LAUSR

As part of initial campaigning in January 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to hold an in/out referendum if the Conservatives won a majority in the general election of 2015. Received wisdom before the 2015 general election was that there would be another coalition government, and that a Liberal Democrat Party partner to such a coalition would reject a referendum; so centrist Conservatives could make the pledge, benefit from it, and likely never have to implement it. Thereafter, the intent was to both undercut the growing popularity of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and silence Cameron’s own Conservative sceptics. European integration had been a source of division within the Party, particularly from the 1990s, based on issues that had never been resolved. These focused mainly on the sharing of sovereignty within the European Union (EU) through the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and then the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. The immediate effect of a referendum pledge was to focus debate on immigration, and provide a degree of legitimacy to UKIP and a point of convergence for Conservative sceptics. In reality, immigration and EU membership are largely separate issues. It has been typical ever since the UK joined the European Economic Community in 1973 for annual net migration to the UK from outside the region to exceed that from within. What matters in UK politics is that UKIP increased their vote from less than 1 million to 3.8 million in the 2015 general election. In essence, in attempting to confront the problem of the Euro-sceptic right, Cameron put short-term strategy for his own party before long-term collective interests. He thus contributed to shifting the ‘Overton window’—the range of ideas that can assume the centre stage in political discourse by being acceptable to the public—to accommodate the sceptics and UKIP’s way of positioning a much broader set of issues. Obviously, this shift also affected the outcome of the referendum in June 2016. It is important, however, to take a longer term and wider view to Brexit and its consequences. Events and episodes occur within processes. A number of processes may not only occur simultaneously but also coalesce and interact in various ways. Already Thucydides, in his