On the basis of that, I wrote a couple of pieces on the Conversation website, which seeks to communicate academic knowledge to a wider public. This was well before the Referendum campaign started, although it was in prospect. These pieces got some media exposure and also led to several invitations to give talks once the campaign was underway. These were generally well-received and there seemed to be a huge appetite in the audiences for better information than people felt they were getting from politicians.
Following the outcome of the Referendum – which I had not expected – I realised that we were going to be in for years in which Brexit would dominate political as well as economic, social and cultural life and I wanted to have some voice, however small, in that. So, after returning from summer holiday, I launched this blog in September 2016 under the title ‘The Brexit Blog’. Since then, I have gradually turned myself into an expert – up to a point – in Brexit. Only up to a point, because it is a topic so complex that no one person can really be expert in it.
In fact, if this blog has a USP it is that it is not specialist. By accident, working in the little-known field of organization studies, which sits at the confluence of sociology, politics, economics, business, and law, is uniquely well-suited to Brexit which is similarly hydra-headed. Most people who work in the field originally studied something else (at least, most people of my vintage - it has changed since) and in my case as an undergraduate I had studied Economics and Politics at Manchester University and then, at UMIST, which was then the Faculty of Technology of Manchester University (the two institutions have since completely merged), in a department which subsequently merged with Manchester Business School, I wrote a PhD on the regulation of financial services.
Subsequently, I’ve conducted research on a huge variety of organizations ranging from accounting firms through to Bletchley Park in World War Two. During those years, I worked first at Leeds University then Cambridge University, where I became a full Professor in 2005 and was also a Fellow of Wolfson College, then Warwick University and most recently at Royal Holloway, University of London, until my retirement in 2020. I have also been a Visiting Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark and Universite Paris-Dauphine, France. In 2015 I was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS). Throughout all that time, my work was, in the most general sense, at the interface of politics and business. It also had a strong thread of historical research running through it, and in 2015 I was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS).
Of course, there are many people (in academia, think tanks, and journalism) working and writing on the many specialised aspects of Brexit – for example trade, migration, Northern Ireland politics, Westminster politics, EU Law, aviation, agriculture etc. etc. – or sub-specialisms within those and other areas. But there does seem to be a space for something that cuts across, or draws together, these things. So I read a lot of the specialist material and try to make sense of it and write about it in an accessible way. I make a particular point of providing extensive links to sources for claims made, or to deeper treatments of those claims. I try to avoid the pitfall that some bloggers fall into of being furious that things I write are ignored, or that things I've said ages ago get attention when said by writers with bigger audiences and profiles than mine. This is just one blog, amid a cacophony of voices, and that's the way the world is. Moreover, Brexit has become such a huge topic that no one 'owns' it.
How the blog developed
When I started the blog the audience, inevitably, was small. But in February 2017 I was persuaded to join what was then Twitter to publicise it and, by complete chance, within literally two days of doing so a post was picked up by some high-profile Twitter users. Within hours, I had thousands of Twitter followers and the readership of the blog rocketed. From that point onwards the blog readership began to spiral into the many tens of thousands, and included hundreds of politicians from all UK political parties (some of whom were well-known Brexiters), politicians from across the EU and beyond, hundreds, if not thousands, of journalists from every major broadcaster and newspaper in the UK, and large numbers from beyond, as well as diplomats, think-tankers, academics, business people and, of course, ‘ordinary people’.
By October 2019, the blog was singled out in the Guardian’s review of the first 25 years of blogging as being an example of how blogs could be “among the best sources of information we have”, and many people have remarked that it may become a useful source for future historians. Whether that is true, I don’t know, but it is the case that there is nothing else quite like it as a single, contemporaneous, record of the Brexit process since the referendum.
With this, came a lot of invitations to give talks and to appear in the media. Some of these I accepted, and I have compiled an incomplete list of them, but most of them I turned down. In some cases it was because they came, repeatedly, from the Russia Today TV channel and Sputnik Radio, and I had no desire to be used as part of Kremlin attempts to use Brexit to stir up internal divisions within the UK. But even when invitations came from reputable news organizations, I often just didn’t have time. I was a full-time, fairly senior, academic until September 2020 and even writing the blog was a struggle. Beyond that, the fact is that I am not a good media performer and I do not enjoy it. So when people sometimes kindly say that my work on Brexit should have more media exposure the truth is that I had the chance and didn’t take it.
Nevertheless, writing the weekly post became a burning passion for me, especially during the political dramas of 2018 and 2019, and also, I think, a way of coping with the distress and trauma of that time. I was also conscious that I had built a considerable readership who found the content genuinely useful, in and of itself, but also, in many cases, who found reading it a way of coping with their own distress and trauma, just as I did in writing it.
It seems that other people also see a value in it. Over time, it settled into a format whereby there was normally a weekly post, on a Friday, analysing the week's developments, although more recently it shifted to a fortnightly post, still on a Friday. As at September 2025 it had been visited almost 11 million times with many thousands of others reading each week via the email sign-up. As the strap line at the top of the Blog indicates, many leading commentators have been kind enough to praise its quality, and it is frequently quoted in the national and international media.
In recent years, probably dating from the point that the transition period ended, the readership numbers per post have declined somewhat, but not hugely, and of course the shift to fortnightly posts has reduced the overall annual readership somewhat. Attention from the national and international media has all but disappeared, only reviving when some anniversary falls, reflecting the decline in media coverage of Brexit more generally.
Criticisms of the blog
There have also been plenty of negative reactions and abuse, hence for a long time comments were disabled. They still came, on social media and from people who looked up my work email address, and included threats of death and violence. It was hurtful and sometimes alarming, but it has mostly died down in recent years. Since November 2023 blog comments have been re-enabled subject to moderation policy, and since then violent abuse has not been a problem. However, I rarely reply to individual comments, whether on this blog or on social media, because, to be honest, I don’t think that the internet is a good forum for discussion.
One recurring criticism (less common recently) that I have an anti-Brexit POV and that this is out of keeping with academic impartiality. The first is certainly true. I stated clearly in the first post on this blog that I start from the position that the Referendum decision was a “national catastrophe” and I believe that as strongly, or more strongly, now as I did then. I don't in any case, see such critics complaining about the various academics, some with very high profiles and much influence, who are openly pro-Brexit. The second is based on a misunderstanding of what being an academic means and what impartiality means (and, also, ignores the fact that this blog isn't written for an academic audience or for an academic publication). We don’t expect medical academics to be ‘impartial’ about the negative effects of smoking. Their responsibility is to state the facts as they understand them, with due regard for the evidence.
Few things in social science are as clear cut as that, and ‘facts’ are always open to interpretation, as is ‘evidence’. But my view is that Brexit is as clear cut as any such issue can be: it is damaging economically, culturally, socially, geo-politically and in every other conceivable way. Of course, I know that many disagree – if that were not so, Brexit would not be happening. But my view is based on the arguments and evidence that I have seen and not the other way round (and it certainly isn’t, to respond to one asinine criticism that is sometimes made, because I receive funding from the EU which I do not and never have done, even if that would make a difference). It is not that I am opposed to Brexit despite good evidence and argument, but because of good evidence and argument. As, for that matter, are almost all who have specialist academic or practical knowledge of what Brexit entails.
In the early years of this blog, such critical comments as there were almost always came from a pro-Brexit position (which, at least, showed that I was not writing for my own echo-chamber). In more recent times, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, it is notable that they are more likely to come from people who are anti-Brexit, often objecting to my ‘pessimism’ about the prospects for rejoining the EU and/or (the two are often linked) to me being, as they see it, insufficiently critical of the Labour government. Other times it has come when I have criticised remainer myths (especially the nonsense about Freeports) or the endless repetition of pointless remainer arguments (especially ‘it was only an advisory referendum/ only 37% voted for Brexit’). Sometimes, people who have been praising my work for years overnight turn on me on fury for having written something they don’t like.
It’s obviously in some ways more painful to receive criticism from, so to speak, my own side. But I am not writing for praise or popularity, and I am not going to adopt positions I don’t believe in, or endorse facts I know to be false in order to court such praise or popularity. Moreover, some of the self-righteousness, nastiness and sneering I have received or seen from some on ‘my’ side makes me sympathise with some of what leave voters have had to put up with. Of course, it should be no surprise – opposing Brexit doesn’t in itself make people who do so good, wise, or pleasant. But I would gently suggest to some on the ‘remain’ or ‘rejoin’ camps that they need to reflect on how, if their conduct alienates even someone as opposed to Brexit to me, it will assist them in building a consensus for what they want to happen.
None of this should be taken to mean that the blog is immune to criticism. it has not been anything like attentive enough to EU politics, or to politics in Scotland and Wales. It has been slightly better with respect to Northern Ireland, and I was one of the first UK Brexit commentators to really understand what Brexit meant for Ireland and Northern Ireland, but only slightly better. It has not been sufficiently attentive the impact of Brexit on EU citizens in the UK or UK citizens in the EU. And the writing style, of long posts and long paragraphs, certainly isn’t to everyone’s taste.
Despite its weaknesses, I think it is fair to say that almost all the predictions that I’ve made about Brexit have come true. I’m sure that if someone were to trawl through all the posts, they would find some exceptions, but on the major issues the only one I got wrong (and I was by no means alone in this) is that I thought it would be far more difficult, and far slower, to ‘roll over’ EU trade deals to the UK, and to do so often on more-or-less similar terms.
Changes to blog name and focus
It might have been logical to end this blog when the UK left the EU in January 2020 or perhaps at the end of the transition period at the end of 2020. Instead, at the latter point, I renamed it ‘Brexit & Beyond’ and continued, for the reasons set out in the first post under that new title. Inevitably from that point the focus shifted somewhat from discussion of the process of leaving the EU to discussion of the ongoing process around UK-EU relations, and the effects of having left the EU.
Then, in September 2025, I changed the title again, this time to ‘Brexit & Brexitism’, and again the reasons were set out in the first post under this new title. The main change was to expand the focus to the wider ways that Brexit had morphed into Brexitism, and at the same time I wrote a standalone blog page defining what I meant by the term 'Brexitism’.
Another change has been that, with Elon Musk’s take over of what is now X, and the disgusting cesspool of propaganda that has gone with that, I have migrated to BlueSky and built a following there (I also briefly posted on Mastodon and still have an account there, but have not used it for a long time). I still keep my X account, although a constantly agonize about doing so, using it solely to post a link to each new blog post. My rationale is that I have followers there who have not migrated elsewhere, and who I still want to reach. But I may well revise that.
As for the future of the blog, that remains to be seen. The new focus, and the way politics in the UK and elsewhere is going, means that there will always be plenty to write about, and the visceral outrage which has motivated me from the outset has not left me. But writing it takes a lot of time and effort ...
One recurring criticism (less common recently) that I have an anti-Brexit POV and that this is out of keeping with academic impartiality. The first is certainly true. I stated clearly in the first post on this blog that I start from the position that the Referendum decision was a “national catastrophe” and I believe that as strongly, or more strongly, now as I did then. I don't in any case, see such critics complaining about the various academics, some with very high profiles and much influence, who are openly pro-Brexit. The second is based on a misunderstanding of what being an academic means and what impartiality means (and, also, ignores the fact that this blog isn't written for an academic audience or for an academic publication). We don’t expect medical academics to be ‘impartial’ about the negative effects of smoking. Their responsibility is to state the facts as they understand them, with due regard for the evidence.
Few things in social science are as clear cut as that, and ‘facts’ are always open to interpretation, as is ‘evidence’. But my view is that Brexit is as clear cut as any such issue can be: it is damaging economically, culturally, socially, geo-politically and in every other conceivable way. Of course, I know that many disagree – if that were not so, Brexit would not be happening. But my view is based on the arguments and evidence that I have seen and not the other way round (and it certainly isn’t, to respond to one asinine criticism that is sometimes made, because I receive funding from the EU which I do not and never have done, even if that would make a difference). It is not that I am opposed to Brexit despite good evidence and argument, but because of good evidence and argument. As, for that matter, are almost all who have specialist academic or practical knowledge of what Brexit entails.
In the early years of this blog, such critical comments as there were almost always came from a pro-Brexit position (which, at least, showed that I was not writing for my own echo-chamber). In more recent times, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, it is notable that they are more likely to come from people who are anti-Brexit, often objecting to my ‘pessimism’ about the prospects for rejoining the EU and/or (the two are often linked) to me being, as they see it, insufficiently critical of the Labour government. Other times it has come when I have criticised remainer myths (especially the nonsense about Freeports) or the endless repetition of pointless remainer arguments (especially ‘it was only an advisory referendum/ only 37% voted for Brexit’). Sometimes, people who have been praising my work for years overnight turn on me on fury for having written something they don’t like.
It’s obviously in some ways more painful to receive criticism from, so to speak, my own side. But I am not writing for praise or popularity, and I am not going to adopt positions I don’t believe in, or endorse facts I know to be false in order to court such praise or popularity. Moreover, some of the self-righteousness, nastiness and sneering I have received or seen from some on ‘my’ side makes me sympathise with some of what leave voters have had to put up with. Of course, it should be no surprise – opposing Brexit doesn’t in itself make people who do so good, wise, or pleasant. But I would gently suggest to some on the ‘remain’ or ‘rejoin’ camps that they need to reflect on how, if their conduct alienates even someone as opposed to Brexit to me, it will assist them in building a consensus for what they want to happen.
None of this should be taken to mean that the blog is immune to criticism. it has not been anything like attentive enough to EU politics, or to politics in Scotland and Wales. It has been slightly better with respect to Northern Ireland, and I was one of the first UK Brexit commentators to really understand what Brexit meant for Ireland and Northern Ireland, but only slightly better. It has not been sufficiently attentive the impact of Brexit on EU citizens in the UK or UK citizens in the EU. And the writing style, of long posts and long paragraphs, certainly isn’t to everyone’s taste.
Despite its weaknesses, I think it is fair to say that almost all the predictions that I’ve made about Brexit have come true. I’m sure that if someone were to trawl through all the posts, they would find some exceptions, but on the major issues the only one I got wrong (and I was by no means alone in this) is that I thought it would be far more difficult, and far slower, to ‘roll over’ EU trade deals to the UK, and to do so often on more-or-less similar terms.
Changes to blog name and focus
It might have been logical to end this blog when the UK left the EU in January 2020 or perhaps at the end of the transition period at the end of 2020. Instead, at the latter point, I renamed it ‘Brexit & Beyond’ and continued, for the reasons set out in the first post under that new title. Inevitably from that point the focus shifted somewhat from discussion of the process of leaving the EU to discussion of the ongoing process around UK-EU relations, and the effects of having left the EU.
Then, in September 2025, I changed the title again, this time to ‘Brexit & Brexitism’, and again the reasons were set out in the first post under this new title. The main change was to expand the focus to the wider ways that Brexit had morphed into Brexitism, and at the same time I wrote a standalone blog page defining what I meant by the term 'Brexitism’.
Another change has been that, with Elon Musk’s take over of what is now X, and the disgusting cesspool of propaganda that has gone with that, I have migrated to BlueSky and built a following there (I also briefly posted on Mastodon and still have an account there, but have not used it for a long time). I still keep my X account, although a constantly agonize about doing so, using it solely to post a link to each new blog post. My rationale is that I have followers there who have not migrated elsewhere, and who I still want to reach. But I may well revise that.
As for the future of the blog, that remains to be seen. The new focus, and the way politics in the UK and elsewhere is going, means that there will always be plenty to write about, and the visceral outrage which has motivated me from the outset has not left me. But writing it takes a lot of time and effort ...
Sadly not much has been made of the 2019 UK general election result. Boris ran on the slogan "Get Brexit done" and the electorate responded by 56.4% voting against that notion. If only FPTP wasn't the system we'd have a more accurate reflection of UK opinion, in parliament.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting interpretation of the result but highly disingenuous. A general election is rarely if ever a single issue referendum, as was the Brexit referendum, but on multiple issues - for example even those supporters of the Labour party who wished for Brexit to be done were very likely not to vote for Boris in any scenario...
DeleteThese kind of arguments do not much more than show the hand of the commentator.
Yet it is a fact that Brexit, and the hardest version of it in which no voter had a say, was only delivered through that December 2019 election. Many right-of-centre pro-European voters voted for Johnson to keep out Corbyn, himself anti-EU. On the basis that general elections are multi-issued as you say, there should have been a vote on the substance - or reality - of the 'oven ready deal' four long years after the 2016 referendum's marginal result. Voters could and should have been offered graded options including that of a soft Brexit staying in the single market and customs union to the benefit of so many across the generations, business, science and medicine and academia to name but a few. One day, when common sense reigns again, we can reclaim this option.
ReplyDelete