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.

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

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.