Book Review: Harold D Clarke, Matthew Goodwin and Paul Whiteley, Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929918807711 |
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| Author | Ron Johnston |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Review |
Political Studies Review
2019, Vol. 17(3) NP5 –NP7
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
807711PSW0010.1177/1478929918807711Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2019
Commissioned Book Review
Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the
European Union by Harold D Clarke,
Matthew Goodwin and Paul Whiteley.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 256
pp., £15.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781316605042
The pattern of voting at the Brexit referendum
has unsurprisingly attracted much attention
from academics and commentators. Several
academic papers published since that pivotal
event in British political history, many using
quantitative approaches, tell the same story
with nuances reflecting the nature of the data
deployed. Qualitative commentaries provide
largely similar interpretations – it was the dis-
enchanted with globalisation, with the coun-
try’s London-based political elite and party
system, with immigration and with unaccount-
able ‘rule’ from Brussels that swung it – though
not in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Brexit tells the same story, but in greater
detail, by three authors with different research
orientations: Goodwin has a strong reputation
for work on British right-wing political parties
and as a commentator on contemporary British
politics; his co-authors have substantial track
records of quantitative analysis of survey data,
and bring to this book monthly surveys con-
ducted since 2005 that detail trends in attitudes
towards Brexit and related issues. Although the
book is a cooperative endeavour, the main
authorship of each chapter is clear.
The chapters are ordered chronologically.
The first three – ‘Brexit introduced’, ‘Campaign
prologue’ and ‘Into battle’ – set the scene for the
referendum and the detailed analyses that follow,
providing a generally excellent overview of the
issues, personalities and politics. There are some
lacunae, however; little is said, for example,
about registration and turnout – or the relative
lack of it, especially among the relatively young
– or about the use of social media in the cam-
paigning. Differential registration and turnout by
age were crucial to the referendum outcome and
should have received more attention than they
are given.
‘Attitudes to Brexit over time’, based on the
survey data, argue that three factors influence
how people think about issues such as the ref-
erendum: (1) calculation – evaluating the rela-
tive costs and benefits of EU membership; (2)
community – how voters think of themselves,
in this case as ‘British’, or ‘English/Scottish/
Welsh’ (Northern Ireland is almost entirely
ignored), or ‘European’; and (3) ‘cues’ – per-
ceptions of various opinion leaders and their
attitudes to the issue. This is merged into a con-
tinuing theme of Clarke and Whiteley’s recent
analyses of voting at British general elections
– valence politics; voters evaluated the benefits
of EU membership according to their percep-
tions of its delivery against key concerns such
as economic prosperity, provision of public
services, state security and democratic account-
ability. The arguments are tested using rela-
tively complex modelling of time series data,
with terse explanations that general readers
will not find particularly illuminating, conclud-
ing that a mix of factors affected people’s
changing attitudes to the EU. Further analyses
involve a wide range of variables but the inter-
pretations are not always clear: we are told that
people who rated the Conservative leader
highly were more likely to be Eurosceptic – but
David Cameron was for Remain!
The fifth chapter – ‘The people’s army’ – is
largely based on a survey of UKIP members’
characteristics, attitudes and activities. Most
were relatively old, male and with few qualifi-
cations; they supported the goal, especially the
demand for reduced immigration, but only
those with political ambitions were prepared to
do much campaigning. The next chapter, on
‘The rise of UKIP’, examines both changes in
its support over the 12 years preceding the ref-
erendum and its performance at the 2014
European Parliament and the 2015 UK general
elections. UKIP’s support is linked to several
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