Brexit: a Globalisation’s Consequence

Abstract

This paper investigates how economic globalisation created social and economic inequality which mainly brought the United Kingdom out of the European Union (EU). On 23 June 2016, more than 17 million Brits chose to withdraw United Kingdom from the EU, a sui generis regional integration. David Cameron, the then British Prime Minister, resigned, stock markets all over the world rocked, and the pound sterling nosedived. Analysis of the polling depicted that Brexit is a result of inequality, it is a war between the haves and the have nots and a clash of people who experienced globalisation differently. Globalisation had created the structure of inequality in which shaped decisions voters made on Brexit. While Bremain voters were benefited from being in the Union in the globalisation era, the Brexiters were not. To support the globalisation argument, the paper provides a definition of the economic globalisation, the globalisation’s factors, i.e. free trade and global supply chain, labour mobility, and technological progress and diffusion. The paper will also evaluates factor implications on inequality and how these factors, systemically, led to Brexit.