Conclusion

The Conclusion finds that the key problem with the British policy for membership of Europe was that otherwise important and influential figures like Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Neil Kinnock, John Major, and Tony Blair did not understand why Britain was a member of Europe. It concludes that David Cameron’s 2016 referendum was not a concession to the Eurosceptic wing of the British Conservative Party, but the product of his ideological debt to Margaret Thatcher, and, ultimately, that its failure was neither the product of austerity policy nor post-truth politics, rather that pro-European ideological practice failed to make British membership of the European Union seem normal, natural, and uncontroversial to enough voters whether they were on the wrong side of conservative economic policy or not.