This Brexit thing - it's almost as if the British people didn't know anything at all when they voted for it. So many of them are genuinely surprised at what is happening.
You'll get a hundred different hot takes on this as it's a very touchy subject but in essence:
Conservative backbenchers have wanted out of the EU for a while. To keep the peace within his own party, David Cameron (the former PM) promised them a referendum figuring it was a straight-forward (and safe!) lay-up that put the matter to bed, and that would then be the end of it. Essentially, "Remain" would easily win by a landslide and the matter would be settled for good.
The plan didn't pan out.
Because it was essentially intended as a rhetorical question when it was devised, no great amount of time was spent figuring out what a Leave vote would mean in practice as it was not expected to happen. Unfortunately, the upper echelons of both political parties spent so little time and effort explaining the implications that it left that role wide open for media outlets to fill in the many blanks - meaning that people on the Left were told it would be the end of days and those on the Right that it was a free ticket to the promised land with no downsides. The Right vote carried.
This is not unique to this issue or populace. I know loads of people in the US who benefit massively from Obamacare and constantly advocate repealing it.
A lady I know who thinks the law is terrible was complaining the other day that her daughter had to get off her insurance at 26. I had to bite my tongue so hard to not be like, ya know, without Obamacare she'd have been booted 8 years ago.
What you said is correct. The UK doesn’t have a system for referendum, so they hacked an opinion poll with the question: “do you want to leave the EU?”
In a normal democracy with a referendum system, the people vote on a text in place of having the politicians do it. The question is always “to you approve the text such and such.” The first problem is that the UK constitution doesn’t have this system I think, the second problem is what to vote on. They could either negotiate a treaty first and then ask people to approve it, or they could ask people to vote on the mission of the negotiators (but it’s tricky since the outcome is not known)
I've often thought referendums need a reconciliation process. My tri-county area in the US voted overwhelmingly for a tax and program package to build light rail transit.
Within 4 years they passed another referendum cutting the taxes they voted in to pay for the trains without repealing the referendum requiring the transit authority to build the trains. Doh!
Build the trains without paying for them. California is much the same way, you have dozens of fantastic niche taxes to fund programs, but next thing you know you're paying $500,000 to house a single homeless family.
It would be easier to give said family $10,000 and exile them from the state, but then you'd have to face a very frank realization, California is not a good state for most working class people.
That's besides the point, let me know when this train gets built. More cities need public transit
I guess that’s what happens when you let people vote on issues they know nothing about.
Referendums should be preceded by fact-checked pros and cons of each decision, side by side. But no, let politician sh*t-talk on TV and buses with nonsense instead.
Democracy works when the voters are informed. With disinformation, the loudest voice wins. That’s not democracy.
It's worse than this. A skilled politician will be able to lie about a "fact" and get away with it. He only needs to appeal to people's own twisted views. The media can help build a false narrative. And public media is controlled by the gov't so that too can be biased. Just remember all the talk about the "experts" during the referendum. As if their opinion was automatically invalid because they were "experts". It's quite hopeless..
As much as I regret that Brexit happened, I don't really think this is the direct fault of the voters that they didn't understand all the issues when voting for Brexit.
We have a representative democracy. Generally, you would assume if you're being asked to vote in a referendum, that either outcome would be implementable. Turns out that the referendum was really just David Cameron's plan to unify the conservatives, and he expected remain would win by a landslide, so didn't have a plan for if leave won.
Of course, we did vote for those representatives in the first place, so it's indirectly our fault either way.
That being said, given the enormity of this change, it was always going to be a challenge for the first year or two after it went into effect. In principle, EU scepticism is a perfectly reasonable view to have, our politicians just let us down.
David Cameron is absolutely going to end up towards the bottom of that list of famous/infamous leaders you get ranked against at the end of a game of Civilization.
Brexit in general. I have been following what looks like an absolute clusterfuck: From the exporters at the border who didn't know they had to have the right paperwork to the Northern Ireland protocol. It looks too awful to be true.
Conservative backbenchers have wanted out of the EU for a while. To keep the peace within his own party, David Cameron (the former PM) promised them a referendum figuring it was a straight-forward (and safe!) lay-up that put the matter to bed, and that would then be the end of it. Essentially, "Remain" would easily win by a landslide and the matter would be settled for good.
The plan didn't pan out.
Because it was essentially intended as a rhetorical question when it was devised, no great amount of time was spent figuring out what a Leave vote would mean in practice as it was not expected to happen. Unfortunately, the upper echelons of both political parties spent so little time and effort explaining the implications that it left that role wide open for media outlets to fill in the many blanks - meaning that people on the Left were told it would be the end of days and those on the Right that it was a free ticket to the promised land with no downsides. The Right vote carried.