What is...Brexit, if not a Shock?

Show notes

This month, we are flipping the script a little: Our new episode features our producer Judith Koch (University of Sussex), whose recent PhD research offers a fresh perspective on Brexit: rather than a sudden rupture, she interprets it as the latest chapter in a decades-long tension between the UK and Europe. What if Brexit wasn’t a bolt from the blue, but just the latest instance in a decades-long struggle between the UK and its European counterparts? In conversation with host Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Judith talks us through the longer history of Brexit, all the way back to the Suez Crisis of 1956. Her work reframes Brexit as the collapse of a unique dynamic that had long sustained UK-European relations, challenging the usual story of the UK’s 2016 decision to leave the EU. Her work has been published in Global Political Economy, and she is currently working on her book. She has been a political journalist with Germany’s ARD for over a decade and now provides media training and produces podcasts for academic and research organisation - including this one!

Koch, J. (2023). The making of the Single European Act reconsidered: IPE, UCD and the challenge of supranationalism. Global Political Economy, 2(1), 98-120. Retrieved Jul 10, 2025, from https://doi.org/10.1332/QLOC4375

PGR interviews (2025): Examining the evidence for why Britain took so long to leave the EU with Judith Koch. Sussex Research Hive. (2025, February 6)

Benquet, M., & Bourgeron, T. (2022). Alt-Finance: How the City of London bought democracy. Pluto Press. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745346854/alt-finance/

Thompson, H. (2017). Inevitability and contingency: The political economy of Brexit. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19(3), 434–449. https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117710431

Pal, M. (Host), & Koch, J. (Guest). (2021, March 1). What is…Political Marxism? [Audio podcast episode]. In Voices - The EISA Podcast.