an associate editor of New Political Economy, and is also the author of several books, including Rational Choice (with Brad Taylor) and What's Left Now?.Hindmoor applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Twelve Days that Made Modern Britain, and reported the following:
From page 99:Learn more about Twelve Days that Made Modern Britain at the Oxford University Press website.
... after a day and a half of talks with these people even I want to leave the EU. I’m getting nowhere.’ On the 20th of February, he announced that the date of the referendum would be the 23rd of June. Just over four months later, 51.9 per cent of the 72.1 per cent of people who voted opted to leave the European Union. The referendum split the country not just in terms of the relative closeness of the vote but in terms of the respective bases of support for the leave and remain campaigns. Scotland, Northern Ireland, London, and Manchester voted to stay. England, Wales, Birmingham, Sheffield, and most towns with a population of less than 100,000 people voted to leave. Sixty-four per cent of those aged over 65 voted to leave. Only 29 per cent of those aged 18–24 did so. Sixty-two per cent of those with a household income of less than £20,000 voted to leave. Only 35 per cent of those with a household income of more than £60,000 did so. Seventy-two per cent of those with a GSCE or less as their highest educational qualification voted to leave. Thirty-two per cent of those with a degree or higher voted to do so. The referendum also split the parties although perhaps less so than initially expected. Thirty-nine per cent of those who had voted Conservative in 2015 and voted in the 2016 referendum voted to remain. Sixty-one per cent voted to leave. Of those who had voted Labour in 2015, 65 per cent voted to stay and 35 per cent voted to leave.Twelve Days that Made Modern Britain passes, I hope, the Page 99 test. At least it takes the reader of a book about modern British history right to the single most jarring event in recent British history: the 2016 referendum on remaining a part of the European Union. But of course the referendum was always about much more than that. It was about generation gaps and national identity and risk and geography and affluence and what kind of a country Britain is or wants to become. Page 99 documents some of the differences in who voted to leave and who voted to stay in 2016.
Why, against expectations, did leave win? With the obvious benefit of hindsight, two factors seem particularly important. First, and most obviously, large numbers of voters had always been opposed to Britain’s continued membership of the European Union. UKIP provided an electoral outlet for this Euroscepticism. It did not create it. By the early 1980s, 71 per cent of people favoured leaving the European Union. This fell to a low of 30 per cent in 1991.
--Marshal Zeringue
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