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Introduction: Despite the relative harmony of the Western states on essential security issues, the July 2024 parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom (the UK), ending with the overwhelming victory of the Labour Party, who has returned to power after 14 years, may have a significant impact on the relationship this country has with the European Union (the EU). Since Brexit, the diminished trade has contributed to a decline in the economy of the United Kingdom and it is one of the countries most significantly impacted by the "increasing cost of living” crisis. Methods: Using an Impulse Response Function (IRF), this paper will assess the impact of a further decline of EU-UK relations as well as the policy implications of some proposals supported by significant fractions of the Conservative Party, namely tax cuts. Results and discussion: The paper concludes that a further decline in trade relations between the EU and the UK will lead to a further decline in the economy of the UK that has few feasible alternatives in terms of trading partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse how immigration was discursively constructed as a newsworthy topic in the UK's quality papers' campaign coverage of the Brexit referendum. To do so, a corpus of four major British broadsheets (The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, and Daily Telegraph) was collected and analysed with a combination of qualitative (Discursive News Values Analysis) and quantitative (Corpus Linguistics) methods. The results show that similar patterns of news values usage appeared in the corpus across the ideological lines (left-right) and Brexit stance (Leave-Remain). Although some dissociation strategies can be observed in the left-wing or Remain backing press, the statistically significant presence of similar linguistic pointers indicates that an anti-immigrant discourse was a salient part of the coverage, even permeating into the left-wing press and the Remain camp's discourse. The adoption and repetition of such narratives could also, by themselves, lead to further acceptance and normalisation of the common anti-immigrant topoi in the broader discourse of Brexit in society, although more research is needed in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit has undeniably had effects on power relations in the world economy and beyond. This article aims to measure the dimensions of power for the European Union, the United States and the BRICS countries and to provide a case study about the prospective impact of Brexit on the EU's and the UK's positions within the global architecture of power. In this regard, the paper proposes a new method of measurement of the world power by using six dimensions of power, using data before the Brexit procedures started. The highlights of the empirical findings are that the exclusion of the UK has strengthened EU's position only for the economic dimension of power, while for the UK, the most dominant repositioning within the power architecture due to the Brexit is recorded for the political & governance. The findings can contribute to raising awareness among policy--makers, companies, institutions and the population, both at European and at national level, about populist tendencies and attitudes towards potential separations of some member countries from the European community and their consequences for the European development from multiple perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This 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/approach: This 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. Findings: This 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/implications: This 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 implications: This 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/value: This 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the interplay between geopolitical goals, governance and International Student Mobility (henceforth ISM). It explores how the United Kingdom's newly envisaged domestic credit‐mobility programme (the Turing Scheme) is reshaping the spatiality of their outward student mobility flows to bolster a global sense of internationalisation through ISM. During its emergence, the Turing Scheme was often positioned as an antithesis to the pre‐established Erasmus+ Scheme which had a strong focus on European integration, instead it focused on promoting a 'Global Britain' narrative. This paper conducts a content analysis of Hansard (transcripts of debates in the U.K.'s Houses of Parliament), to reflect on ISM decision‐making, debating the choices made and unmade regarding the development of the Turing Scheme. This research illuminated multiple issues, adding to the debate about the importance of ISM for geopolitical purposes, and how these can underpin credit‐mobility schemes, and shape these during periods of large‐scale geopolitical change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bilateral trade relationships between countries vary across products. Such heterogeneity poses challenges when assessing the economic impacts of trade agreements. This paper estimates bilateral trade elasticities at the product level and explores these impacts using a hypothetical no‐deal Brexit as an example. Our findings indicate that the European Union's demand for the United Kingdom products is often less elastic compared to products from other trading partners. We also observed substantial heterogeneity in the elasticities across products and a negative correlation between these elasticities and tariffs. These factors mitigate extent of trade welfare losses compared to a scenario using homogeneous elasticities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from six rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS), between 2004 and 2016, to examine attitudes towards European integration across countries. Using both individual responses and country-level variables, we analyse factors influencing Euroscepticism; how these factors are changing over time; and whether they may signal a latent potential for Brexit-like outcomes in different countries. Controlling for a unique combination of demographic, political and macroeconomic factors, we find individuals with higher levels of income and education, and those with more left-leaning political views to be more supportive of European integration, while those who are older and right-leaning to be less supportive. Using predicted values from our empirical analysis, we find median voters' attitudes diverging across European countries over time, with an increasing number of countries moving closer to the threshold values observed among voters in the United Kingdom in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union has always been tumultuous and problematic, and European integration has always been a controversial topic in the UK's contemporary politics. However, current research on the Brexit referendum's news discourse hardly addresses this topic directly. Therefore, this paper analyses the discursive construction of the UK versus the EU during the campaign coverage of the Brexit referendum in major British broadsheets. To do so, a corpus of four major British broadsheets along ideological lines (left-right) and Brexit stance (Leave-Remain) was analysed by applying a mixed method approach of Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies (Discursive News Values Analysis along with some Corpus Linguistic tools and techniques). The way news values were adopted in the campaign coverage of the British broadsheets shows a certain continuation of historical discourses around the relationship of the entities. The results show that news values during the campaign coverage were adopted by the pro-leave outlets to construct a highly negative and elite-associated image of the EU in contrast to the UK, while the pro-remain broadsheets mostly focused on a limited, practical and economic argument in favour of the EU, maintaining and highlighting the importance of UK independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the effect of trade policy uncertainty in a customs union on export‐platform foreign direct investment (FDI). First, I develop a partial equilibrium framework with heterogeneous firms based on the proximity–concentration trade‐off that involves trade policy uncertainty about trade costs inside a customs union. Second, I derive an empirical equation that I test by exploiting the 2016 Brexit referendum as a natural experiment and using data on manufacturing greenfield FDI projects. The results show that trade policy uncertainty impacted negatively the decisions of firms to invest in export‐platform activities in the UK following the Brexit referendum. Moreover, I find that extra‐EU manufacturing firms preferred EU countries as opposed to the UK for new investments after the 2016 referendum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Brexit referendum results, there may have been fears that a significant part of the British population in Spain, one of the largest outside the Commonwealth, would return to the United Kingdom. This paper uses different sources to assess whether, on the one hand, such a return movement has existed and, on the other hand, whether it could exist in the future. To do so, we analyse data from the Spanish Population Register (Padrón) and the Residential Variation Statistics (EVR) from 2003 to 2021, and a survey carried out in 2020 of 643 British people over 55 years of age living in Spain. In relation to the registry data, it has been observed that the return movement after Brexit has not been as significant as might be expected at a time of great uncertainty. Only in 2021 it was detected an increase in return movements, especially above the age of 75, probably caused by the end of the application of the Withdrawal Agreement. On the other hand, the survey results show that the intention to return is lower than in other similar surveys that have been carried out in the past, even in another COVID‐19 outbreak scenario. Moreover, this intention to return is especially related to variables linked to insertion, such as not being properly registered or owning a property in the United Kingdom, among other variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit constitutes a puzzle for integration theory. Functionalist analyses have not only failed to predict the UK's exit but have also underestimated the disintegrative dynamics of the withdrawal negotiations. By contrast, postfunctionalism accounts for the disintegrative Brexit process but struggles to explain the unity and defence of supranational integration among the EU-27. This article tries to make sense of the Brexit puzzle. First, it argues that Brexit constitutes an attack on the EU polity rather than a policy failure – the type of crisis that functionalist theories explain best. Second, it complements the postfunctionalist account of domestic politicisation with an analysis of the reactions and strategies of the defenders of supranational integration. According to this expanded postfunctionalist analysis, the interaction of polity attack and polity defence has produced 'external rebordering': extreme disintegration of the UK from the EU, on the one hand, and strengthened integration of the EU-27, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Kingdom's strategy for negotiating Brexit involved a misapprehension: that the EU-27 would divide and concede to UK demands. In this article, we provide one explanation for this misapprehension: a pervasive 'Merkel myth' widely accepted within the British political class. That myth skewed British understanding of the European Union's power balance and priorities. It privileged an interpretation of Merkel as a decisive influence in Europe, well-disposed to the UK. Alongside this was the belief that Merkel would come under pressure from Germany's manufacturing giants to grant the UK a relatively generous deal. The Merkel myth reinforced a political strategy that, by all accounts, never came close to success. Yet these beliefs affected the approach of three prime ministers. Employing the distinctive analytical lens of 'political myth' to explain the judgements of actors, the article contributes to a growing literature on the role of ideas in political strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]