Ali Smith’s Autumn was published in October 2016, just four months after the United Kingdom’s referendum on European Union (EU) membership, and is widely considered the first post-Brexit novel. On June 23, 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU by a narrow margin of 51.9% to 48.1%. The result exposed deep social and political divisions, ushering in a period of intense uncertainty and acrimony. 

Among the various factors that contributed to the result of the referendum was the pervading skepticism regarding the UK’s relationship with Europe, especially since the UK was expected to contribute its economic resources toward initiatives that did not directly benefit the country, such as bailout plans during the 2010s eurozone debt crisis; free-movement agreements across the union also helped to enable a large number of immigrants to settle in the UK. Proponents of the “Leave” vote leveraged this skepticism and xenophobia to convince British citizens that the UK would be better off funneling its economic contributions back into its own social institutions, promising improved services that would drive up the quality of life for British citizens and erase regional economic inequalities. This engaged a populist thrust to the “Leave” vote. 

The “Remain” campaign warned against the potential socioeconomic pitfalls of Brexit: losing access to the European single market, which would inhibit trade of goods and services and present barriers to businesses; consumer goods increasing in price as a result; and cutting off a large European labor supply for many services in Britain. The Brexit result immediately caused a 10% fall in the value of the British pound, leading to inflation that drove up the price of imported goods. By June 2026, the pound had still not recovered to its pre-Brexit value in relation to the Euro; analysts also judged that the GDP was up to 8% lower than it would have been if the UK had remained in the EU, while British business investment is estimated to be 18% behind a “Remain” scenario (Partington, Richard. “How Brexit Has Made Britain Poorer – in Charts.” The Guardian, 14 June 2026). These factors have contributed to a national “cost of living crisis,” which began in 2021 (Hourston, Peter. “Cost of Living Crisis.” Institute for Government, 7 Feb. 2022).

The rocky negotiations between the UK and the EU from 2017 to 2018, along with the immediate economic impact of Brexit and the failed push for British Parliament to ratify a Withdrawal Agreement by 2019, gradually convinced citizens that Brexit was largely mishandled. Since the UK’s formal withdrawal from the EU in 2020, public opinion of Brexit’s benefits has steadily declined, and various polls have revealed that a majority of respondents want the country to rejoin the union (“Post-Brexit Poll of Polls.” What UK Thinks: EU).

The novel directly channels this atmosphere, opening with a variation on Charles Dickens: “It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. Again” (3). This sense of a fractured nation is central to the narrative. Characters grapple with a landscape where “all across the country, the country split in pieces” (61). The aftermath of the vote also saw a documented rise in xenophobia and hate crimes. This reality is reflected in the novel when Elisabeth sees a cottage vandalized with the words “GO and HOME” (53), a stark example of the hostility that surfaced. Elisabeth’s mother captures the prevailing mood of exhaustion and despair, stating that she’s “tired of the vitriol. [She’s] tired of the anger. [She’s] tired of the meanness” (56), articulating the emotional toll of the referendum on the national psyche.