Voting for Your Pocketbook, but against Your Pocketbook? A Study of Brexit at the Local Level

• Date: 01 March 2022
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Author: Max Kiefel,Javier José Olivas Osuna,Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni
• DOI: 10.1177/0032329221992198
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329221992198

Politics & Society

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329221992198

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Article

Voting for Your Pocketbook,

but against Your Pocketbook?

A Study of Brexit at the Local

Level

Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni, Max Kiefel,

and Javier Olivas Osuna

London School of Economics

Abstract

In explaining the outcome of the 2016 EU referendum in the United Kingdom, can

theories emphasizing the importance of economic factors be reconciled with the

fact that many people appeared to vote against their economic self-interest? This

article approaches this puzzle through case study research that draws on fieldwork

and a process of reciprocal knowledge exchange with local communities in five local

authorities in England and Wales. It argues that the Leave vote can be attributed

partly to political discontent associated with trajectories of relative economic decline

and deindustrialization. Building on the growing literature about the role of narratives

and discourses in navigating uncertainty, it contends that these localized economic

experiences, interpreted through local-level narratives, paved the way for local-level

discourses of resilience and nationwide optimistic messaging about the economic

impacts of Brexit to resonate. Local and national-level discourses discounting the

potential economic costs of leaving the European Union played a crucial role in giving

precise, somewhat paradoxical, political content to the sense of discontent. The

article contributes to the growing focus on place and community in understanding

political behavior and invites further research on local discourses linking macro-level

trajectories and micro-level voting decisions.

Keywords

geographical inequalities, local discourses, Brexit, voting behavior

Corresponding Author:

Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni, European Institute, Centre Building, London School of Economics and

Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.

Email: k.gartzou-katsouyanni@lse.ac.uk

992198PASXXX10.1177/0032329221992198Politics & SocietyGartzou-Katsouyanni et al.

research-article2022

2022, Vol. 50(1) 3–43

José

The findings of most quantitative impact assessments of Brexit have been pessimistic.

Brexit has been predicted to have negative effects on inflation, the income distribu-

tion, and living standards; on employment; on immigration; and on trade and GDP.1

According to a cross-departmental analysis by Her Majesty’s Government, the accu-

mulated impact of Brexit on UK GDP after fifteen years would range from −3.9 per-

cent to −9.3 percent.2 Moreover, a range of studies predict that the impacts of Brexit

across UK regions and industries are likely to be asymmetric. Some expect Leave-

voting areas to be hit the hardest by rising trade barriers, declining purchasing power,

and the loss of EU funds.3 A recent study showed that “areas of the UK that voted to

leave the EU have suffered the biggest economic hit” as a result of the loss of house-

hold purchasing power and weak business investment since the 2016 referendum.4

These findings pose a paradox for theories that explain the outcome of the 2016 refer-

endum on the basis of economic factors. Why would economically motivated voters

choose what was likely to be, by most scientific accounts, an economically damaging

outcome?

We address this puzzle by analyzing different ways of thinking about the economic

consequences of the 2016 referendum in five case study areas: Barnet, Ceredigion,

Mansfield, Pendle, and Southampton. We draw on evidence collected via interviews

and focus groups with local stakeholders, fieldwork, local news sources, and gray lit-

erature, conducted in the framework of the research project “Debating Brexit at the

Local Level: A Mixed Methods Comparative Study.” While a range of quantitative

studies have generated invaluable insights into the origins of the Brexit vote,5 our

focus on the puzzle of economically motivated, economically damaging voting in a

small number of cases enabled us to examine context-specific configurations of vari-

ables. This design also allowed us to combine a macro-level analysis of long-term

local economic trajectories with a micro-level analysis of how these trajectories are

interpreted and translated into voting choices by individuals.

We argue that context-specific economic conditions and trajectories, especially

relative economic decline, the spread of low-value-added business models, and the

decline in the quality of infrastructure and public services, played an important role as

determinants of the Leave vote. They did so not only by generating a widespread sense

of political discontent but also by giving rise to defensive and nostalgic conceptions of

local pride and narratives of blame toward outsiders. Such conceptions and narratives

created a fertile ground for the emergence of a predominant local discourse about

resilience in the face of crisis that resonated with national-level tropes about Brexit,

leading local actors to play down the potential risks and overstate the expected bene-

fits of leaving the European Union. The higher the degree of uncertainty over the type

of impact that Brexit would have on the economy, the greater the impact of these dis-

courses about resilience.

The article is structured as follows. In the next section, we situate our research in

the literature and develop our theoretical argument. We then outline our case-study-

based, participatory methodological approach. In the fourth section, we provide a brief

overview of the demographic and socioeconomic realities characterizing each of our

case studies. Next, we present the first part of our empirical evidence, showing how

4Politics & Society 50(1)

local economic trajectories of relative decline gave rise to both political discontent and

to discourses of nostalgic pride and blame shifting. In section 6, we show that the dis-

courses of nostalgic pride and blame shifting analyzed in the previous section created

a fertile ground for the resonance of optimistic messages about the ability of local

communities to cope with a potential crisis, helping to entrench discontent around the

issue of Brexit. In section 7, we conclude.

Drawing on Local Predominant Discourses to Navigate

Uncertainty: The Theoretical Argument

Given the negative economic forecasts by a range of experts and “Project Fear,” why

would voters support the Leave option with its likely adverse consequences?

One potential answer is that Brexit was never about people’s economic situation. It

was about their “basic outlook; whether they take a cosmopolitan or a more insular

view of the world.”6 Scholars have pointed to the importance of a shift in generational

values, increasingly negative attitudes toward immigrants, and the prevalent percep-

tion of a loss of sovereignty.7 However, this interpretation is contested by a number of

prominent accounts that suggest that structural transformations inherent to globaliza-

tion, the advance of the knowledge economy, and the adoption of neoliberal economic

policies have created the circumstances that allow populist or antisystem politics to

develop.8 Recent developments have sought to move on from this debate by identify-

ing the ways in which cultural and economic factors reinforce each other in driving

such outcomes.9

Our fieldwork findings support those developments as we identify context-specific

ways in which economic and cultural sources of political discontent can intertwine.

Specifically, we suggest that the experience of relative economic decline gives rise to

feelings of frustration and neglect, defensive perceptions of local identity, and resent-

ment against the most visible manifestations of changing economic models, which in

turn fuel political discontent. Our argument builds on the growing interdisciplinary

literature that emphasizes the importance of territorially unequal trajectories of devel-

opment for today’s political cleavages.10 Andrés Rodríguez-Pose influentially included

Brexit as one of several populist voting outcomes across the world that reflected a

revolt of the “places that don’t matter.”11 Indeed, substantial spatial economic imbal-

ances in the United Kingdom between the south and the north and between well-inte-

grated cities and postindustrial towns have paved the way for geographically polarized

voting behavior across the United Kingdom.12 A decline in local housing markets and

the relative vulnerability of certain areas to Chinese import competition contributed to

localized economic stresses and resentments that fueled the Leave vote in certain

areas.13 After all, individuals draw conclusions about the state of “the national econ-

omy” via their proximate, local-level economic experiences.14

Nevertheless, these observations only further contribute to our puzzle. If some form

of economic deprivation, marginalization, or threat was a significant motivator of the

Brexit vote, then why were the potential economic consequences of the antisystem

outcome not a primary consideration for voters? In order to address this question, it is

5

Gartzou-Katsouyanni et al.