Britain enters the era of Brexit

Abstract

In the decade after the 2008 financial crisis, the arrival of more hard-right politics in Europe gave rise to a new conventional wisdom by academics and commentators on politics: that identity was replacing ideology as the main driver in modern electoral politics. The two major votes of 2016, for Donald Trump and for Brexit, seemed to confirm that thesis. With the passage of time, however, the assumption that populist identity politics would consume all other factors that come into play in democracies has faded. There is a huge literature from the early years of the past decade arguing that anti-immigrant populist identity politics—and, in the case of Europe, passionate opposition to the EU—would completely transform the way we should describe and analyse political activity, campaigning, voting and, finally, the election and formation of governments. Donald Trump's associate Steve Bannon came to Europe, rented a disused monastery near Rome and was...