The brutal jolt came at 4.40 am.
Ten years to the day.
It was a time of personal upheaval, as the hubby and I had just returned to these shores after living and working in the States for several years.
Brexit referendum day started like most others. Stretched and in a mad rush. He worked in radio and, at that time, at a leading news outlet. I was busy re-establishing our life and home back in the UK, and after casting my vote, I didn’t think too much about it. There were, after all, millions of storage boxes scattered everywhere, waiting to be unpacked.
Little did I know that very soon, there’d be plenty more to unpack for both me and, more importantly, the country. Learning the top 5 PR lessons behind Brexit is something we’ll explore in more depth.
One of the busiest news days in recent memory, my overworked partner didn’t make it home until very late. We quietly ate our soggy, reheated lasagna in the company of David Dimbleby, amongst a mountain of brown boxes, sticky tape, and bubble wrap, and made our weary way to bed.
Then came the moment. The husband let out a toe-curling shriek. No, it wasn’t a masked intruder. It was something much scarier: Brexit! I won’t repeat exactly what he said to relay the news, but it wasn’t pretty.
Blurry-eyed, we raced downstairs, and there was David (D, not C!) giving us the news no one had expected.
“The British people have spoken, and the answer is: we’re out!”
As someone who has worked in TV for many years, news is made when something unexpected happens. And this, in every sense, was seismic news.
Remain lost. Leave won.
The Nos have it.
It’s a decision that has shaped the UK’s political and economic life every day since.
The Day after Brexit: No Man’s Land
This is a PR blog, not a political one, so I will try to leave my political opinions at the door.
But whichever side of the fence you’re on, we can all agree that what we were sold on that momentous day and what has been delivered are remarkably different, leaving many voters feeling let down.
So, let’s unpack how we got here and what lies ahead.
The Top 5 PR Lessons Behind Brexit
Clear Comms
So, the first lesson is one of clarity. This applies to both camps. We were not clear on what Brexit would look like and on the political and legal mechanisms to get there. The devil is in the details (or lack thereof), and we didn’t have a playbook for such a momentous decision. It unravelled almost immediately upon first contact with the real world.
The spectacular fallout was a protracted Westminster bubble fracas that alienated voters even more and took years of wrangling (and a couple of Tory leaders) to resolve. Not good for public confidence and trust, and it certainly didn’t do us any favours on the world stage.
A few years before Brexit, I worked in government comms, and the most dangerous thing in politics is not having a plan, and in this sense, we were very exposed. Only chaos reigns in a vacuum.
Not even the Vote Leave camp really believed they would win. Boris Johnson didn’t think they had a prayer and reportedly, greeted the shock result with this telling reaction: ‘But we’ve got no plan’. Nigel Farage also had his doubts. By many accounts, he privately believed they would lose by a narrow margin and even publicly conceded defeat on Sky News on the night of the result.
Because of the lack of clarity and proper post-Brexit planning, the country was very much in no man’s land, and the public mood was one of uncertainty. And one thing we all know is that the financial markets don’t like uncertainty! Liz Truss taught us that lesson in spades (and in lettuce leaves!).
Economically, the post-Brexit uncertainty has continued to take its toll, and some estimates suggest our GDP may be reduced by as much as 8%. That’s a real everyday impact on our pay packets and spending power. And more worryingly, the impact compounds over time, so year after year, that disparity will only grow.
Add to the mix a Bloomberg report, which estimated in January 2023 that leaving the EU was costing the UK around £100bn a year in lost output and, in investment terms, that firms have cut capital spending by 12-18%. You get the drift…
Owning the Crisis
The second lesson is to show leadership, ownership and resolution in a time of crisis. Politically damaged beyond repair, Cameron had little choice. But with hindsight, maybe the best course of action was not to bolt, but to ensure stability and avoid damaging leadership contests at a time of huge national uncertainty. For the sake of continuity and stability, it might have brought a sense of business as usual for the country. And helped ease the difficult passage ahead.
Honest Communication
The third lesson relates to scrutiny. There just wasn’t enough fact-checking at the point of sale. There was misselling on all sides – everyone fell short. It’s well-documented, but too many of the campaign pledges, whether dubious NHS slogans on Brexit buses or fanciful posters of EU migrants standing in queues, were ‘misleading’.
Effective campaigning tools — three-word, snappy taglines and catchy phrases like ‘Take Back Control’ and ‘Project Fear’ — dominated public discourse but carried little real meaning and helped public attention away from complicated policy details.
The false narrative wasn’t exclusive to Leave. Remain talked up the chances of an imminent recession following the UK’s departure from the EU and a 2p rise in the basic rate of income tax. Neither happened.
Storytelling really matters in any campaign. Essentially, the Remain story didn’t pack a punch, and a lacklustre campaign just didn’t do enough to convince the public of the merits of staying in the EU. That big cut-through PR moment to counter the emotional pull of the Leave narrative never materialised.
It’s a story that closely mirrors that of the outgoing PM, Keir Starmer, and his inability to connect with people and to define his government’s ethos.
Find Common Ground
Time hasn’t proved to be a great healer. Indeed, we’re still divided as ever on the issue. A coherent, consistent, clear communications strategy that can heal divisions and bring people together will help. A hard nut to crack in a divided country, but strong, unifying messaging that finds common ground will help ease the still-fractious debate. Clear communication about the benefits, challenges, and the road ahead will increase visibility. Communicating wins, but also being transparent and open about the future direction of travel.
Field your Best Team
And lastly, it’s about plain-speaking. Brexit is mind-blowingly complex, so an expert communicator will break those barriers down and make it easier to understand.
Accessibility helps engage audiences and fosters greater understanding of an issue that polarises many. During the referendum, economists, business leaders and politicians found it difficult to cut through the noise.
There was a general distrust of experts, but the dense and often technical language used to communicate with a sceptical audience failed to engage. In a phrase that did land, on the Leave side, Michael Gove struck a chord when he said: ‘People in this country have had enough of experts”.
Take the M&S Chair, Stuart Rose, and his first awks press conference launching the Remain campaign when he branded leavers as ‘quitters’. And then, after that stuttering start, there was an embarrassing series of blunders, including confusing Sweden for Switzerland and forgetting the campaign’s name. They didn’t get their best communicators out there, showing that a winning campaign needs to play to its strengths. Some CEOs are great at business and building teams, but not natural communicators. As Rose himself admitted: ‘businessmen should stick to business and politicians to politics’. Fair point.
And when it comes to natural communicators, Leave had Boris and Nigel, who have definitely honed that particular skill. They instinctively know their audience, connect with people and have a knack for getting their message across.
When the odds are heavily stacked against them, both men know how to win. And their easy, folksy communication style is a big reason behind their popular appeal. The next man hotly tipped to take up the hot seat, Andy Burnham, also has that charismatic style, so we should see a sharper, bolder, more proactive Downing Street media operation kick into gear in the near future.
The Past is a Foreign Country
Here we are ten years on. And Brexit hasn’t quite delivered the ‘sunlit uplands’ we were promised or that great mythical beast: the Brexit Dividend.
The polls show that, quite understandably, the public feels let down by what leaving our closest trading bloc has actually delivered.
Key takeaways from a recent YouGov poll show that 57% of Britons think the UK was wrong to vote to leave the EU, including 23% of Leave voters, while six in ten Britons think Brexit has been a failure, with the Tories and Johnson seen as most responsible for it being a less-than-roaring success.
In/Out/Midway house? Where we’ll be another ten years from now in Brexitland is anyone’s guess. Challenges lie ahead, especially now as geopolitics becomes a global game of ‘Risk’ (see Iran/Venezuela/Yemen and a likely Cuban crisis next), and the constantly revolving door at Number 10 adds to the uncertainty.
But hopefully, whatever comes next, skilled and well-crafted communication is at its heart, with messaging focused on authenticity, clarity, and transparency, aimed at rebuilding public trust.
From climate change to economic crises to unexpected wars and the age of AI, navigating the myriad of future obstacles means we have to get better at communicating risk to the public and what that truly entails.
We can’t travel back in time and correct the mistakes of the past, but by applying the PR lessons learnt from the Brexit referendum and its immediate aftermath, we can avoid repeating them in future. And a new, grown-up, straight-talking, authentic style of politics and communications is a positive change we can all believe in.
For more political campaign insights, you can visit my previous post on Zohran Mamdani’s rise to NYC Mayor here. You can read more about mastering the political interview here.
Katherine Porter is a former TV journalist with extensive PR experience. She has worked in senior public sector roles, including as PR manager for the London Olympics and as a Director of Communications in the US. Most recently, she worked in charity sector comms before setting up her own PR agency. She also writes regularly on Substack.
