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The economic landscape of the UK has been significantly shaped by the intertwined issues of Brexit, COVID, and their interconnected impacts. The disruptions caused by Brexit and the COVID pandemic have created uncertainty and upheaval for both businesses and individuals. Whilst the effects of COVID are now receding, Brexit is still dominating headlines seven years after the referendum and is likely to do so for the foreseeable future. In this introduction, we provide an overview of the literature on Brexit. We review the reasons for leaving the European Union, as well examine the consequences of Brexit, with a focus on investment, economic growth, trade, unemployment, and financial markets. We then introduce the seven papers selected from the 'Post Brexit: Uncertainty, Risk Measurement and Coronavirus Challenges Conference' held at Birmingham Business School in June 2021, that advance the current literature on the effects of Brexit and COVID on the UK economy. Evidence in these papers suggests that Brexit and COVID are still clearly posing a severe strain on the UK's economy. However, some papers suggest that not everything about Brexit has been detrimental, or at least certain sectors of the UK economy are displaying a marked resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how so-called Brexit, that is the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union (EU), has modified the regional geography of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs). The latter are therapies deriving from cell manipulation, gene editing, tissue engineering, or a combination of these techniques. Their development and delivery have been realised through research collaborations and commercial relations of international scope. In the EU, this has happened by means of a complex distribution of commercial activities and legal responsibilities. With Brexit, three main kinds of reconfigurations have occurred: the relocation of research and manufacturing activities; the reorganisation of quality control tests aimed to manage clinical risks; and the redistribution of legal responsibilities and representatives. This technical and legal reconfiguration is captured here by means of theoretical insights from the emerging domain of legal geography. Drawing on interviews conducted with both EU and UK professionals involved in ATMP development, this paper reveals the main challenges brought by Brexit to the current and future configuration of the ATMP landscape in the EU and the UK. Furthermore, it demonstrates how shifts in legal arrangements impact on science-intensive domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to study the evolution of Britain's involvement in the EU's foreign and security policy in order to highlight the reasons that led the issue to be left out of talks on the post-Brexit future relation. The paper argues Europeanisation or de-Europeanisation largely depends on the degree of politicisation of issues both in the EU, the EU-27 and in the UK. As long as foreign and security issues remained relatively low key, the UK was able to enjoy the magnifying effect of its participation in the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and contributed to the decision-making process in order to successfully influence EU policies. Politicisation of foreign and security issues was due both to developments in EU-led or national initiatives and to the reaction they provoked in the UK. The EU insisted the UK was to be considered as a 'third country' and stressed the need for future cooperation to be institutionalised. On the contrary, in the UK, public distrust against a putative European 'super state', led successive governments to avoid any formal commitment to new EU initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of Brexit-related uncertainty on the economies of the UK, EU, and the US. We propose a measure of Brexit uncertainty that has not been employed before in the literature. We first construct a binary variable by selecting Brexit-related events. We subsequently employ the Qual VAR model of Dueker [2005. "Dynamic Forecasts of Qualitative Variables: A Qual VAR Model of US Recessions." Journal of Business & Economic Statistics 23: 96–104] to transform this variable to a continuous latent variable that captures uncertainty on important economic and financial variables. Next, this latent variable enters a structural Factor-Augmented Vector AutoRegression model combined with 452 macro and financial variables for the sample countries. Overall, our results indicate that the prolonged period of uncertainty, had a positive effect on the economies of major EU countries and negative effects for the UK economy. Additionally, the UK is the most important net sender of uncertainty spillovers in the EU, while Germany and France are among the most important net receivers of uncertainty shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on theories of international regimes and game theoretical approaches this article analyzes the level of overlap in national security strategies, seeking to explore the potential of convergence in security and defense cooperation in Europe post Brexit. It investigates two research questions: 1. What is the potential for future security cooperation in the Euro-Atlantic space post-Brexit? and 2. What areas are more prone to collaboration? The paper applies cluster analysis and a comparative design, using national security strategies as units of study. It finds that there is potential for future convergence between EU27 and the UK at the industrial level, in internal security matters and EU missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the historic role of Britain's major public service broadcaster, the BBC, in reporting the European Union. To do this it combines a content analysis of two datasets of BBC broadcast and online coverage from 2007 and 2012 with a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with former and current senior BBC editors and journalists. The research finds that BBC coverage in the pre-referendum period was closely tied to major events – such as summits – and elite party conflict. These patterns in coverage were primarily a consequence of the lack of traditional news values inherent in most EU stories and the impact of the wider political and media landscape. The consequence of these patterns in coverage was to present audiences with a restricted, negative and largely conflictual picture of Britain's relationship with the EU which is likely to have fuelled rather than inhibited the growth of Euroscepticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Kingdom (UK) and Japan have conducted unprecedented military exercises as each other's closest security partners in Asia and Europe, respectively. Despite publicly avowed closeness, these military exercises were not predicated on formal alliance commitments or deterrence of common adversaries underpinned by shared threat perceptions. Addressing this puzzle, a hitherto-overlooked perspective of mutual strategic reassurance for trusted partners is proposed here. This paper derives hypotheses from existing – but relatively under-developed – literatures on military exercises and reassurances that locate the drivers of reassurance in the needs and weaknesses of the other. What stems from this starting premise is an importance placed on high-level diplomacy and adjusting military deployments to allay each other's strategic concerns. These hypotheses are tested by presenting original interview data supplemented with discourse analysis of both primary and secondary sources. The findings suggest that effusive diplomatic language vowing politico-strategic support for each other, reinforced by ground-breaking military exercises mutually reassured UK concerns about retaining post-Brexit global standing and Japan's apprehension over its dire geo-strategic context. While not quite deterrence or alliance, these military exercises enabled the UK and Japan to transform their predominantly trade-based relationship into a more defence-oriented one. [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 manufacturing sector in the UK is currently undergoing a significant supply chain transformation and managers are re-evaluating supply chain location decisions to minimise the disruptions caused by Brexit. This entails manufacturing offshoring and back-shoring once again being considered as strategic decisions and companies ought to make informed choices with respect to where they source or manufacture their products. This paper aims to contribute to an improved understanding of the back-shoring phenomenon in the UK. Eight case studies of back-shoring have been analysed and compared using a theoretically informed framework. The results show that back-shoring can stem from both misjudgements of previous offshoring decisions as well as changes in the demand pattern in the home country. Unlike offshoring decisions being mainly cost-oriented, strategic shift aimed at increasing the value perceived by the customer has a pivotal role in the back-shoring decision. Furthermore, skill shortage is the main barrier for the implementation of back-shoring strategies in the UK and requires companies' attention prior to its repatriation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do voters update their perceptions of party positions? How certain do voters feel about their perceptions? We argue that perceptual updating and perceptual certainty depend on how divided or unified political parties are in their policy positions. We argue that voters do not accurately update their perceptions and that they become less certain about their perceptions when divided parties shift positions. For unified parties, we expect voters to accurately update party positions and become more certain about their perceptions. We test our arguments in the context of the European integration issue in the UK. Using original newspaper data on British parties' messages on European integration and five waves of the British Election Study (2014–2016), we find evidence in support of our arguments. The paper has important implications for research on party position-taking and its consequences on voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we employ the World Input–Output Database to develop a multi-sector inter-country model that allows us to identify the channels through which the trade effects of Brexit would propagate. The inclusion of global value chains and indirect Brexit effects in the model leads to estimates that diverge with the results of the main literature. Indeed, we found that Brexit could be risky and costly not only for the UK but also for many EU countries. Furthermore, we develop a second model and present the first empirical analysis on the consequences of domestic import substitution and trade diversion policies in Input–Output schemes. We found that allowing sectors and countries to partly substitute foreign products, leads to significantly lower losses for both macro-regions: the UK and EU27 would lose, at worst, the 0.28 and 0.5 percent of value-added, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a defence of ambivalence as a response to the political polarisation of our era using multiple languages to present its case from psychology to sociology, political science, philosophy and critical theory. It suggests that the Brexit story can be told in a different key, whereby the politics that have led to entrenching 'leave' and 'remain' identities overlay a harder to assess ambivalence about the EU both in the UK and in the EU, a dynamic referred to as the 'Machiavelli Trap.' Accordingly, we ought to ground the future relationship in the recognition of the 'Brexit paradox' (you can leave and therefore you shouldn't), and its implications for the core principles that have shaped the Brexit debate and negotiations. In the end, the paper offers a plea for a politics that allows citizens to tune into their constructive ambivalence about the fundamental tension between control and cooperation which pervades both Brexit, EU and global politics at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of Brexit on UK financial services policy, explaining recent reforms to the domestic financial regulatory framework and assessing the prospects for future divergence from EU rules. Deploying the lens of de-Europeanisation, we show that the failure to include financial services in the final UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement necessitated major institutional changes. By contrast, there has been very limited change to date with respect to policy, while the government's ambitions for a 'Big Bang 2.0' package of regulatory reforms have been significantly scaled back. Drawing on insights from the political economy of finance, we argue that this process has been shaped by contested adaptational pressures mediated by three key variables: business unity, financial stability, and administrative capacity. The result is an emerging pattern of differentiated de-Europeanisation in financial services, ranging from intentional regulatory divergence to active alignment with EU rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the economic policy uncertainty in various countries has gradually increased with the increasing complexity of global economic situation, and foreign direct investment and trade have also been impacted. As a historic event, does Brexit affect the economic consequences of economic policy uncertainty? In this regard, we aim to examine the Brexit spillovers on five major EU member states and the UK through economic policy uncertainty. Cluster analysis and TVP-VAR model are used to analyze the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade (TRADE) during Brexit. The results at different time horizons show that, in addition to the Netherlands, impulse responses of foreign direct investment and international trade have the characteristics of positive and negative conversion. Despite all this, impulse responses of international trade are lower than those of foreign direct investment. Time points when foreign direct investment and international trade have the greatest impulse response vary from country to country. Overall, the impact of economic policy uncertainty on them is more reflected in the late Brexit period. Based on the above findings, we draw policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a multivariate procedure based on multidimensional visibility graphs to detect changes in the market volatility of UK financial indices, considered both before and after Brexit main events. We produce a graph-theoretical representation of volatility time series derived from equity indexes, government rates and currencies to investigate the behavior of the aggregate market volatility through the use of global centrality measures. By employing a stylized agent-based model, we show that the proposed approach is able to discriminate between periods of high and low volatility, both in the temporal dimension and cross-sectionally among multiple time series. We aim at recognizing whether external news related to the Brexit process could induce significant 'after-shocks' (and also 'pre-shocks') in the system, by producing dynamic relaxation in the values of centrality measures, in line with the cascade effects described by the Omori earthquake law. In particular, high volatility cascades dissipate into the market via power-law relaxation. When compared with other categories of events, such as Bank of England monetary policy announcements, we observe significant market inefficiency in processing Brexit related news. We also find that strong market surprise related to specific Brexit news or a correct discount of some Brexit announcements can produce an inverse Omori law exhibiting convex relaxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the discourses produced on their websites by the two organisations that conducted the official 'leave' and 'remain' campaigns in the Brexit referendum. The analysis, which adopts the general orientation of the Discourse Historical Approach in CDS, is aimed at illuminating the main discursive strategies, argumentative schemes and key representations of Britain in/and Europe that sustained the ideological (de)legitimation of Brexit on either side. Based on this analysis, this paper argues that the specific ideological articulation of two key discursive elements – namely trade and immigration – and the argumentative schemes deployed in the campaign engendered and legitimised a new toxic (inter)national logic of Brexit: by leaving the EU, Britain 'takes back control' to pursue mercantile policies whose benefits 'outsiders' should be excluded from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of Brexit on rural England will be far reaching, although only the impacts on agriculture tend to be considered by researchers and by government. This paper explores the challenges and opportunities which Brexit presents for renewal of rural policy in England. Rural policies remain rooted in the immediate post-war context but the rural economy is no longer synonymous with agriculture, and rural society and the institutions of governance have each been transformed over the past 70 years. International evidence from social scientists suggests that an approach conceptualised as 'networked rural development' would be more effective at promoting the prosperity and well-being of citizens in rural areas, and the elements of such an approach are taken as a basis for a practical agenda for reforming and updating rural policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the potential impact of Brexit on UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Using a major longitudinal survey of UK SMEs, the analysis suggests that Brexit-related concerns are escalating. Larger, export- and import-oriented SMEs are most concerned, as are those located in major urban and peripheral locations. Among SMEs with growth-related plans, many firms are scaling back on capital investment, innovation and (especially) exports. An appraisal of existing policy frameworks suggests that the devolved administrations seem better equipped to enact interventions in order to alleviate any negative effects arising from Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While analyses of Twitter have shown that it holds democratic potential, it can also provide a venue for hate speech against minorities. The articulation of opinion-based identities, the tendency to homophily, and the use of emotional discourses can indeed help spread verbal violence on Twitter. This paper discusses group polarization on Twitter through Mouffe's distinction of agonistic and antagonistic politics, as elaborated in the 2013 book "Agonistic: Thinking the World Politically". The theory is supported by a practical example: a qualitative analysis of Islamophobic tweets sent in the aftermath of the 2016 British referendum on European Union membership, which is commonly referred to as 'Brexit'. Following the UK's decision to leave the EU, there was a surge of Islamophobic attacks on Twitter. My analysis reveals that anti-Islamic sentiments were articulated in terms of complex identities referring not only to religion but also to ethnicity, politics, and gender. The paper shows that these tweets are antagonistic in character because they prevent the dialogic participation of Muslims and propagate symbolic violence rather than engaging in constructive conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, increase of analyzing stock markets as complex systems lead graph theory to play a key role. For instance, detecting graph communities is an important task in the analysis of stocks, and as planar maximally filtered graphs let us to get important information for the topology of the market. In this study, we first obtain correlation network representation of UK's leading stock market network by using a novel threshold method. Then, we determine vertex clusters by using modularity and analyze clusters in planar maximally filtered graph substructures. Our analyze include a new measure called weighted Gini index for measuring the sparsity. The main goal of this paper is to study the hierarchical evolution of the market communities throughout the Brexit referendum, which is known as the stress period for the stock market. Hence, the overall sample is divided into two sub-periods of pre-referendum, and post-referendum to obtain communities and hierarchical structures. Our results indicate that financial companies are leading elements of the clusters. Moreover, the significant changes within the network topologies are observed for insurance, consumer goods, consumer services, mining, and technology sectors whereas oil and gas and health care sectors have not been affected by Brexit stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the policy developments concerning the Single Market in finance in the context of Brexit. Theoretically, we engage with two bodies of work that make contrasting predictions on European financial market integration and the development of European Union (EU) policies on financial regulation: one focused upon a neo-mercantilist 'battle' amongst member states and the other stressing the importance of transnational financial networks (or coalitions). Empirically, we find limited evidence of the formation of cross-national alliances in favour of the United Kingdom (UK) retaining broad access to the EU Single Market in financial services, the presence of which would have aligned with the expectations of analyses focused upon transnational networks. By contrast, the main financial centres in the EU27 and their national authorities competed to lure financial business away from the UK – what we explain in terms of a 'battle' amongst member states and their national financial centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We offer a rich set of macroeconomic and sectoral effects of Brexit in France, together with macroeconomic ones for the UK, the rest of the EU and the rest of the world. We explain the intuition for the impact on production and trade across the 21 sectors that underlie our macroeconomic estimations (national imports and exports, output, GDP, welfare, wages and rental rate of capital). Our comprehensive technique captures the direct and indirect effects of Brexit on trade. Four types of withdrawal are analysed, including the finally agreed between the EU and the UK on December 2020. This will avoid tariffs, but other medium size (non-tariff) barriers will emerge. The UK, France and the rest of the EU will be harmed by Brexit, although asymmetrically. While Brexit will substantially harm the UK economy, the negative impact on France and the rest of the EU will be limited and similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most analysts, Brexit reveals the highly contingent power of finance and the clear limits to its ability to influence crucial policymaking outcomes. By contrast, I contend that UK-EU negotiations demonstrate the unique capacity of finance to secure substantial commercial protections relative to all other business sectors and that the structural sources of the City's political power remain exceptionally robust. Elaborating a notion of 'structural interdependence', the paper demonstrates how policy officials on both sides came to perceive that the future prosperity and stability of their economies relied upon maintaining open trading relations in financial services. This necessitated broad continuity in access to London's deep financial markets for EU firms and preservation of the City's leading role in the UK growth regime. In establishing these claims empirically, I document an extensive range of contingency measures designed throughout December 2018-April 2019 that would function to protect the financial industry from economic disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The outcome illustrates how finance benefits from a form of structural power that does not require instrumental mobilisation, but rather shapes policy decisions on the basis of deeply entrenched and commercially vital cross-border financial entanglements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tourism Geographies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since the late 1990s, populist discourse based on anti-immigration sentiments has been on the rise in Britain. This phenomenon reached a peak during the EU Referendum (ER) campaign and shortly thereafter. The ER has been linked to the upsurge in racially and religiously aggravated offences recorded post-July 2016. Polish nationals, who constitute the largest group of EU nationals in the UK, were targeted by many of these incidents. It could therefore be argued that, in the last years, and particularly, since the ER, EU nationals living in the UK have become more 'vulnerable'. To test this hypothesis, this contribution is based on an interdisciplinary project that collected socio-legal evidence to compare the vulnerability of the Polish community in Southampton before and after the ER. The paper draws on vulnerability and psychology literature to differentiate between 'objective' and 'subjective' vulnerability. Our study deploys mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) to test changes in objective and subjective vulnerability among Southampton-based Poles before and after the ER. Our findings suggest that, following the ER, Poles felt significantly more vulnerable, especially in terms of subjective vulnerability, even if they had never experienced overt hate incidents or discrimination (objective vulnerability) before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The UK Pharmaceutical Industry is arguably one of the most important industries to consider in the negotiations following the Brexit vote. Providing tens of thousands of jobs and billions in tax revenue and research investment, the importance of this industry cannot be understated. At stake is the global leadership in the sector, which produces some of the field's most influential basic science and translation work. However, interruptions and losses may occur at multiple levels, affecting patients, researchers, universities, companies and government. Goals: By understanding the current state of pharmaceutical sector, the potential effect of leaving the European Union (EU) on this successful industry can be better understood. This paper aims to address the priorities for negotiations by collating the analyses of professionals in the field, leading companies and non-EU member states. Research methods: A government healthcare policy advisor and Chief Science Officer (CSO) for a major pharmaceutical firm were consulted to scope the paper. In these discussions, five key areas were identified: contribution, legislative processes, regulatory processes, research and outcomes, commercial risk. Multiple search engines were utilised for selecting relevant material, predominantly PubMed and Google Scholar. To supplement this information, Government documents were located using the "GOV.UK" publications tool, and interviews and commentaries were found through the Google News search function. Conclusion: With thorough investigation of the literature, we propose four foundations in the advancement of negotiations. These prioritise: negotiation of 'associated country' status, bilaterally favourable trade agreements, minimal interruption to regulatory bodies and special protection for the movement of workforce in the life sciences industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Debates around the impacts of the UK's exit from the European Union ('Brexit') have exposed the limited critical attention given to how planning systems intersect with environmental protection. This is an important omission, especially given deregulatory pressures on both planning and environment in many countries. In response, this paper uses documentary, interview and focus group data, to conceptualise different regulatory styles governing the environment-planning interface, and assess UK planning practitioner attitudes to EU environmental legislation and scenarios for future change. The data show practitioners largely supporting the fixed standards and robust oversight characteristic of EU environmental regulatory styles, anxious about deregulation, and interested in procedural flexibility. More fundamentally, it also reveals the compromises struck in regulatory design, and the importance of concrete development-environment challenges in constructing arguments for change. Consequently, planning occupies a pivotal position within wider debates about new environmental policy fixes, warranting more extensive professional discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues of accessibility, diversity, and inclusion are becoming increasingly important for MICE managers around the globe and need to be considered in terms of both event attendees and employees/meetings professionals. The UK MICE sector is facing an unprecedented period of disruption in relation to the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty of Brexit, the impacts of which may have far-reaching consequences in terms of equality and diversity. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 13 stakeholders - meeting planners, venue managers, entrepreneurs and member organization leaders - this paper considers how issues of accessibility, diversity, and inclusion are playing out in the changing landscape of the UK meetings industry. Findings suggest that although the MICE sector is paying increasing attention to the importance of accessibility, there is evidence of persistent inequality and marginalization on the grounds of gender, age, 'race' and (dis)ability. We question if a focus on diversity remains a priority in economically, politically, and socially unsettled times, and what this may mean for an inclusive future for the UK meetings industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU's work on climate change is key to the regional and international fight against the problem, and disruptions to it have global implications. When analyzing the effects of the UK's decision to leave the EU (Brexit) on EU climate action, this paper looks at two types of impact. The first is related to UK absence from EU climate policy, finance and diplomacy following the actual UK departure from the EU. The second is related to the costs attached to the withdrawal process, including the additional costs and uncertainty created by the delayed UK departure. These latter implications of Brexit have been less explored by the literature, although the last years provide plenty of evidence for them. The paper finds that the impact of Brexit on EU climate action is mainly negative, without denying some potential positive impact and while acknowledging the limitations of a study that entails forecasting in an uncertain political context. Key policy insights Following Brexit, the EU will lose a member that supported its climate action internally and internationally through commitment to high emissions reduction targets at the EU level, policy solutions, and financial and diplomatic support. The withdrawal process itself has had a negative impact on EU climate action: Brexit has hijacked the EU agenda, captured EU human and administrative resources and increased the uncertainty in which investors and businesses operate. Planning for separate European Councils to deal with Brexit could prevent agenda hijacking. Both the EU and UK also need to provide businesses with a clear regulatory framework. A repeatedly postponed Brexit has caused additional damage, by prolonging uncertainty. Continuing to work with the UK on climate during the Brexit negotiations and after the UK departure should be a priority for the EU, as well as ensuring the willingness to cooperate is not spoiled by mutual resentment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 23 June 2016, 52% of Britons voted in a referendum to exit (Brexit) the European Union (EU) while 48% opted to remain. This is a watershed moment in world politics, given the implications for the future of the UK, the EU and the rest of the world. This paper uses the case of Brexit to analyse paradoxes of regionalism and democracy. The central question is, what does the case of Brexit suggests about the contradictions of democracy and regionalism in the 21st century? Importantly, what broad lessons may be gleaned from the case for regionalist projects among Commonwealth countries? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU referendum was arguably the greatest political event in British politics since 1945 and the campaign was marked by divisive rhetoric. This paper investigates how Britain's membership of Europe was narrated as a crisis by both sides of the discussion. I claim that this was a conscious discursive strategy by campaign actors for two reasons. Firstly, by constructing an event as a crisis implies that immediate measures need to be taken (by voters) to correct the situation. Secondly, this discursive strategy allowed actors from Leave and Remain campaigns to suspend partisan political divisions which would normally compromise co-operation. The chosen site of analysis is the televised EU referendum debate, entitled 'The Great Debate', which was broadcast two days before the referendum of June 23rd 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of GeoHumanities is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

This paper reformulates classical questions regarding the plans and strategies of Polish migrants in the UK-such as decisions to leave or remain in the host country, or be 'deliberately indeterminate' about future plans-from a sociologically situated 'rights-based' perspective. This approach considers migrant's attitudes towards specific 'civic integration' measures in a medium-term time frame, as well as in the new context created by the UK's vote to leave the EU. Based on the quantitative analysis of original survey data, we investigate the factors behind Polish migrant's migration strategies and we argue that basic socio-economic and demographic factors are inadequate, on their own terms, to explain future migration and civic integration plans. Instead, we find that aspects such as interest in and awareness of one's rights, as well as anxieties about the ability to maintain one's rights in the future are stronger determinants. [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]

Development cooperation between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of states has provided a vehicle for the UK’s ongoing relationship with the majority of the Commonwealth, although this was widely overlooked in the run-up to the UK referendum and its aftermath. Membership of the EU has provided the UK with the opportunity to collectivise its obligations to ACP Commonwealth states and a framework for its development cooperation relations across the Global South. This has augmented British leadership in global development and the alignment of development policy and practice at the global, regional and national levels. This paper argues that withdrawal from the EU would be a lengthy and costly process that threatens to undermine the UK’s position in global development, current levels and sources of development funding and existing and nascent trade relations. While this will present particular challenges for ACP Commonwealth states, there may also be opportunities to propose and advocate for alternative frameworks. However, recent changes to the UK’s post-referendum political leadership does not augur well for those hoping for a roll back of pressures for liberalisation and associated reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1 January 2021 the UK has moved out of the implementation period for its withdrawal from the European Union (EU) and it is an appropriate time to reflect on the way forward for the UK in developing private international law. This article considers the practical steps that the UK should take in the near future. There is significant work that the UK can do to progress its commitment to the "progressive unification of the rules of private international law" by improving its commitment to the effective functioning of several key Conventions concluded by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH). Some of these steps can and should be taken immediately, notably accepting the accessions of other States to the Hague Evidence and Child Abduction Conventions and extending the scope of the UK's ratification of the Adults Convention to England and Wales, and Northern Ireland. Other things require more consultation and time but there are great opportunities to provide leadership in the world by ratifying the Hague Judgments Convention 2019 and, when implementing that Convention which is based on minimum harmonisation, providing leadership in the Commonwealth by implementing, at least to some extent, the Commonwealth Model Law on Recognition and Enforcement of Civil and Commercial Judgments. Within the UK, as a demonstration of best constitutional practice, intergovernmental cooperation between the UK Government and the devolved administrations should take place to consider how intra-UK private international law could be reformed learning the lessons from the UK Supreme Court's highly divided decision in Villiers. Such work should involve the best of the UK's experts (from each of its systems of law) on private international law from academia, the judiciary and legal practice. Doing so, would avoid accusations that Brexit will see a UK run by generalists who give too little attention and weight to the views of experts. This use of experts should also extend to the UK's involvement in the future work of HCCH at all levels. The HCCH will only be able to be an effective international organisation if its Members show a commitment to harnessing the talents of experts in the subject within the work of the HCCH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The uncertainty of the post-Brexit relations between the UK and the remaining EU-27 countries has caused political, social and economic concerns [Kroll, D. A., & Leuffen, D. (2016). Ties that bind, can also strangle: The Brexit threat and the hardships of reforming the EU. Journal of European PublicPolicy, 23(9), 1311–1320.]. The ongoing negotiations concerning future relations cover various scenarios that may have different impacts on the individual countries in both an economic and a political sense. The aim of the article is to analyse consequences of the British voters' decision to withdraw from the European Union through the lens of a disintegration process by measuring the degree and the nature of vulnerability of the individual EU-27 countries. It demonstrates an economic and spatial approach to the critical assessment of Brexit, with focus on identifying the nature of individual countries vulnerability. In this way, we contribute to the ongoing debate on the Brexit negotiation process by providing strong arguments in favour of certain policy decision. In line with the 'neighbor country' and 'small country' hypotheses, we assume that closely located economies and small European economies will experience moderate to high negative consequences of Brexit, while larger ones will not be affected as much. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a model with heterogeneous firms, that consists of a system of two integrated regions (a large core region and a small periphery region) and an external third region, I study the impact of external trade openness on firms' spatial sorting patterns within the system of the two regions. Applying the main theoretical findings of this model in the case of Brexit, I find that impaired access to and from the UK induces less manufacturing firms to relocate from the periphery to the core of the EU. Other findings show that as the external region becomes more important relative to the system of the two integrated regions (i.e. its productivity goes up or/and its market size goes up), the most efficient manufacturing firms find it profitable to leave the small periphery region and migrate to the large core region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the media coverage of the 2016 Brexit, Great Britain's withdrawal from the European Union membership. She argues against the media's failure to provide clarity on Brexit, with newspapers like the "Daily Telegraph" and "Daily Mail" featuring daily coverage of pro-Brexit propaganda and fueling public anger towards political figures behind the referendum including Anna Soubry, former attorney general Domonic Grieve and EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier.

Brexit has been a game-changer for Britain, and its key partners. Strategic shifts as well as historic relations have impacted the UK's relationship with France in a number of unexpected ways. This article explores some of the key historical events that have caused both agreement and strife between the two states, looking at the bilateral treaties established to deepen cooperation on security and defence, specifically the Lancaster House agreements, and considers the series of intriguing accords and conventions that have arisen from the mid-1980s, as well as the logistical challenges of the shared border and juxtaposed border controls of Britain and France. Post-Brexit diplomatic forums in which Britain and France are joined by Germany are then explored, before assessing Britain's attempts to forge its new role in relation to long-standing commitments to France and an evolving relationship with the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit and the controversy concerning an Irish border makes the issue of whether Northern Ireland is a common currency area with the rest of UK or the Eurozone topical. We test the microeconomic foundations of a common currency area for Northern Ireland, UK, Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the Eurozone. We provide evidence that all areas meet the microeconomic criteria for a common currency area. Banking data suggest that lending in Northern Ireland is different from lending in the rest of the UK, raising doubt on whether or not the UK forms a common currency area including Northern Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that identity documents (ID) and migration statuses are both tools of population control and subjectivities that individuals have an interest in holding. I use documentary analyses and interviews with 31 EU27 citizens in the UK, 21 UK citizens in Belgium and the UK and with nationality bureaucracies in the two countries. States create legitimate, illegitimate and in-between statuses, and in-between statuses show how being exempt from certain ID and migration controls can create paradoxical vulnerabilities. Windrush generation migrants in the UK were exempt from migration controls but then in some cases were treated as irregular migrants because of the lack of proof of status. EU citizens were free from many migration controls, but can have difficulties in naturalization and dealing with new requirements brought about by Brexit because the procedures can require proof of rights usually produced through the migration controls they were exempt from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit constitutes an unprecedented crisis for the European Union and its member states. Three affected parties – the United Kingdom, the EU and Ireland – worked hard to protect their interests, making the negotiations difficult, especially regarding the Irish land border. While the key interests of the negotiating partners are clear, it is less known how and to what extent these interests were communicated by the political representatives of the three countries. We approach Brexit as a critical juncture and base our work on the framing literature. We use a unique dataset including political speeches made by EU Commission members and the UK and Irish government officials during a period from January 2016 until January 2020, relying on the innovative automated text analysis approach of keyword-assisted topic modelling. Beyond insisting on their interests, communication reflects the socio-political context. We find indications that speeches reflect the flow of the negotiations. Finally, our analysis reveals topics that largely flew under the media radar, such as research and protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about Brexit and migration, but little from the perspective of Bulgarians in the UK. Through an online questionnaire followed by in-depth interviews, we study Bulgarians' 'stay' or 'leave' intentions in light of Brexit and then Covid-19. Combining cross-tabulation and regression analysis of survey data and narrative analysis of interview scripts, we show how migrants' plans are dependent on their position in the labour market and document the experiences of those who have returned. We find that stayers are more likely to be highly skilled and longer-resident in the UK. Most returns are only partially related to Brexit and are often finalized following the impact of Covid-19; family considerations are the main trigger to return. Many returnees are dissatisfied with life in Bulgaria. The article demonstrates that EU migrants' mobility decisions post-Brexit need to be examined in relation to other contingent factors operating at various scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a Weberian ideal-type framework to capture elite strategies for managing hard Euroscepticism and their consequences for EU disintegration. It does so by drawing on policy evolution theory to conceptualise two ideal types representing contrasting strategies: taming Euroscepticism by technocratic adaptation or embracing it. This framework is used to analyse empirical examples that match these two ideal-type approaches respectively: France and the UK between 2004 and 17. The use of this framework is a novel way of explaining the evolution and differences between elite French and UK responses to hard Euroscepticism by showing how and why French EU policy remained intra-paradigmatic as compared to the paradigm shift of Brexit. This approach allows for a better understanding of the process and probability of EU disintegration by linking the latter to strategic policy choices. In a UK context, it also offers a way to anticipate the signals leading to a reversal of disintegration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost five years have passed since the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union was considered to be definite. Now, in 2021, we finally see the Brexiting process start and some more practical problems arise. Although the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement as of 1 January 2021 clarifies what is due to happen in certain areas of policy, the language issue still remains unsolved. All these years English has not only been an official and a working language, but also the most commonly used for institutional communication and the one that the majority of the European citizens speak as a second language. Moreover, it is tied to the language regime of the Union, its citizens' rights and its language policy, and has a special status worldwide. The fact that the United Kingdom left the European Union, but English remains an official language up to this day without the unanimous decision of the Member States is the purpose of this contribution. Furthermore, the position of English in the European Union and the citizens' rights are analysed, and its future in this context is investigated through the presentation of some scenarios and their results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northern Ireland hardly featured as an issue in the historic 2016 Brexit referendum campaign in the UK. Subsequently, however, it became the main zone of contention between the EU and UK. This article examines Northern Ireland's experience since the Brexit vote through the theoretical lens of liminality. It does so, specifically, by focusing on the three strands of relationships at the heart of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace agreement, and how Brexit impacted on each of these relationships. It argues that Brexit proved profoundly unsettling to the existing political order and triggered significant angst and fear in Northern Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a long view of British planning's connections with continental Europe, locating Brexit within historic uncertainties about the country's international outlook, interests and position. In 1948, Churchill portrayed Britain at the intersection of three 'great circles': the British Empire, the wider English-speaking world (principally the USA) and Europe. This notion is drawn on to show how the strong earlier European links of British planning were seriously disrupted or severed by twentieth-century wars. These drew both country and planning approach closer to its 'distant friends' within the other 'great circles'. As former imperial ties faded and the USA relationship became less special, Britain looked again to Europe but without shedding these habitual links. Even after Britain joined the European Communities in 1973, its strongest international planning connections remained with the USA and its former Empire and Dominions. In the 1990s, the EU promoted spatial planning but Britain remained largely aloof until the 'New Labour' governments of 1997–2010. Yet growing Euroscepticism saw this relative enthusiasm fade, with Brexit reviving uncertainties, now about whether EU approaches should be jettisoned and a more deregulated planning system created. The article predicts (or at least hopes) that current anti-Europe thinking will itself fade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]