Katherine Butler, joint head of Guardian Opinion

Seven million people turned to the wisdom of the Guardian’s comment writers in the 24 hours after the EU referendum result in June 2016. Three years on, it feels disturbing to admit that Brexit, for our small team of opinion editors, is the gift that keeps on giving.

With political opinions two a penny on the web, the scale of our traffic perhaps says a lot about the value of rapid but trusted, carefully commissioned and edited analysis in helping navigate an issue as polarising and open to factual distortion as Brexit. As the theatrics of Westminster voting, resignations and government defeats played out, many readers said they also found the Brexit-themed satire provided by Marina Hyde on our Saturday pages an essential form of therapy.

The big surprise is how even the seemingly dry detail can ignite fierce debate. Article 50. Customs union. WTO rules. Meaningful votes. Indicative votes. Backstop to the backstop. With the stakes so high, bring it on, readers seem to say.

Seeing this level of engagement with the complexities of the UK/EU relationship can be bittersweet. Back in the 1990s I reported on the EU from Brussels, competing (in vain, it usually felt) to convey the complicated reality against the Eurosceptic drumbeat.

So tense has the national mood been lately that you have to guard against unwittingly raising hopes of the impasse ending. A recent column was initially headlined: “Britain will have a second referendum - on 23 May”. Only when it started to spread like wildfire around the internet did it become clear that people were frantically sharing it because they hoped our columnist had exclusive news to impart, rather than a view on the EU elections.

Joseph Harker, deputy opinion editor

The first appearance of the word “Brexit” in a Guardian Opinion article was written by our columnist Timothy Garton Ash in December 2012. Headlined “A referendum on Europe? Bring it on, for all our sakes”, it read:

Unlike many of my pro-European friends, I think we will win. I do not believe the brains of the British people have been so addled by the Sun and Daily Mail that they will, confronted with the facts about what it is really like to be Norway (without the oil) or Switzerland, decide that exit – Brexit or Brixit – is the best option for this country.

Fateful words.

Our in-house columnists have been amazing at filing within minutes of some of the most dramatic and unexpected moments. And, beyond that, we’ve tried to give bigger-picture pieces as well.

One of the first, and still most memorable, was Mike Carter’s report of his walk through Britain’s post-industrial heartlands shortly before the vote. Headlined “I walked from Liverpool to London. Brexit was no surprise”, it gave a stark portrayal of the human stories of left-behind Britain. And campaigners such as Gina Miller have been hugely well read too.

With Brexit showing little sign of ending any time soon, all of us on the opinion desk will try to keep our readers informed through a range of diverse voices, whatever happens in the weeks and months ahead.

The desk at work: ‘There’s a delight for the obsessive (a category most editors fall into) in following the drama. Brexit is stuffed full of gossip, speculation and nailbiting votes.’ Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Sonia Sodha, deputy opinion editor and columnist; chief leader writer, the Observer

Brexit is simultaneously a columnist’s dream and nightmare. A dream because who could complain about having politics of the very highest stakes to interpret, week in week out? A nightmare not just because of what’s actually at stake – the outcome of Brexit will of course determine the future of our country for decades to come – but, on a much more parochial level, how to respond when something significant seems to happen every week, but nothing ever seems to change.

My approach has been to try to focus on what all the Westminster shenanigans could mean for where we ultimately end up, rather than on the archaic parliamentary procedure. It would be easy to let the excitement and unpredictability that comes with being in politically uncharted territory mask the troubling lack of responsible political leadership that has left us where we are today. It’s our job to point that out.



Toby Moses, deputy opinion editor

Never has a news story of such importance lasted so long, with such a high frequency of crunch moments that have failed to deliver any kind of resolution. The challenge of commissioning on a topic which is constantly developing and yet somehow never changes lies in finding new angles.

Views can be predictable, so when we can find an expert to present a perspective on what Brexit is doing in their area – a farmer or a pharmacist – it adds something new.

The fact that the appetite from readers is voracious, with every twist and turn pored over, means other stories can be crowded out. Most of the problems with the world that pre-date Brexit are still there, and getting worse, but the space for them has narrowed. Thankfully, we have excellent columnists who are all too aware of the continuing harm being done by austerity and the conflicts costing thousands of lives around the world. Our responsibility as editors is to make sure those stories are promoted to give our readers a broad range of comment to absorb. It can feel as if Brexit is the only thing happening in the world. It isn’t, and the opinion pages reflect that.

David Shariatmadari, deputy opinion editor

Editing in times of Brexit can be a lot of fun and really rewarding. There’s a delight for the obsessive (a category most editors fall into) in following the drama. Brexit is stuffed full of gossip, speculation and nailbiting votes. Therein, however, lies the danger. The science of Brexitology can be impenetrable to the uninitiated, and as a paper we have a responsibility to communicate the issues of the day accessibly. That means that blow-by-blow coverage must be balanced by pieces that give you a feeling for the bigger picture, the sweep of history.

I covered the 2016 US presidential election as opinion editor from New York. There was the constant risk of losing sight of underlying factors amid the extraordinary twists and turns. The minutiae of Trump’s gaffes and outrages provided plenty of fodder for columnists, but broader currents were ultimately more important. These included voter disaffection with the status quo, a feeling of economic alienation, and splitting of the country along broadly cultural lines. It’s no coincidence that these are the animating issues in Brexit Britain as well. Our challenge is not to lose sight of them.

Maya Wolfe-Robinson, assistant opinion editor

The prospect of our morning ideas meetings being dominated by Brexit for years to come is, frankly, pretty terrifying Maya Wolfe-Robinson

Brexit is like Marmite. I often cover the early morning shift, where I review the morning papers and news sites and aim to have commissioned the first piece of the day by 8am. Some writers are so obsessively following every aspect, they are aghast if you suggest a non-Brexit-related topic. And then there are those who plead “Anything but the B-word!” as soon as they answer the phone.

When we invited teenage environmentalist school strikers into the office to guest-edit, their frustration that we were debating an article 50 extension vote amendment instead of discussing the climate emergency offered a healthy sense of perspective. Yet it’s been valuable to edit pieces that show Brexit’s huge effects beyond Westminster, such as Frances Ryan on how an economic downturn would affect those already hit by the benefits freeze and Kimberley McIntosh and Shehreen Ali on how Brexit will affect the UK’s ethnic minorities. There’s very little good news though, so the prospect of our morning ideas meetings being dominated by Brexit for years to come is, frankly, pretty terrifying.

Charlotte Naughton, production editor, opinion

Three hours past our normal print deadline, I’ve just picked up a hastily rewritten column. A parliamentary vote has just passed and Rafael Behr has updated his article at speed – but it’s too long for the space. Behr is standing at my shoulder. “This Malthouse detail, let’s lose that,” I say. “Yes, good,” he says. Another minute and pre-press will be clamouring for this last page so we can get the newspaper to the printers on time. I finish reading it, print out a proof, another subeditor checks it and I send the page.

We have sometimes had to choose between getting pieces live on the web first or getting the next day’s paper out on time. At such an incredible time, the production team pulls together – one person writes a headline while another edits copy and a third adds a picture. Behr’s article is live in minutes, and we can all finally relax. Until the next day.