It captures faithfully the stance of both sides of political debate in Europe. Whether you are convinced Brexiter or committed Remainer, whether you live in Europe far beyond this book will explain for you one of the most complex political decisions of our century - a fracture of European Union. Authors meticulous research, and faithfulness to the smallest detail of political events and social context can be observed on literally every page. Everyone who delves into this book will be rewarded with freedom from oversimplifications, phantasy or pure disinformation which are so prevalent in the debate on Brexit. If one wants want to be free from manipulative headlines promoted on social on media this book can be light on the path to liberty of mind. It is worthy to notice that historically populism to succeed always required manipulators and those who wanted to be manipulated. The issue of Brexit that was sloganeered by populist politicians became their tool with which they enslaved so many minds around the world. "Brexit" that reads like novel, which is made available thanks to Cambridge University Press may help in rebuilt of responsible and informed public debate.

This was so interesting! Brexit dominated Britain for a long time during the campaign and it was really interesting to see it from an academic perspective. This book looks back to the previous European vote and the change in opinion between then and now. It focuses on the rise of UKIP and the fear of immigration within the country at large, and the view of national identity. It was very interesting that when polled, compared to UKIP voters, the average person had a very similar view on immigration and different ethnicities.

This is something of a dry read, crammed with statistical analysis (unfortunately most of it unreadable on the Kindle version I had).: "Since the dependant variable is a dichotomy...model parameters are estimated using binomial logit procedures..." gives a flavour of the tone! Nonetheless, it is a fascinating read and does make you wonder why the pundits & pollsters got the referendum result so wrong. The authors indicate, based on a slew of long-term survey evidence, that many of the factors that affected voting were baked in long before the referendum took place. and that whilst some people did change their minds during the referendum campaign, most attitudes had formed years before. "It is clear that, if they were listening, a large majority of British MPs would have heard their constituents supporting Brexit" - London and Scotland being the exceptions. The survey evidence also suggest the Remain campaign got its strategy wrong - the scare-mongering of 'Project Fear' just didn't go down well. The Leave campaign seems to have been more nimble in responding to voters' concerns.

I also found the author's analysis of the likely consequences. Here again they are looking at statistical information, including a Cambridge study which suggests that the economic benefits of EU membership, not just for the UK but for other member states, are not as great as has been implied. They also cast doubt on the reliability of the Treasury model which predicted doom & disaster and fuelled George Osborne's warning of an emergency budget in the event of a leave vote. The upshot is that the authors suggest that the negative effects of Brexit have been over-stated. Another interesting issue emerges in that the authors indicate that the views of British voters to immigration are not dissimilar to those of voters across the EU - we are far from the being exceptional in attitudes towards immigration. Survey evidence from Europe shows that support for further integration fell between 2004 and 2014.

The book was written before the 2017 general election but it does indicate that among the wider public there was no sign of Brexit remorse nor any appetite for a second referendum and there is little to suggest that has changed.

An insightful analysis of the reasons for Brexit, using recent survey data as well as reviewing the history of Britons' attitudes towards the EU since they joined in 1973. As a more in-depth analysis than media reports at the time, it suggests that Brexit wasn't in fact as much of a surprise as general opinion would have thought. Since the beginning of Britain's membership in the "Common Market", the country has experienced fluctuations in public opinion about being a part of the EU, and recent surveying suggests national identities played a large role in both Leave and Remain votes (evident in the discrepancy between the Scottish votes for Remain and the English and Welsh votes for Leave). UKIP and it's voters make up a large part of the book's analysis, as well as a broader study of attitudes towards immigration in Europe as a whole. The sobering reality is that the unfavourable attitudes on immigration, refugees and 'human capital' generally attributed to the 'deplorable' UKIP voters is in fact widespread across all voters in the UK, and indeed in Europe as a whole. This may just be the beginning of the end; the EU band-aid is struggling to hold together the deep wounds within Europe.

My thanks to Cambridge University Press and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book for review purposes.

The 23 June 2016 referendum decision for Britain to leave the European Union was a pivotal moment and one that confounded the overwhelming majority of media commentators, pollsters and academics who concluded that Remain would win, given the weight of advice to that effect from national and international figures and organizations (including the Prime Minister, most of his Cabinet, a large majority of MPs, the CBI, the World Bank and the IMF), in addition to the dire warnings of the consequences of leaving, emanating from the likes of George Osborne (talk of a “DIY recession” and a “punishment budget”) and Barack Obama (saying that a Britain outside the EU would have to go to the “back of the queue” in any trade negotiations with the US).

‘Brexit’ by Harold D. Clarke, Matthew Goodwin and Paul Whiteley seeks to explain why Leave won, to analyze whether the result should have come as such a surprise, and to examine the likely consequences of Britain’s departure.

This last ambition is particularly tricky as looking into the future is always difficult but especially so when one lives in such fast-moving times and thus some statements - such as Anand Menon’s “lingering uncertainty” in the Prologue, over where UKIP voters “might go should they decide to withdraw their support” - have already been rendered dated.

When one hears from its social scientist authors that this volume’s USP is that it is “the first to draw on longitudinal aggregate- and individual-level survey data to examine the drivers of support for leaving the EU in a more holistic fashion” than rival volumes, specifically making use of the Essex Continuous Monitoring Surveys (ECMS) and a November 2014-January 2015 survey of nearly 15,000 UKIP members, then one might understandably fear an abstruse text periodically punctuated by opaque tables. ‘Brexit’ is, in fact, surprisingly readable, if you can cope with tables with titles such as ‘Individual-Level Logistic Regression Models of Voting for UKIP in the 2014 European Parliament Election and 2015 General Election’.

The best feature of the book is the way in which it is able to meld statistical analysis of grass-roots changes in sentiment with an appreciation of the impact of the actions of the principal political actors, for example showing the EU Referendum to be merely the last in a long list of moves which reveal David - “I’m a winner” - Cameron to have been an habitual political gambler.

Boris Johnson understandably receives considerable attention as he crucially represented a popular figurehead for the Leave campaign for those squeamish about aligning themselves with Farage, although we’re mistakenly told that Boris announced his decision to join the Leave campaign “immediately after Cameron had announced the date of the referendum” when in fact - as mentioned elsewhere in the book - he did not do so until the following day.

Several of the authors’ conclusions – such as that whilst “the 2016 campaign may have changed some people’s minds and motivated them to cast a ballot, when it came to … whether to vote for Brexit, some key attitudes had been in place for a long time” or that most of those who joined UKIP “were elderly, white men who mainly became politically active because of their strong desire to leave the EU and reduce immigration” – are hardly very surprising, although there’s obviously some merit in having the seemingly self-evident statistically underpinned.

Other conclusions are fairly inconclusive (“even if everyone who was eligible to vote had gone to the polls, there is a distinct possibility that Remain could still have been defeated”) or even close to contradictory (“strong public concern over the large numbers of immigrants entering the country was front and central to Leave securing victory” versus “no one single factor … shaped how people thought about EU membership”).

Most contentious, however, in my opinion, is the statement that “while UKIP was propelled into the mainstream by public opposition towards the country’s EU membership, there have also been other sources of support for the party” including “the people’s negative judgements about how respective Governments have managed the economy, the NHS and immigration”.

Surely UKIP supporters tend - or at least tended - to see virtually everything through the lens of EU membership (or immigration), believing that departure from the EU provided the solution to all the UK’s difficulties? That is certainly the charge commonly levelled at their representatives, whilst the view that their raison d'être has largely disappeared with the success of the Leave campaign and the triggering of Article 50 largely explains their emasculation at the local government elections of 4 May 2017. Thus if most UKIP supporters at the time with which this book is concerned did not really see the economy, the NHS and immigration as issues separate from EU membership it is a rather artificial exercise to treat these issues as discrete when seeking to explain UKIP support.

To sum up, on first appearance ‘Brexit’ is like a plane with a very sturdy undercarriage, which should enable it to resist buffeting and take an impressive payload into the air with great ease. It’ll certainly take the reader from A to B quite efficiently but it never soars quite so high or flies quite as smoothly as its basic design promises.