me turn now to my moniker. So after a seemingly indeterminable period of political imbroglio in British politics following that referendum of June 2016, the UK did leave the European Union, first thanks to an exit agreement and then followed by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the so called TCA. Now, the election of the Labour government in 2024 led to a commitment to a reset. Now, you've written in a recent chapter that Keir Starmer characterized his approach as improved, ambitious, pragmatic and mature. As is sometimes the case when it comes to Keir Starmer, there are words, but we don't always know what that means in practice. So what has that actually meant in practice? And how would you characterise the UK's kind of formal relations with the European Union today?
- [34:04]
C
So the UK relationship today is definitely warmer and more polite, more pragmatic. The mood music has changed significantly, but it's still kind of very limited in nature. So the thing is that the big red lines are still there. You know, no single market, no customs, uni, no free movement. And those red lines do limit a lot what the reset can actually deliver. So we see progress in many areas such as, you know, security, defense, horizon, Erasmus and other issues. And that is terrific and I'm personally very grateful for it. But in a way it's still mostly sorts of patching up exercise and also as Somebody who studies political discourse. I often find myself wondering whether reset is really the most fortunate word choice here, because the word reset sounds very simple, right? It sounds technical, almost effortless, like rebooting a computer. So you press a button, the system restarts and everything works again. But political relationships, they do not work like that. And if Brexit taught us one thing, it is that trust between two sides can be damaged very quickly, but rebuilding it is very slow and fragile and truly difficult. So I sometimes worry that the language of reset actually creates unrealistic expectations. I know that it's politically very appealing because it suggests that there is this quick fix, but in reality, this is a long process of rebuilding habits, of cooperation, of rebuilding trust, and essentially of learning how to work together again in very different contexts after years of confrontation.
- [35:56]
B
It's really interesting. I'll ask an unfair question, follow up question, if I may, Monica, but I think you've made a very compelling case for why reset isn't the word. Is there another word that might fit better?
- [36:09]
C
See, I would have to think this through carefully, but maybe, I don't know, like recalibration, rapprochement. I know that it does not sound that politically appealing, but I'm not sure that reset as such is really. Is really that helpful.
- [36:25]
B
Yeah, I think you're right that reset absolutely makes us think about kind of computers and just turning off and on and everything will be fine. Again, I think you're right that those other words maybe don't quite sound so politically appealing, but they may be more accurate. And in the long term, it might be better to be accurate than to come up with a snappy word Right. In politics. Monica, staying with you. So the decision of the United Kingdom to leave, leave the European Union was lamented by a number of states across the European Union. For some states, the UK's exit was seen as a loss of a key ally within European structures. So a decade on, I mean, at least since the vote and, you know, half a decade or so since we formally left, how would you say that Brexit has actually impacted kind of bilateral relations, perhaps reflecting particularly on your home state of the Czech Republic, but also more broadly about bilateral relations.
- [37:23]
C
So Brexit has definitely impacted bilateral relations a lot. So if I look at this specifically from the Czech perspective, so Czechia definitely lost a very useful ally inside the European Union. Not on everything, of course, but, you know, on the single market and nuclear energy and skepticism towards too much centralization and other issues. Prague and London often spoke a similar language. The difference was that the UK spoke it with a much louder microphone, and we benefited a lot from that. So Czechia did regret Brexit a lot. And also, you know, before Brexit, the UK and Czechia cooperated a lot within the framework of EU institutions. It was like being colleagues in the same building. Right? So you keep meeting in corridors and committees and working groups, but after Brexit, the UK moved out of the building. So now if you want to meet, you actually have to call and plan and travel and essentially make an effort. So the bilateral relationship both between the UK and Czechia, but also, you know, the others, they have become more intentional and also more costly. But of course, it's not like freestyle dancing. I mean, Czechia is still in the eu, so even when Prague kind of dances with London, it cannot leave the EU dance floor. So Czech UK bilateralism is actually very strongly bounded by Czechia's obligation as an EU member state.
- [38:55]
B
Just having these images of the Czech Republic dancing a Val Cheek or something, I don't know. So I'm very conscious. My editor always tells me that I make these podcasts too long. So I'm going to try and bring us to conclusion with a couple of questions I'd like to to ask you all, and I'll ask you in turn. So the first question is, you know, we're all scholars who have worked to some extent on these issues related to Brexit. Obviously, Charlotte is writing a wonderful book that we're looking forward to. She's pointed out that is something that we still need to know more about. But do you think, you know, Looking back now, 10 years since the vote, do you think that there are some key aspects of Brexit that you think still need researching? What do we still not know enough about? Let me come to Maria first.
- [39:46]
A
I have been trying to think about this, and I do think one of the very interesting questions to me still is the role of the economy. And we do actually have a smattering of pieces talking mostly about the local economies in certain places. And one of the reasons, I think, why this is relatively underexplored still is because there are so many things that have been happening at once. So a lot of those places have history where they were affected by the changing demographic structures. So a lot of those places that were really affected by the 2008 global banking crisis, for example, already suffered from the changing of the local industrial and manufacturing and et cetera, et cetera. So it is very difficult. But I still have not seen a completely persuasive analysis of to what extent economy mattered and especially in those geographical contexts. So I definitely think there is more room for that as well, apart from Charlotte's wonderful idea. And I'm really looking forward to reading her book too.
- [40:46]
B
I mean, just following up on that, I would very much agree with you. I think that the kind of the local element of politics, the local impact of the economic impact, I think is really important. And it help, you know, will help to understand why the vote. Vote was the way that it voted. I mean, you know, I grew up in a relatively small town in England, you know, not particularly affluent, not particularly poor. But the impact of some of the things that you talk about in Brexit land around kind of immigration and the. The state of the kind of high street and the like, I think that they definitely did play some kind of role. But I've never seen anyone really drill down and explore that in any significant, significant detail. So I think absolutely, that would be a terrific topic. Let me come to Monica. What do you see as something that still needs researching when we think about Brexit?
- [41:39]
C
As a discourse scientist, I can't help answering that one area we still don't understand well enough is political discourse. So the language of Brexit and also post Brexit, because Brexit was this huge battle over stories as well. You know, stories about sovereignty and control, betrayal, democracy, identity, elites, the people. You know, stories about what Britain is and what Europe is. And those stories did not disappear in 2020 when the UK left the European Union. They still circulate in British politics today. And I also think that we need more research on silence and avoidance in political discourse because, you know, today many politicians are actually very careful not to speak too openly about Brexit and the UK's relationship with the European Union, even when Brexit is clearly part of the issue. So there is this strange situation where Brexit is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. So I think that this would be also worth researching in more depth.
- [42:44]
B
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I like, obviously I know a lot of your work on discourse and I sometimes think, you know, Brett, Brexit can be explained by three slogans and nine words. Kind of take back, control. Brexit means Brexit and get Brexit done. It kind of encapsulates a lot about what was going on. But I also, yeah, I think your point about the silence, I think is really important. I mean, that's even broader than just Brexit, that sometimes we need to think about what isn't said as much as what is said. And Charlotte, I know obviously you are writing a book about something that needs needs to be researched, but would you say that there is anything additional that should be kind of researched that you think has been under researched?
- [43:24]
D
Yeah, I mean my book stops in 2017, so I would say we need to kind of research the last 10 years. And I think I'm just thinking of kind of what I say to my in the last week of my final year module on Brexit, which is kind of looking more broadly at nationalist movements, far right movements and anti gender movements. And I think think what I've been doing is tracing kind of how political, economic and media power has been used to advance kind of anti equality agendas. And I think what we really need is more research on anti gender movement and networks between the UK and these kind of wider global movements. Looking at the networks between the anti trans movement in the UK and these wider anti gender and far right movements. Also looking at the kind of role of money, dark money is really important. There's a lot of investigative journalism doing this work, but I've seen very little academic work or collaboration with those journalists. And I say this because I think this also needs a lot of this work is being done, but it's not really connected to Brexit. And kind of what I would argue is that actually these movements are in the UK building on the Brexit project, while also mobilizing within the EU and around the European Court of Human Rights to also erode the same kind of equalities frameworks and human rights protections. So that's kind of what I would say we really need to focus on in terms of research.
- [44:55]
B
Yeah, that's, that's really interesting that you're also talking about the kind of the transnational and the international networks. It's interesting if we put that alongside what Maria is saying about also the kind of local level, perhaps too much of the discussion about Brexit is often thought about it in a national sense and not looked below and above that particular level and the interactions between those kind of levels, which at one level is kind of crazy when you actually think what the European Union is and what European Union membership entails. And it's surprising that those sort of elements haven't been explored as much by researchers. My final question again to all of you is obviously this podcast has been recorded to mark the 10th anniversary and if we repeat this podcast in 10 years, time for the 20th anniversary. I know speculation is an awful game for political scientists and we often get it wrong. But we can get it wrong in interesting ways, I would say. So the question might be, what do you think we are likely to be discussing, do you think in 10 years time when we reflect back on the 20th anniversary? And maybe for this one I'll go in reverse order, so I'll start with Charlotte first.
- [46:07]
D
So I don't want to be overly pessimistic, but I'm afraid I probably will be. I think. I also don't like to make predictions. And so I think I'm not going to predict, but I'm going to say what is possible. And what I think is possible is that what we know anyway is that Brexit has closed off an avenue for the protection of rights for minoritized people. The UK courts are no longer bound by EU law, and we're already seeing erosion of the Equality act as it applies to trans people. What I see happening if we don't actually kind of stop it in its tracks, is that this erosion of the Equality act will be extended. We know that Reform has announced that it would scrap the Equality act if it forms a government. Already we saw the Conservative Party in 2024 promising to limit spending on equality initiatives in the public sector. But perhaps the greatest risk is concerning our membership of the European Convention. Reform is obviously committed to leaving the European Convention. In my data, I see how leaving the EU was portrayed as the first step to leaving the European Convention because you have to be a signatory in order to be any member state. And we're already seeing politicians, including, including from labor, seeking to undermine Article 8 of the European Convention, which is around the right to private and family life. This is often kind of talked about with regards to the right to asylum. But we need to remember that this article and the other ones also protect all of our rights. And Article 8 has been crucial for these LGBTQ rights that I've talked about where the Court found the UK in violation of Article 8. And so that's, I think, a huge risk. And if we comes back to kind of how Labour will kind of go forward from this election, if we don't realize what the actual project of Brexit was about, I think that's where we're going to be in 10 years time.
- [48:16]
B
Interesting, Monika.
- [48:18]
C
So I'm going to answer carefully because political scientists indeed have this complicated relationship with crystal balls. So if we meet again in 2036, and I certainly hope that we will, I think that we will be asking what kind of European country the UK has become. I think the UK will be much closer to the EU by then, you know, through defense, energy, youth mobility, maybe even some form of, of, you know, single market relationship. I'm not predicting rejoining, nothing like that. But I do think that the direction of travel will be closer cooperation simply because geography is stubborn and the UK can leave the eu, but it cannot leave Europe. It's such a cliche, I know that. It's true. And we may be also asking, you know, other uncomfortable questions, such as, for instance, did Brexit teachers, other EU member states, how fragile the membership actually is or did they fail to learn that lesson? Because for me and Tim, you have hinted at that a bit. Brexit is not only about, you know, Britain and the European Union, it's about what happens when politics becomes a battle over identity and nostalgia and control and other things. And that story is actually much, much bigger than Brexit itself.
- [49:38]
B
And Maria.
- [49:39]
A
So actually, I'm glad Monica took a punt at this because I did jot down three things and one of them was will we be discussing a possible rejoin referendum campaign? But I don't think it's that likely in that short frame. But we do have to remember that actually nowadays public opinion is growing towards that end point, especially as the younger people who are of course entering the electorate are more pro eu. But actually, for me, from my perspective, the most interesting thing is something we talk about with Rob at the end of our book, Brexit Land, which is we draw these three scenarios and one of those scenarios is the replacement of one of the major political party as a result of the upheaval and the de alignment over Brexit. And I think that one still looks possible, certainly I would say the likeliest, it's still that reform would replace the Conservative Party. And yes, it's not happened yet, but I think it's because of our electoral system that slows things down until it stops and then it speeds things up. So it could happen in a single election if it is to happen. But that brings me to my third thing I jotted down, which is will we see an electoral system change? Because of course, if one of the main parties, especially the Labour Party, now within their still giant majority, realize that the only way to retain any of these 400 odd seats at the next election is through proportional presentation, they might have a go at this. So, yeah, these are my three things.
- [51:07]
B
I think it's absolutely fascinating. I think there's a lot of things for us to be looking at, to be thinking about, to be reflecting on, as you all said. You know, political scientists are not great at predicting if, if we were, we would have got our lottery numbers right, we'd be having this conversation, drinking mojitos on a Caribbean pizza probably. Sadly, we don't have that kind of level of foresight. But I think what will be interesting and I think will certainly be the case is that the impact of that referendum is going to remain significant for a long time to come and it will still be important. In 20 years time. Britain's relationship with the European Union, whatever that relationship is, will be very important for the United Kingdom in terms of its place within the world. But also just some of the other things that you've all reflected on is that there's going to be a two way relationship between various things happening domestically and at the kind of European level. And it's going to be the interaction between those factors, perhaps that is going to be, is going to be important. But all I can say is I do hope that we have the chance to repeat this conversation in 10 years time for the 20th anniversary. I would love to continue talking, but I know that the editor will tell me. As usual, I've gone beyond the time that I'm supposed to allocate to podcasts. So sorry to my editor for that, but I would like to express some thanks. So firstly, big thank you to Maria, Monica and Charlotte.
- [52:35]
C
Thank you so much. This was a real pleasure.
- [52:38]
A
Yeah, it was so much, Tim, thank you.
- [52:40]
B
And I would like to thank you, the listeners, for joining us for this conversation on Brexit. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to the People Power Politics podcast broadcast to you by cedar, the center for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham. To learn more about our center and the exciting work we do on these issues around the world, please follow us on Twitter cedarbham and visit our website using the link in the podcast description. Sam.