Why did the UK vote to leave the European Union in 2016?

In this essay, I will be discussing in depth regards to what extent did the British unanimously vote to withdraw from the European Union (EU) membership with no reconciliation in 2016. Simultaneously, this literature will also explain reasons behind this rationale. Not only that, this paper denotes in what ways do scholars in International Relations support or against such an action. In order to understand this situation, it is highly important that the affiliation between the United Kingdom (UK) and EU have always been both politically as well as in the economic aspect. Sutherland (2016) has mentioned that “the destabilization that ensued as a result of the Brexit decision had a beneficial outcome. It has greatly shifted public sentiment elsewhere in the EU away from holding similar referendums on the subject of leaving the EU for a while. More importantly, they are against the likelihood of genuinely voting to leave”. This represented the EU unification that is stronger than ever before. Nontheless, it can be said that to a certain extent, many scholars denote that the meaning of the EU still vaguely defined and oftentimes deemed to be insignificant not only to the United Kingdom, but also in Eastern European countries as well. Continuingly, this essay will summarize both sides of this argument and which of them formulate a better elaboration to this debate in respectively. Initially, it was controversial among those who advocated an exit from the EU union and who thought that this topic was compromisable in a more calm and civilized manner. This is owing to the fact that leaving without any negotiation damages both the UK themselves and globally since the UK is an economical and politically strong yet stable country in the world. Nevertheless, PwC analysis (2021) reports annually on the economic trend within the UK, “it is predicted the pandemic's asymmetrical impact will persist as the recovery becomes more polarized across sectors, regions, and households'. This shows that despite a severe impact of the pandemic the current situation of the UK and how they are more financially stable than the rest of the World, with exceptions of China and the United States. On the one hand, Thiseen, et al. (2020) also suggested a similar view on this topic, “most services possess lower cumulative tariff and nontariff barriers than industry or agriculture in the event of a hard Brexit. For geographic areas with greater service specialities, the impact of Brexit on sales prices is minimal''. Such a belief illustrates that even the worst outcome possible had little to merely low effect on typical British and their standard of living. Not only that, Gamble (2012) surveyed British people regarding the euro currency intergration. He found that ”in fact only 1% of the British public reckon that joining the euro would be a good idea in the present time. Unexpectedly, 40% admit it could be a good idea for Britain to join at some point in the future, with varied degrees of enthusiasm, while 51% are against this principle”. This poll demonstrates how unpopular and unenthusiastic Britons' perception towards this integration is, which indeed, many of them did not have as positive emotions which is as predicted. This can be seen in the instance of devaluing the British currency as Wall (2012) discussed that ”even though the pound sterling's 25% depreciation has not resulted in a discernible improvement in Britain's competitiveness. It is nonetheless controversial among eurozone countries since they believe Britain has given themselves an unjustified competitive benefit. This policy preference identified how British people had a tendency over their counterpart despite devaluating Britain's currency. It is due to the fact that Britain is among the top ten countries financially. Furthermore, since there were no economic ties with the Union in the first place, leaving the union did not sharply impact on their economical system. Thereby, a large number of British were not eager to align themselves with the union and voted to immediately leave regardless of conditions and consequences of their own actions. This links to Week 18 of GV204 content that stated why some British citizens voted to maintain their relationship with the EU. The reason for this to happen is because it is what is known as the best of both worlds’ stradegies. This stadegies illustrated that the UK can still access to single market without having to concern about single currency share with other members of the Union. On the other hand, the Center for Economic Performance London School of Economics and Political Science (2016) holds a different standpoint regarding this topic, they offer a viewpoint that economists have consistently come to a conclusion that Brexit would result in reduced household income in the United Kingdom. From such a speculation, this means that in fact the United Kingdom suffers from financial instabilities as a consequence of Brexit though not as much as other European territories. This opposed perspective links to the content of GV204 due to the Week 18 content that illustrated why remainers voted to remain in the Union. The reason for this political turnout is because some Britons could not bear the risk of leaving and how it would severely deter economically, worst even resulting in prices of goods inside the United Kingdom inclined. Hanel and Wolf (2019) has yielded a survey that hypothesizes how the so-called “remainder” of this conflict cast their votes according to how they believed. They came to a conclusion that “oftentimes remainders place a higher value on the well-being of all people, social and environmental issues, and their community on average. They are also more likely to believe that tight collaboration inside the European Union benefits both their own community and society as a whole”. According to the following speculation, many British people have a faith in welfare states due to how it resolves a variety of communal problems both environmentally and sociologically as well. Moreover, they believed that by enhancing the quality of basic necessities would escalate their living standard and allowed them to become more disciplined than not entitled themselves to a welfare state. This related to the GV204 topic that mentioned, a relatively small number of remainers felt strongly attached to the EU already. For such a reason, they casted their votes for the remaining sides accordingly.