Ten years after the Brexit referendum, one lesson stands out from my research on referendum campaigns: economic arguments alone rarely win high-stakes political contests.
The prevailing wisdom among policymakers, academics and commentators was that voters would punish proposals associated with heightened economic uncertainty. Expert forecasts and warnings about the economic costs of leaving the European Union were therefore expected to persuade. Yet the referendum demonstrated that citizens do not evaluate risk solely through material calculations. The Leave campaign successfully reframed Brexit as a morally meaningful leap into the unknown, an opportunity to ‘take back control’, restore democratic sovereignty, and reclaim agency over Britain’s future. It did so without even having to define that future in concrete terms, because economic uncertainty itself had been ‘de-risked’ and presented as a price worth paying.
In hindsight, Brexit foreshadowed broader developments in democratic politics across Europe and beyond. Economic performance and technocratic expertise continue to matter, but they increasingly compete with narratives rooted in identity, belonging, and purpose. Voters may accept significant economic costs if they believe they are acting in accordance with deeply held values or contributing to a collective project that gives meaning to sacrifice.
The referendum therefore taught us something important about political persuasion. Facts do not speak for themselves. Their persuasive force depends on the interpretive frames through which citizens understand them. Political actors do not only compete over policy proposals but also to define what risks are acceptable, what futures are imaginable, and who ‘we’ are as a political community.
A decade on, Brexit remains a reminder that democratic politics is as much about meaning and moral interpretation as it is about economic calculation.
Ece Özlem Atikcan is Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick.
Note: The views expressed in this post are those of the authors, and not of the UCL European Institute, nor of UCL.
