Six years on from the Brexit vote, and never a dull moment
That fateful referendum has proved one of the most truly polarising issues of the last decade, says Harriet Williamson
This week, Voices will be marking six years since Britain voted to leave the EU on 23 June. We are running a series exploring the impact of the Brexit referendum from a range of perspectives, with op-eds from our regular columnists, including Hamish McRae, Sean O’Grady and chief political commentator John Rentoul, and perspectives from Furvah Shah, economist Patrick Mitford, and musician Billy Lunn.
Do you remember where you were when the referendum result was announced? People often say that you tend to know what you were doing at the time of momentous events – like the death of Princess Diana or the 9/11 attacks.
I was on holiday (in Europe, as it happens) when the news broke that we’d be leaving the EU, and I’d been gloomily predicting this for weeks because I’ll admit that I do tend towards pessimism. There was no triumph in being proved right.
Since that defining vote, Brexit has been a permanent feature of news coverage in the UK. Only the Covid-19 pandemic was sufficiently dramatic enough to nudge it from the headlines for any meaningful length of time. Now, of course, we are seeing a very real risk to the union through the government’s decision to toy with the Northern Ireland protocol, something the EU has announced it will be taking legal action over. Never a dull moment, eh?
Brexit has proved one of the most truly polarising and divisive issues of the last decade, something that’s risky to bring up in conversation, particularly if you’re unsure about where the other person stands on it. It’s a terrible dinner table topic, and can kill a first date stone dead.
To me, it’s most interesting that attitudes towards Brexit have changed over time, and as of May 2022, only 39 per cent of the public believe we were right to leave the EU – a significant drop from the nearly 52 per cent who voted to do so in the referendum. Perhaps this is down to the fabled nature of “Brexit benefits”, and how even the most staunch of the Brexit champions appear to struggle to define them.
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That fateful referendum has certainly shaped the Britain we live in today, whether you believe this is for better or for worse.
And the anniversary of the Brexit vote aside, we are looking forward to an exciting week on Voices, with a special edition of our newsletter, Voices Dispatches, to celebrate Pride month – you can sign up here – and plenty of expert comment on the upcoming Wakefield by-election. Will it be another humiliation for Boris Johnson? Or will the prime minister who “got Brexit done” scrape through unscathed?
Yours,
Harriet Williamson
Voices commissioning editor