The trouble is your assumption that the referendum was a battle between leave and the status quo. In reality it wasn’t — it was leave vs ever closer integration. Both, in my opinion, are sub-optimal outcomes. It’s just the negatives of Brexit will be felt much sooner. It looks increasingly like Brexit will be a short, sharp economic shock. But to borrow the boiling frog analogy, the deleterious effects of ever closer integration can be felt in the UK and on the continent only slowly. In the UK those effects were declining living standards of the working class due to unlimited immigration, on the continent it rears its head in the form of the sclerotic Eurozone causing youth unemployment in Spain and Italy, a 50% fall in GDP in Greece over the last decade, a brain drain in Poland and so on. Not to mention the ever widening democratic deficit that ever closer integration brings. I’m no Corbynite, but I did manage a cheeky smile when May was denied her majority. The public gave the powers-what-be a kicking and demanded an end to austerity. That’s democracy in action. It seems hard to understand how such a safety valve would work if we endured further integration without radical EU reform— Greece being a prime example of this. But the EU has demonstrated absolutely no desire to reform.
The status quo may have been the best option for Britain. A reformed EU with strong economic ties but free from the noose of ever closer political integration may have been even better. But neither of these options were ever on the table.
In conclusion, I don’t think the idea of Brexit persisted for so long because it was good to bring up at dinner parties and to present your patriotic credentials at party meetings, it came up because we were most assuredly a frog in slowly boiling water. The issue refused to go away because ever closer integration kept on throwing up more and more negative consequences to which Brexit offered a solution. As the temperature rose, demands for a referendum increased. It may have been a frying pan to fire decision for the UK — time will tell. But make no mistake, the frying pan will cook you all the same.
