| 0. Former Prime Minister gambles on a referendum in order to crush rebellion in his own party and secure his leadership. He makes a pact of support and in return gives a referendum on Europe satisfying a small niche of party extremists. Crucially the referendum isn’t binding which is where the problem occurs. The vote didn’t go the way people thought it would go. Maybe because of the fall out of banking crisis and rising inequality, maybe because the leave campaigns broke the law, maybe because of Russian involvement. So now you have a representative democracy that is broadly pro EU vs a popular vote which has voted “out” whatever that means. The referendum is non binding so should be advisory only to the elected officials. Now the government is in a pickle. Because even though the vote was just advisory if they’re seen to ignore this, people will start wondering if their vote matters at all. It could be a path to chaos. This is complicated further by the split of the age of people voting leave. They tended to be older and these voters traditionally vote conservative (aka republican in US terms). So they’d be disenfranchising their base. The government doesn’t even have a majority and is propped up by another tiny party of 10 members called the DUP. This is a little complicated but the outcome is a really weak government because it doesn’t have the numbers to push through legislation it would like. On top of that the euro-sceptic extremists are bolstered by vote and lobbying hard for out by any means necessary. They’re effectively driving policy by threatening to terminate her fragile leadership. All this would have been a doddle if a decent opposition was sat opposite in the commons. However in a perfect storm the opposition is absent. This is even more complicated to understand but the summary is that the hard left socialists have more in common with the hard right anti-EU lot than either of them would like to admit. It’s weird. Mays deal satisfied no-one and it’s taken 2 years to get this far. One interesting side effect is that more people now know what being in the EU means than ever before. It was virtually never discussed before. I’m off to stockpile toilet roll and pain killers |