How to Win a Referendum on Europe: 1975, 2016 and ...?

50 years ago this summer, in the UK’s first national referendum, the public voted by a majority of two-to-one to stay in the European Community. In 2016, they voted by a smaller majority to leave the EU. Both referendums disrupted party loyalties, pioneered new types of campaigning and had seismic consequences for British trade, international policy and Britain’s place in the world. Half a century after the 1975 vote, and five years since Britain left the EU, we ask how those referendums were won and lost, and what lessons they might teach for any future referendum on the relationship between Britain and European integration.

The venue will be announced the week before the event. Doors will open at 6.10pm to allow us to start at 6.30pm sharp.

Speakers:

Chair: Neil Carmichael is a politician and political commentator who served as the Conservative Member of Parliament for Stroud from 2010 to 2017. He chaired the House of Commons Education Select Committee from 2015 to 2017 and is now an Honorary Professor of Politics and Education at the University of Nottingham and University College London. He was Chair of the Conservative Group for Europe and is now a Trustee of the Sir Edward Heath Charitable Foundation.

Sara Hobolt is the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions and Professor in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. She has published extensively on referendums, public opinion and elections in the European Union and her next book, Tribal Politics: How Brexit Divided Britain, co-authored with James Tilley, will be published in 2026. She is the Chair of the European Election Studies project which explores how voters, political parties and the media interact in elections to the European Parliament.

Anand Menon is Director of the UK in a Changing Europe and Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King’s College London. He has written widely on many aspects of EU politics and policy and on UK-EU relations, and is co-author, with Geoffrey Evans, of Brexit and British Politics. He is a frequent contributor to the British and international media on matters relating to British relations with the EU.

Robert Saunders is Reader in British History at Queen Mary and Deputy Director of the Mile End Institute. He is the author of Democracy and the Vote in British Politics (2011), Yes to Europe! The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain (2018) and co-editor of Making Thatcher's Britain (2012). He has provided political and historical analysis for the BBC, The New Statesman and The Economist, and is a regular contributor to the Past, Present, Future podcast.

Maria Sobolewska is Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester and is an expert on political integration and representation of ethnic minorities and in the public’s perceptions of ethnicity, immigrants and integration in modern Britain. Her latest book, Brexitland, co-authored with Rob Ford, won the Political Science Association’s WJM Mackenzie Prize for the best political science book in 2022.