In June last year, Britain held a referendum to determine whether the country should leave the European Union, and those in favor of Brexit won, though quite narrowly. The two major parties, the Conservatives and Labour, as well as the middle-of-the-road Liberal Democrats, argued that the United Kingdom should remain in the union. The UK Independent Party, which campaigned for Brexit, had won only one seat in Parliament in the June 2015 general election (because of the single-seat, first-past-the-post voting system, even though it garnered 12.6 percent of the total votes). That the "leave" votes still outnumbered the "remain" votes indicated that the general public revolted against the free movement of people within the region under the EU law.
Migration of people within the EU fueled popular dissatisfaction over matters related to public safety, national security and the economy. An influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe deprived unskilled British workers of their jobs, lowered their wages and increased unemployment. The country has been stripped of the means to keep terrorists at bay. It seems clear that these sentiments pushed a majority of the British masses to vote for leaving the EU.
For decades after the end of World War II, the British political landscape was characterized by the Conservative-Labour competition, in which the two major parties took turns running the government. Not only in Britain, but also in the United States, France, Germany and the Netherlands, however, a majority of voters have now become fed up with the rivalry between established major parties and begun to accede to populism, which is premised on confrontation between the general populace and the elite.