The course of Brexit was set in the hours and days after the 2016 referendum. / It was at 6:22 a.m. on June 24, 2016 — 59 minutes before the official tally was unveiled — that the European Council sent its first “lines to take” to the national governments that make up the EU.

Drawing on their recent article, Tim Bale and Karl Pike explore the consequences of the ‘Merkel myth’ for Brexit – the notion that the key to UK withdrawal lay with Angela Merkel.

On 7 October last year, there was a defining phone call between Boris Johnson and Angel Merkel.