How the Referendum Was Lost

In January 2013 under pressure from his own backbenchers, the growing influence of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the tabloid press, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron announced that the Conservatives would hold a referendum on United Kingdom (UK) membership of the European Union (EU) if his Party were to win the General Election in 2015 (Startin 2015). This watershed moment in the evolution of the UK debate on ‘Europe’, followed by the unexpected Conservative majority victory at the 2015 General Election, led the Prime Minister to underline his manifesto promise for an ‘in–out’ referendum with the commitment included in the Queen's Speech at the beginning of his second term. In February 2016, the Prime Minister negotiated an agreement with the European Council, which he claimed would give the UK ‘special status’ in the EU and announced the date of the referendum for 23 June 2016. ¹ The Brexit referendum, as it became labelled by the media, was to prove to be one of the most polarising and controversial campaigns in British political history, culminating in a narrow victory for the Brexit vote. Based on a turnout of 72.2 per cent, 51.9 per cent voted to leave the EU and 48.1 per cent to remain. In England (53.4 per cent) and Wales (52.5 per cent) there were majorities in favour of leaving whereas in Scotland (62 per cent) and Northern Ireland (56 per cent) a majority voted to remain. Polling data indicated very polarised lines of division along both geographic and socio-demographic lines, which, Pearce observes, pitted ‘working-class voters in post-industrial towns and cities, deprived seaside resorts and the agri-business rural areas of England and Wales, against the young, middle-class and-university-educated cosmopolitan centres’ (Pearce 2016).