In January 2013, responding to a perceived rising tide of British opinion, Conservative UK prime minister David Cameron proposed a referendum on British membership in the EU. He said at that time: “It is time for the British people to have their say. It is time to settle this European question in British politics. I say to the British people: this will be your decision.” In doing so, he was attempting to mimic Labour's Harold Wilson who had successfully done the same thing in 1974 regarding membership in the European Economic Community (EEC). Cameron launched a years-long campaign that culminated in a June 2016 Brexit vote in which the British people “had their say.” In what has been called Cameron's “great miscalculation,” they voted to leave the EU or at least to try. Prime Minister Cameron resigned with his political career in tatters.

The Brexit campaign had deep roots in what is known as Euroscepticism, a mix of nationalist, ethnonationalist and populist ideas about the state of Britain in the world. Its rise is often linked to the signing of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty forming the EU, as well as to perceived economic decline in the UK. It is primarily but not exclusively linked to the political right in Britain and has some parallels with similar development in the United States. The vote was a close call, with majorities in Scotland, Northern Ireland and London voting to stay in the EU. It was a signature event.

Populism has been described as an antiestablishment movement that pits “the people” against “the elites.” The fact that populists are themselves often members of the elite does not seem to matter. Populism engages in mythmaking and the gross simplification of complex issues (heuristic substitution from Chapter 4). In the current era, these complex issues include economic globalization and multilateral relations. Mythmaking and the us/them cleavage work together in populist rhetoric, conjuring up “enemies of the people.” Further, as discussed in the previous chapter, “the people” can be defined in ethnonationalist terms (the “English”), and the results can be dramatic.

For example, Nigel Farage is a descendant of Huguenot refugees who fled from France to England in the seventeenth century to escape religious persecution. He became the face of the populist UK Independence Party (UKIP) that took up the pro-Brexit cause.