UK voters narrowly approved leaving European Union in referendum campaign marked by debates over immigration, sovereignty, and economic impacts, with Leave voters concentrated in post-industrial areas feeling left behind by globalization. Brexit implementation involved complex negotiations, Northern Ireland border issues, and economic disruptions, while exposing deep divisions between metropolitan and rural populations, younger and older voters, and different UK constituent nations regarding national identity and global engagement.

Brexit inspired British poets to explore themes of national identity, belonging, and division, with writers like Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage addressing Brexit's cultural implications. Poetry examined nostalgia for imperial past, anxieties about multiculturalism's future, and working-class communities' sense of abandonment, while Scottish and Northern Irish poets explored Brexit's impacts on union's stability, creating literature reflecting Britain's contested relationship with Europe and its own internal diversity.