Voting to leave: economic insecurity and the Brexit vote

This chapter focuses on the political economy of the Brexit vote. It contributes to the debate on British Euroscepticism by examining the impact of economic insecurity. More specifically we explore the determinants of individual support for Brexit by focusing on several factors relating to economic insecurity that have all received significant attention in broader political economy debates including income, occupation, unemployment, poverty and the level and type of education. Our analysis pays particular attention to the labour market position of individuals and the labour market risks they face as we want to examine whether- and if so how- the risk of being unemployed, the risk of being in poverty and housing risk have influenced support for Brexit. We also investigate the impact of income level and source, of being in low skill occupations in areas where immigration has been particularly salient, and of having studied a higher education degree that is ‘protective’ (medicine or law)

Xenophobia Britannica? Anti-immigrant attitudes in the UK are among the strongest in Europe

Tim Vlandas had hoped the referendum would have been the end of the obsession with immigration. Brexit would allow the UK to ‘take back control’ of its immigration policy, thereby nullifying the need for politicians to talk about it on an almost daily basis. He argues, however, that in fact the reverse is happening. Having decided to leave the EU, the vote is increasingly interpreted as a call to end immigration almost entirely and, furthermore, it is discussed even more often and more negatively than before the referendum

Explaining perceptions of the unemployed in Europe

This article explores the determinants of the perceptions of the unemployed in 29 European countries along three dimensions: whether people see the unemployed as the ‘government’s responsibility’; whether they believe the unemployed do not ‘try hard to find a job’; and whether they think that the standard of living of the unemployed is ‘bad’. I derive a number of expectations from the political economy literature on policy preferences and test whether these expectations explain variation in the perceptions of the unemployed. Using logistic regression analysis, I find that labour market status and occupations influence individuals’ perceptions of the unemployed. For instance, the unemployed and workers in low skill occupations are most likely to think that the government is responsible for the standard of living of the unemployed. However, certain factors such as gender, occupations, education, and union membership affect distinct types of perceptions differently. The determinants of policy preferences help us make sense of perceptions of the unemployed but certain factors affect different types of perceptions in distinct ways

Debunking the myth that keeps coming back: excessive spending on labour market policies and benefit fraud in the UK

Tim Vlandas of Reading University shows why recent UK labour market reforms rest on false assumptions and will do little to cure unemploymen

Why Cameron is wrong on the ‘cost’ of migrants

Tim Vlandas of Reading University attacks David Cameron’s pre-election focus on the ‘cost’ of migrant

A pandemic ‘misery index’: ranking countries’ economic and health performance during Covid-19

How can we compare the impact of Covid-19 on different countries across the world? Tim Vlandas proposes a pandemic ‘misery index’ that incorporates data covering both the health and economic dimensions

Does unemployment matter? Economic insecurity, labour market policies and the far-right vote in Europe

What is the impact of unemployment on far-right party support? This article develops a framework that links unemployment to far-right party support, while taking into account both the heterogeneity of the workforce and the role of labour market policies. More specifically we focus on unemployment as a driver of economic insecurity and examine its effect on outsider and insider labour market groups. We identify the extent to which two labour market policies -unemployment benefits and Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) - mediate the effect of unemployment on economic insecurity, thus limiting the impact of unemployment on far right party support. We carry out a large N analysis on a sample of 14 Western and 10 Eastern European countries between 1991 and 2013. We find that unemployment only leads to higher far-right support when benefits replacement rates are low. The results with regards to the mediating effect of EPL are more complex as EPL only mediates the impact of unemployment when we take into account the share of foreign - born population in the country

Conservative voters and those living in Conservative constituencies appear more likely to be vaccinated than Labour supporters

Does political partisanship affect the likelihood of an individual choosing to get vaccinated against Covid-19? Using data from constituencies across England, Margaryta Klymak and Tim Vlandas show that Conservative voters and those who live in Conservative constituencies are more likely to be vaccinated than Labour supporters

Why far right party success is about alliances between voters with different immigration grievances, and not just about culture

Support for the far right is often explained with reference to a ‘cultural backlash’ against cosmopolitanism, globalisation and immigration. Drawing on a new study, Daphne Halikiopoulou and Tim Vlandas explain that while these cultural explanations have some merit, there has been a tendency to overlook the importance of economic concerns about immigration for the electoral success of far right parties

Why far right parties do well at times of crisis: the role of labour market institutions

The far right is on the rise in many western and eastern European countries. The obvious culprit for this rise is the 2008 Eurozone crisis, and indeed a large body of literature suggests that economic malaise prompts far right party support. This conventional wisdom, however, is not consistent with cross-national patterns of unemployment and far right votes in the last three EP elections. To solve this puzzle we argue that it is specific labour market policies rather than the economic crisis itself that are more likely to facilitate the rise of the far right. In many countries governments have deregulated employment protection legislation and reduced unemployment benefits in the last three decades. But it was precisely these labour market institutions that offered protection from the insecurity and deprivation that economic malaise imposes on societies. We test our argument on the last three EP elections and find that unemployment and GDP growth have not played a role while labour market institutions had both a direct impact on far right support and an indirect impact in limiting the effect of unemployment. Unemployment benefits have both a direct association with far right support and an indirect association in limiting the effect of unemployment: where unemployment benefits are generous, unemployment has no association with far right, but where they are not, unemployment is associated with higher far right support. EPL only has an indirect association conditional on unemployment benefits. Where unemployment benefits are low, EPL mediates the impact of unemployment benefits, but where unemployment benefits are generous, there is no mediating impact of EPL. This suggests that the policies of austerity are likely to exacerbate support for the far right in EP elections therefore undermining the European integration project itself