The 2016 EU Referendum: Explaining Support for Brexit Among Would-Be British MPs
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Author | Caitlin Milazzo,Joshua Townsley,Siim Trumm |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321720904935 |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720904935
Political Studies
2020, Vol. 68(4) 819 –836
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720904935
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The 2016 EU Referendum:
Explaining Support for Brexit
Among Would-Be British MPs
Siim Trumm, Caitlin Milazzo
and Joshua Townsley
Abstract
The outcome of the 2016 referendum on European Union membership took many by surprise
and has continued to define the political discourse in Britain. Despite there being a growing
body of research focused on explaining how voters cast their ballot, we still know little about
what motivated our politicians to do the same. In this article, we draw on individual-level survey
data from the British Representation Study to explore support for Brexit among parliamentary
candidates who stood at the 2017 general election. We find that candidates’ political views on
immigration and democracy were key determinants of their decision to vote Leave. In addition,
more optimistic views of how Brexit was expected to impact British economy and democracy are
associated with greater likelihood of voting Leave. These findings highlight that, while politicians
were less likely than voters to support Brexit overall, their motivations for doing so were quite
similar. Interestingly, however, we also find that candidates contesting constituencies with higher
Leave support were no more likely to vote for Brexit themselves. Taken together, these findings
have important implications for elite representation of voters’ policy preferences on the issue
of Brexit.
Keywords
Brexit, parliamentary candidates, immigration, democracy, economy
Accepted: 17 January 2020
Introduction
The 2016 referendum on the European Union (EU) membership marked a significant
juncture in the history of the United Kingdom. The country voted to leave the EU, indicat-
ing that it wanted to end a membership that spanned over four decades. The vote set into
motion developments that have been shaping the British political landscape and discourse
ever since.
School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Corresponding author:
Caitlin Milazzo, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7
2RD, UK.
Email: caitlin.milazzo@nottingham.ac.uk
904935PSX0010.1177/0032321720904935Political StudiesTrumm et al.
research-article2020
Article
820 Political Studies 68(4)
The unexpected result of the EU referendum raised the obvious question of who sup-
ported Brexit on 23 June, which unsurprisingly has become a well-researched topic since
2016. As a result, we now have an extensive body of literature examining how voters’
personal characteristics and political views relate to their vote choice (e.g. Clarke et al.,
2017; Goodwin and Milazzo, 2017; Hobolt, 2016; Vasilopoulou, 2016) and how the
strength of the Leave vote varies across communities (e.g. Goodwin and Heath, 2016;
Matti and Zhou, 2017). While the literature of voters is now well-established, the study of
support for Brexit among political elites remains in its infancy. There is an emerging lit-
erature focusing on which politicians cast their ballot for Leave in 2016 (Heppell et al.,
2017b; Lynch and Whitaker, 2018; Moore, 2018; Trumm, 2020), but to date, the focus of
these studies has largely been limited to members of the parliamentary Conservative
Party and candidates at the 2016 devolved election in Wales.
In this article, we expand the scope of the investigation to explore the drivers of sup-
port for Brexit among political elites more generally. In doing so, we hope to improve our
understanding of what influenced our ‘political class’ to support, or oppose, Brexit.
Exploring the motivations of political elites on the key issue of our generation provides
valuable insights into the supply side of the representation divide at this critical juncture
of British politics. It gives voters clarity not only about what elites do, but also about how
they form their choices. Moreover, politicians are often portrayed as being out of touch
with voters. With respect to Brexit, this perception is grounded in fact – politicians were
less likely to cast their ballot for Leave than voters. What we do not know, however, is
whether this discrepancy was limited to vote choice, or whether there were more funda-
mental differences in how voters and elites formed their views. We consider this to be an
empirical question, and we seek to shed further light on the drivers of elite support for
Brexit, so that we may determine the extent to which elite motivations align with, or
diverge from, what we already know about voters.
To answer these questions, we use survey data from the 2017 British Representation
Study. We focus on candidates who stood at the 2017 British general election and exam-
ine how important the strength of Leave support in their constituency, as well as their
personal characteristics and political attitudes were in shaping their support for, or
opposition to, Brexit at the 2016 EU referendum. In doing so, this article builds on the
emerging body of literature on politicians’ voting choice in June 2016 and furthers our
understanding of what motivated our politicians to support Leave. The analysis reveals
interesting patterns. We find that candidates’ personal characteristics and the strength
of the Leave sentiment in their constituency did not systematically influence their like-
lihood of voting for Leave. By contrast, candidates’ views about immigration (its
impact on Britain and its general importance), as well as their views on how democratic
the EU is perceived to be, and what the Brexit effect is likely to be for the United
Kingdom, are key drivers for their EU referendum vote choice. In addition, we find
candidates’ views on Europe to be quite stable – very few of them changed their mind
in the year running up to the referendum. These findings touch upon some of the key
debates and perceptions in British politics, and they provide further support for the
prominent narrative that politicians are ‘out of touch’ with voters when it comes to their
attitudes towards Brexit. That said, their key motivations for voting Leave are broadly
in line with those among voters.
In the next section, the existing literature that is touched upon to guide our investiga-
tion is examined. We then outline our theoretical expectations, describe the data used, the
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