In the myriad arguments and counter-arguments about the virtues, or otherwise, of Brexit, it is hard to discern what role, if any, was played by social policy in the referendum result. Following an account of the key factors that contributed to the decision to call a referendum, this chapter examines the pattern of voting across the UK before moving on to consider how the particular configuration of the referendum vote relates to wider issues that concern the conduct of economic and social policy in the UK. The analysis suggests that although voters were largely influenced by a narrow range of core issues – notably the impact of rising net migration, anxieties about sovereignty and fears about the trajectory of the UK economy – these concerns may in turn have been provoked by two factors. First, labour markets became increasingly ‘flexible’ and less secure as a result of globalisation, and, second, this insecurity was compounded by the significant tilt towards ‘austerity’ in the period after 2010. This latter factor, in particular, had an immediate negative impact on the living standards of the most deprived groups in the UK and on the public services upon which they depend.

Although it is not possible, in any simple manner, to equate the effects of globalisation and the rise of austerity, on the one hand, with, on the other, a decision to leave the European Union (EU), one general observation can be made. Many of those who voted to leave expressed a sense of being ‘left behind’ – ‘left out’ might be a better phrase – by economic growth and the political elites that design and implement key economic and social policies (Wright and Case, 2016). This understandable sense of marginalisation led large numbers of people to protest against their treatment by voting to leave an institution that, however unfairly, had in their view come to embody a toxic combination of democratic deficit and elite ‘remote control’. The irony here is that this revolt against a hostile economic environment and policies that appeared to be intentionally designed to reduce living standards in the interests of preserving that environment, may well result in the further deterioration of those standards as the UK struggles with the economic and social implications of Brexit.