More on Brexit

In explaining the course of history, scholars like to look not only at immediate causes of an event, but the underlying trends that made it possible, if not inevitable. The assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 may have sparked World War I, but the conflagration was the expression of longstanding geopolitical rivalries [..].

On their own, the EU’s failures need not have necessitated a vote to Leave. Despite these developments, there were strong arguments for staying in the EU. One could, on balance, decide that the good outweighed the bad, that the EU could be reformed, that the economic benefits of staying were not worth the political advantages of leaving [..]. 

But that would require knowledge of the positive case for staying. And over many years, the British public were treated to nothing but the negative: story after story — many exaggerated, some invented, others all too true — of the EU’s failings. Nobody in power spoke of the positive things Europe provided. There was no counter narrative, and there hadn’t been since the 1975 referendum to join the EU [..].

[T]he government never laid the ground for a pro-EU referendum, despite numerous examples of Britain’s ability to sway European policy. We put forward proposals that blazed the trail for a digital single market and the Energy Union that eventually became the EU’s response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea. And we rescued the Commission’s efforts to end mobile telephone roaming charges and pushed hard on improving airline safety. A Business Task Force with six prominent British businesspeople looked at all the EU regulations that should be scrapped — and managed to get two-thirds of their recommendations implemented within a year. 

But Cameron never turned these victories into high politics. He preferred highlighting achievements he knew would play well in the House of Commons — vetoing changes to the Lisbon Treaty, capping the EU’s budget, ensuring that the U.K. would not be liable for eurozone bailouts. These invariably portrayed him as defending the U.K. from the EU’s encroachments. We did not weave similar stories to show how EU membership helped the U.K.