In June 2016 the UK shocked the world by voting to leave the European Union. In our previous book (Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union) we told the story of what happened in the referendum and why it produced a leave vote. This book is a sequel to the earlier one and examines what happened after the decision was made looking at events up to the point that the UK formally left the EU in January 2020. This was a period of unprecedented political and electoral turmoil in British politics which for a period looked like it could shatter the party system. It encompassed three elections and three different Prime Ministers and unprecedented volatility in both Parliamentary and electoral politics. The book maps out the twists and turns of the Brexit process, both at the level of the political elites and among the mass public. It then goes on to examine the long-run antecedents of this momentous decision, using data that goes back more than fifty years. Finally, it speculates about the economic and poltical consequences of Brexit for the future, while taking into account the Covid Pandemic which itself added to the turmoil in British politics.

Boris Johnsons victory over Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 general election

The electoral consequences for Theresa Mays government in the 2017 general election examining the role of Brexit and other factors in explaining the results

The political twists and turns of the Brexit process

The fragmentation of the UK party system in the European Elections of 2019. Why the Brexit party won, Labour came third and the Conservatives came fifth.

Chapter 10 concludes our story by looking at the evolving electoral aftermath of Brexit in England and Wales, as seen in the 2017 and 2019 general elections, and the possible paths forward. The steady growth of the identity liberal electorate of graduates and ethnic minorities has provided Labour with a powerful source of new votes. But this influx of new identity liberal supporters has also created new electoral risks, risks underlined by the party’s weak performance in the 2019 election. The growing electoral heft of identity liberals within the Labour coalition has increased the political power of identity politics to unsettle the attachments of economically left-wing but socially conservative ‘old left’ voters, who are increasingly at odds with the identity liberal groups now rising to dominance in Labour’s electoral coalition. The re-alignment of these voters, driven by Brexit, fuelled the Conservatives’ 2019 triumph, but that success in turn brings new challenges. The Conservatives have made major short-term gains with white school leavers, but must now meet the expectations of these disaffected and distrustful voters, and also face growing risks of counter-mobilisation from graduates and ethnic minorities opposed to the identity conservative politics they are now seen as representing.

In this first case study I start by describing Theresa May’s period in office as UK prime minister between 2016 and 2019. Then, an analysis of her performances in Prime Ministers Question Times (PMQs) with Jeremy Corbyn is undertaken, using the adversarial score devised in Chapter 3. The May–Corbyn exchanges are interesting because neither performer is typical in this context – May because she is a woman and Corbyn because he is a man whose stated aim is to make PMQs less adversarial. May’s style in debates is found to be highly evasive with some extremely adversarial elements and Corbyn also uses adversarial language. Next, May’s performances in ‘critical gendered moments’ (where gender or gender relations are explicitly discussed) are scrutinised. May is found to position herself as a feminist, but one who adheres to traditional, conservative gender roles, and she is shown to have some difficulty entering into the homosocial bonding activities of the old boy’s network because of how she is positioned by sexist, collaborative humour. Finally, I consider some gendered media representations of May, particularly in relation to emotion, and identify how she has resisted or exploited them.