Margaret Thatcher meets the president of the European Commission. Photo: / PA Wire/Press Association Images. All rights reservedWhat is surprising about the result of the referendum is that so many of us were surprised – astonished may be closer to the truth. If we had thought a bit more deeply about the state of Britain and placed the referendum within a framework of the policy history of the country over the past 4 decades – since the 1980s- then all would have been predictable. What has happened – a narrow majority decision to leave the EU- has more or less nothing to do with the failings of the EU and everything to do with the state of the country. Those who voted to leave – and those who voted to stay- were both responding to economic and social forces that were not in any way inevitable but were the outcome of policy choices of both Labour and Tory governments.
Possibly the most significant factor has been the welcome given to neoliberal economic ideas and their embodiment in national policy. Fundamental to this ideology is the proposition that markets are self equilibrating: that if left to themselves with the minimum of government regulation all would be well and everyone would be better off. Of course, the conditions required for such an outcome are in practice not present in the real world, where there is risk and uncertainty and concentration of ownership and control. But the neoliberals were canny in their shifting of the policy window so that policies that no one would formerly have thought feasible became the new norm.
policies that no one would formerly have thought feasible became the new norm.
