"Masterful" – Ian Dunt "Fascinating" – Professor Brian Cox "Vital" – David Miliband *** Britain's 2016 vote to leave the EU divided the nation, unleashing years of political turmoil. Today, many remain unreconciled to Brexit whilst, in a tragic irony, some of those most committed to it are angry and dissatisfied with what was delivered. In this clear-headed assessment, Chris Grey argues that this painful legacy was all but inevitable, skilfully unpacking how and why the promise of Brexit dissolved during the confusing and often dramatic events that followed the referendum. Now fully updated with an afterword covering each element of the Brexit debate since the end of the transition period in 2021, this new edition remains the essential guide to one of the most bitterly contested issues of our time.

From Boris Johnson to Nigel Farage, George Galloway to Michael Gove, the campaign to get Britain out of the EU brought together some of the most colourful characters in British politics. This once-in-a-generation opportunity to free the UK from the grip of Brussels saw egos put to one side and rivalries put on hold to push for a Leave vote in the EU referendum ... Or did it? As D-Day drew near, political reporter Owen Bennett went deep into Leave territory to reveal the inside story of the battle for Brexit. Behind a campaign promising hope and glory - but seemingly mired in blood, sweat and tears - Bennett discovered a plethora of Leave groups, all riven with feuds: the Tory 'posh boys' against the 'toxic' hardliners; UKIP's only MP against the rest of the party; Michael Gove's former lieutenant Dominic Cummings against almost everyone else. Charting the crusade from the massing of the UKIP foot soldiers after the general election to the arrival of the Cabinet cavalry after Cameron's Brussels deal and the dramatic final weeks' fighting on battle buses, The Brexit Club reveals the truth behind the campaign that divided friends, families and, ultimately, the country.

Through a focus on media and political discourses both before and after the UK 2016 EU Referendum, this volume provides a set of comprehensive, empirically based analyses of Brexit as a social and political crisis. The book explores a variety of context-dependent, ideologically driven, social, political, and economic imaginaries that have been attached to the idea/concept of Brexit in the UK and internationally. The volume’s wider contribution has three dimensions. First, it provides evidence of how the Brexit referendum debate and its immediate reactions were discursively framed and made sense of by a variety of social and political actors and through different media. Second, the contributors show how such discourses were reflexive of the wider path-dependent historical and political processes which have been instrumental in pre-defining the key pathways along which Brexit has been articulated. Third, the book identifies key patterns of national and international framing in order to discover the key, recurrent discursive trajectories in the ongoing process of Brexit – including after UK’s formal departure from the EU in January 2020 – while putting forward an agenda for its further, in depth and systematic analysis in, in particular, politics and the media. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Critical Discourse Studies.

Covering Western history from the ancient world to the current era of globalization, The Modernization of the Western World describes the forces of social change and what they have meant to the lives of the people caught up in them. The volume presents the history of Western civilization from a historical sociology perspective, introducing readers to the analyses of thinkers like Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Max Weber, in order to provide tools for understanding how societies function and change. This application of modernization theory argues, not that what has happened in the West should or even must happen in non-Western societies, but that understanding modernization as a process of social change affords a better understanding of why and how life has changed over the past millennium. The interactions of Western and non-Western societies have had a profound effect on each other; this is the story of the development of a truly global economy. This new edition has been updated to include a final chapter which addresses recent developments—economic disturbances in the global marketplace, cyberwarfare, and the rise of populist movements—testing the relevance of classic modernization theory for today. Featuring a glossary, maps and illustrations, boxed features, and an extensive index, this book will be of particular interest to students looking to understand world history as well as those interested in historical sociology and modernization theory.

‘Being more like America again and less like Europe is the heart of the UK model of capitalism ... [but] there are many respects in which Britain remains unlike America despite its strong appeal to the British political class ...’ In 'After Brexit' Andrew Gamble sets out the economic models and external relationships that Britain has pursued since the Second World War and examines the choices it now faces as it adjusts to life outside of the European Union. This volume brings together this essay with some of Andrew Gamble’s most important and influential writings on British politics and political economy from the last forty years. They reflect on many of the issues that animate British politics, from the relative decline of the economy and the reshaping of the welfare state to the transformation of the Conservative and Labour parties and the changing constitutional order with the devolution of power to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The volume is introduced by the author and includes his notes on each of the essays as well as an epilogue, which considers their original context and what has changed since. Taken together, the essays in this volume are testament to the acuity of one of Britain’s foremost political thinkers and provide rich insight into debates and ideas that continue to influence British politics and Britain’s place in the world. A companion volume of Andrew Gamble’s essays, The Western Ideology and Other Essays, focusing on political ideas and ideologies, is also available from Bristol University Press.

The Parliamentary Battle Over Brexit provides answers to those who want to understand the bitter arguments that occurred over Brexit, what might have been handled better, and the role that parliament played. Since the 2016 referendum, the hotly contested issue of Brexit has raised fundamental questions about the workings of British democracy. Nowhere was this more true than regarding the role of parliament. This book addresses important questions about parliament's role in the UK constitution, and the impact on this of the Brexit process. While initially intended to re-establish 'parliamentary sovereignty', Brexit wrought significant damage on the reputation of parliament, and the wider culture of UK democracy. Charting the full story of the parliamentary battle over Brexit, Meg Russell and Lisa James show that it wasn't always what it seemed. Based on careful documentary research and extensive interviews with key protagonists, the book explores multiple nail-biting moments, procedural innovations, and political 'what if's'. Drawing on insider accounts, alongside media and parliamentary debates, the book puts the events of Brexit into context and provides a clear and reliable document of record on a complex and disputed story. Ultimately, it argues that Brexit was largely a battle inside the Conservative Party, for which parliament got the blame. Insightful and comprehensive, the book is necessary reading to those with broader interests in British Politics, the culture of UK democracy, and the challenges of populism and democratic 'backsliding'.

Things fall apart when empires crumble. This time, we think, things will be different. They are not. This time, we are told, we will become great again. We will not. In this new edition of the hugely successful Rule Britannia, Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson argue that the vote to leave the EU was the last gasp of the old empire working its way out of the British psyche. Fuelled by a misplaced nostalgia, the result was driven by a lack of knowledge of Britain's imperial history, by a profound anxiety about Britain's status today, and by a deeply unrealistic vision of our future.

This book is the first to explore the relationship between tourism and Brexit from a social science perspective. As the UK repositions itself in the uncharted waters of a post-Brexit world the book considers three interconnected themes all bound up in touristic practices: travel, borders and identity. The volume uses diverse examples, including UK-Polish tourism, royal events, Arthurian-based heritage in Cornwall, media representations of Brits abroad, ideas of freedom on holiday in Mallorca, the impacts of Brexit on migrant workers in Mallorca and on tourism for Commonwealth and Overseas Territories. Contributors to the book are based in the UK, EU, Southeast Asia, USA, Australia and New Zealand, giving the analysis a strongly international focus. It will be useful for students and researchers in tourism, migration, European studies, social anthropology, geography and sociology.

Brexit and the Migrant Voice provides a platform for the perspectives of European citizens and migrants living and working in the UK by assessing their representation in British and European cultural productions (literature, drama, the media) and by foregrounding their attitudes, their fears, and their concerns about Brexit. The book looks at Brexit through the eyes of Britain’s European citizens (‘Europe in Britain’), while also looking at European perceptions of Britain as a nation (‘Britain in Europe’), via a geographical journey – from West to East –across Europe. The book assesses how these countries, their citizens, and their cultural productions engage with the questions and challenges posed by Brexit. It brings together an exciting line-up of European academics and scholars, both early-career and well-established, from a variety of subject disciplines. Some live and work within UK Higher Education Institutions and thus look at Britain from within, while others reside within their countries of origin and look at Britain from the outside. Their chapters assess Brexit via a plethora of cultural outputs – Brexit fiction from their individual countries, opinion pieces, press discussions, but also narratives of compatriots affected by the UK’s decision to leave the European Union. The authors’ individual focal points on fiction, journalism, blog posts, theatre performances, and other cultural productions offer an innovative and comprehensive picture about thoughts on Brexit from around Europe that will fill an important gap in the market. This book will appeal to the academic market at undergraduate, postgraduate, and academic researcher level in a wide variety of disciplines including Literature, Politics and International Relations, European Studies, History, Cultural Studies, Sociology, and Media Studies.