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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]

This article uncovers the origins of 'cakeism' i.e., the notion the UK could keep certain EU benefits or not suffer costs after Brexit. The analysis demonstrates how the assumptions behind cakeism originated after 1992 in policy circles associated with the Conservative Party. They argued that a free-trade alternative to the EU was easy to put in place by simply disaggregating preferred elements of the single market from supranationalism. A Westminster-centric perspective also meant these proto-Brexiters were unable to countenance any potential domestic disruption caused by leaving the EU. During May's Brexit negotiations, European Research Group MPs resorted to cakeist arguments that reprised the same assumptions about international trade and the unitary nature of the UK state articulated well before 2016. Cakeist ideas helped scupper May's customs plan and paved the way for Johnson's free trade deal, thereby demonstrating the enduring influence of the early think-tank debate on leaving the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article applies insights from comparative federalism to analyse different models for managing future EU–UK relations. The argument is that the stability of the EU–UK relationship before as well as after Brexit is best understood by examining the presence of federal safeguards. Drawing on Kelemen, four types of safeguards are identified as the means for balancing centrifugal and centripetal forces. During the United Kingdom's European Union membership, the strong glue provided by structural and judicial safeguards was undone by the weakness of partisan and socio-cultural ones. However, each post-Brexit scenario is characterised by weaker structural and judicial safeguards. The most stable outcome is an indeterminate Brexit that limits the incentive to politicise sovereignty and identity concerns by ending free movement of people and reducing the saliency of European Union rules. Such stability is nevertheless relative in that, from a comparative perspective, federal-type safeguards were stronger when the United Kingdom was still in the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article scrutinizes the merits of holding a referendum over UK membership of the EU. It queries the assumption that direct democracy can somehow resolve the longstanding Europe question in British politics. To do this, the analysis traces the existence of an exceptionalist approach to the EU within Britain, now associated with re-negotiating UK membership in the shadow of a referendum. The article argues that the prospects for a radical reconfiguration of the UK's treaty obligations are slim, thereby increasing the risk of a vote to withdraw. Yet withdrawal would be the opposite of a simple solution to the Europe question. Political and economic interests dictate lengthy politicking over a highly complex post-Brexit settlement revisiting free movement of goods, services, capital and people. Such negotiations undermine any mooted cathartic benefits of a popular vote, while Eurosceptics will remain dissatisfied in the event of a yes, a result likely to further destabilize the Conservative Party. Consequently, the simplicity and decisiveness that a referendum-particularly one that spurns the EU-promises is merely a mirage as relations with the EU necessarily form part of an enduring British political conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So-called "remainers" spent the three years following the 2016 EU membership referendum imagining how the Brexit referendum could have been conducted differently or trying to persuade Parliament to legislate for a second "People's Vote" on the matter. Successive British governments from Thatcher to Cameron promoted the EU single market as a means to support the growth of financial services, the UK's major global industry. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the referendum debate going on in Great Britain for the past 40 years regarding the country's relationship with Europe. The article states that David Cameron is still fighting with identical strategies to give Great Britain a place in Europe. Immigration and concerns of other EU countries are discussed. Great Britain is still going on renegotiating with Europe regarding the matter and a figure has been provided to make us understand the shifting opinions.