The most talked-about reasons for the British people to have voted to withdraw from the EU are Immigration, Contributions to the EU’s budget and Trade.

However, this perceived hierarchy of the issues contributing to the Leave win, back in 2016, is somewhat affected by how Remainers imagine the Leavers’ modus operandi.



Indeed, studies show that Remainers have more trouble understanding why Leavers voted as they did than vice-versa. This could be attributed to the extensive anti-Brexit coverage in most of the media and the fact Remainers tend to “block” people who disagree with them more than Leavers do. Remainers tend to highlight the point a large number of leave voters did not attend higher education or are racist. Some even have claimed Leavers are genetically inferior.



With less than 10 days to go before the UK finally withdraws from the EU – finally getting Brexit done and moving onto negotiating new relationships with countries around the world – it is worth talking about the real reason why most Leavers voted the way they did almost 4 years ago.



Sovereignty

The evidence proving that the single most important issue for Leavers was Sovereignty abounds on the internet.

Here is an example showing the issues relevant to both groups and undecided voters:

Furthermore, according to a YouGov poll, 45% of Leave-backing voters considered “Britain’s right to act independently” as the most important issue, with immigration coming on third place at only 26%.

Moreover, sovereignty was also pointed as being the predominant reason behind the Leave vote by prominent liberal economists abroad.

For instance, in my personal experience, it was only after reading Charles Gave’s (director of the Institut Des Libertés in Paris) article in French explaining the reasons for the UK’s impending withdrawal back in February 2016, that I became convinced that Leaving the EU was a mainly about sovereignty.



Mr Gave explains in his article, how, if given the choice, Britain will always choose democracy over anything else, including economic benefit.

His reasoning? – That the British people love democracy, because they invented it as it is today.

Furthermore, Mr Gave attributes the fact that most of the UK practices Common Law rather than Civil Law. His interpretation of the difference between the two is as follows: “Common law stipulates what is forbidden, allowing everything else. Civil law, on the contrary, stipulates what is allowed, forbidding everything else”.

This perhaps is the most telling reason as to why Britain felt uneasy as a member of a technocratic political institution which relies on EU civil law determined by politically motivated lawmakers and second-rate politicians who most often failed to convince the people of their countries of adopting their ideas and have thus resorted to try to implement them at a continental level. The UK legal system based on precedent and formed through centuries, influenced by the cultural and social development of Britain as a nation. This seems to be more important to the British people than the Remainers assumed.



Brexit, then, is all about British sovereignty. Issues such as immigration, trade, environmental policy, animal welfare and any other political issue which comes to mind are secondary.



Is it a coincidence, then, that those calling for a written constitution, who are eager to get the laws they prefer to be codified – rather than allowing the people to determine the country’s future through the nurturing of Common Law once out of the EU – are the same sore Remainers who believe none of this would have happened if they would have written Brexit to be constitutionally illegal?