What is Nigel Farage's favorite novel? Why do Brexiteers love Sherlock Holmes? Is Philip Larkin the best Brexit poet ever? Through the politically relevant sideroad of English Literature, writ large, ...John Sutherland quarries the great literary minds of English history to assemble the ultimate reading list for Brexiteers.Brexit shook Britain to its roots and sent shockwaves across the world. But despite the referendum victory, Brexit is peculiarly hollow. It is an idea without political apparatus, without sustaining history, without field-tested ideology. As Sutherland argues: it is without thinkers—like Frankenstein waiting for the lightning bolt. In this irreverent, entertaining, and utterly tongue-in-cheek new guide, Sutherland suggests some stuffing for the ideological vacuity at the heart of the Brexit cause. He looks for meaning in the works of William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Thomas Hardy; in modern classics like The Queen and I and London Fields; and in the British national anthem, school songs, and poetry.Exploring what Britain meant, means, and will mean, Sutherland subtly shows how great literary works have a shaping influence on the world. Witty and insightful, and with a preface by Guardian columnist and critic John Crace, this book belongs on the shelves of anyone seeking to understand the bragging Brexiteers (and the many diehard Remoaners, too).
Political campaign slogans, such as ‘Take back control of our country’ (United Kingdom Independence Party) and ‘The Netherlands ours again’ (Dutch Party for Freedom), indicate that right‐wing ...populism appeals to the belief that the country is ‘ours’, and therefore, ‘we’ have the exclusive right to determine what happens. We examined this sense of ownership of the country (i.e. collective psychological ownership CPO) with the related determination right in relation to exclusionary attitudes and voting behaviour. Among Dutch (Study 1, N = 572) and British (Study 2, N = 495) participants, we found that CPO explained anti‐immigrant and anti‐EU attitudes, and these attitudes in turn accounted for voting ‘leave’ in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the British sample (Study 2). Additionally, CPO was more strongly related to negative immigrant attitudes among right‐wing Dutch participants, whereas it was more strongly related to negative EU attitudes and voting ‘leave’ among left‐wing British participants. CPO contributes to the understanding of critical contemporary social attitudes and political behaviour.
PurposeThis paper aims to explore the value of geographic diversification in the context of deglobalization, drawing evidence from a quasi-natural experiment – the Brexit referendum that took place ...on 23 June 2016 in the UK.Design/methodology/approachThis study applies an event study methodology to estimate the impact of the Brexit vote on a cross-section of firms with varying levels of geographic diversification – undiversified UK firms, UK firms with significant operations in the European Union (EU) and globally diversified UK firms. This study deploys a Heckman two-stage regression approach to address sample selection bias.FindingsThis study finds that undiversified UK firms experienced negative cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) around the Brexit referendum. The value of UK firms with majority sales within the UK declined by 0.9 percentage points, on average, in the three days centred on the Brexit referendum. In contrast, UK firms that are globally diversified, with the majority of sales within the EU are unaffected, while diversified firms in the rest of the world generated positive CARs of 1.8 percentage points over the same period. These results are robust to firm characteristics, selection bias and alternative measures of CARs and diversification.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is subject to some limitations that open avenues for future work. There are a few available proxies of diversification and further work on developing other proxies is much needed. Further work may also examine the long-term impact of diversification on UK firms. This study considered Brexit as a quasi-natural experiment, and this study could be applied to other deglobalization events like COVID-19 and can enhance the generalizability of diversification strategy in the deglobalized world. Findings may stimulate future work to explore how another form of diversification – product diversification has affected firm returns around Brexit. Finally, this study has focused on the UK as its base case. It may be interesting to corroborate the findings by exploring the impact of Brexit on European firms, who hitherto Brexit, had some operations in the UK.Practical implicationsThis work offers some insights for policymakers and regulators around the impact of deglobalization on local firms. Findings suggest that these trends significantly negatively impact the most vulnerable firms (smaller firms with less global reach), while their larger counterparts with significant global reach might be insulated. This finding is important for determining the nature of support needed by different firms in times of deglobalization. The work also offers insights to managers of firms operating in countries where there are real prospects of deglobalization. Specifically, the work highlights the importance of geographic diversification when free movement of goods, services and people is restricted.Originality/valueThis study shows that a certain group of globally diversified firms earned significantly higher returns from the prospect of the UK leaving the EU, thereby highlighting the value of geographic diversification in a time of deglobalization.
The Papuan Armed Criminal Group (KKB) has been a hereditary problem for the Indonesian government. Their demand to secede from the Republic of Indonesia was the main reason why this group was formed. ...Because the Government has not responded to the demands of the KKB, it led this group to carry out acts of terror against the society in Papua. One of the cases that have recently attracted media attention is the KKB’s attack that killed several workers in Beoga, Puncak district, Papua. The study aims to analyze and evaluate the settlement of terrorism cases carried out by KKB. This normative legal research relied on secondary data. The results of the study indicate that in international law, the context of referendum exists only in the context of decolonization and non-self-governing territory. The government's move by considering the KKB as a separatist terrorist group and not accepting KKB's demands for a referendum or mediation is one of the right steps. Acts of terrorism cannot be tolerated even though they are related to human rights because it is regulated in legislation
Using volunteer writing for Mass Observation, we explore how British citizens decided whether to leave the EU. The 2016 referendum was the biggest decision made by the British electorate in decades, ...but involved limited voter analysis. Many citizens did not have strong views about EU membership in early 2016. The campaigns did not help to firm up their views, not least because so much information appeared to be in dispute. Voters, often characterised as polarised, were reluctant and uncertain. Many citizens took their duty to decide seriously, but were driven more by hunch than careful analysis. In 2016, voters reacted against elites they did not trust at least as much as they embraced the ideas of trusted elites. This contrasts with the 1975 Referendum on the Common Market, when the vote was driven by elite endorsement. In low-trust contexts, voters use cues from elites as negative rather than positive stimulus.
Even though the opinion polling before the British referendum on membership of the European Union showed a narrow gap between the two sides, the actual result—a vote to leave—on the morning of 24 ...June 2016 came as a surprise to many. Yet in truth both the referendum and its outcome had deep roots in British politics. In this article we cast an eye over the history of Britain's relationship with the EU, which has long been marked by a mixture of awkwardness and successful influence. We trace the origins of the referendum in long-run tensions between, and within, the political parties, and in the lukewarm public support for European integration. We also examine more contingent, short-term factors relating to the referendum campaign itself. We conclude by commenting on the divisions exposed by the vote along lines of geography, education, class and wealth, and suggest that reconciling these with the continuing tensions in the party landscape make a clean and speedy exit from the EU unlikely.
The UK's 2016 EU referendum and its aftermath have seen the eruption back into mainstream political and media discourse of spatial language and representations. As commentators, politicians and ...citizens have sought to make sense of the splintering and convulsion occasioned by the referendum, a spatial imaginary and lexicon has emerged - for example, referencing 'left behind places' populated by 'left behind' citizens, and contrasting these with 'metropolitan cores' and 'metropolitan elites'. Informed by this the present paper identifies and unpacks some of the spatial imaginaries foregrounded in the UK's 'European debate' and the aftermath of the 2016 EU referendum.
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