The secret to Vote Leave’s success was not illegality but ambiguity. While it is true, as the Electoral Commission has now ruled, that the official Leave campaign broke electoral law by overspending, its greatest political trick was managing to offer a welter of contradictory futures wrapped up into a single idea: Brexit.
Vote Leave promised to spend the whole of the United Kingdom’s net contribution to the EU budget on the NHS (that famous £350m a week) while pledging to extend the subsidies handed to farmers and scientists. It offered an end to the free movement of people and a de facto reduction in immigration while laying out a future in which the UK struck trade deals with India and Brazil, both of which would require more visas for their citizens in return for greater access to their markets. It promised parliament the freedom to set British laws without regard for anyone else, an impossibility in the era of globalisation. It held out the notion of leaving the customs union while keeping the border with Ireland as open and invisible as it is now. Almost 17-and-a-half million people voted Leave – and you could argue they each voted for a different kind of Brexit.
Content from our partners
