Blame for the Brexit debacle is not hard to find – Britain’s leaders have let the country down.
Leaders are important. We all know that having good people at the top – good in every sense of the word – makes for a strong, prosperous and morally grounded country. Good people are disciplined by ethical principles, principles which they apply to rule the nation.
Bad people make dangerous leaders. Like ‘Dave’ and ‘Boris’, they go with the flow of public opinion in order to gain power, prestige and status.
Bad democratic leaders have a recognizable modus operandi. A disaffected electorate gives them the opportunity to respond with catchy but inappropriate policies. When these fail to deliver results, frustrated voters call for more radical changes, which bad leaders once again promise to deliver in their search for ever-greater power and popularity. Angry voters and opportunist leaders feed off each other. But sooner or later, voters feel that the system is simply not working. At that point, the centre frays and the range of drastic negative outcomes increases.
This is the stage we are at now.
Voter disillusion, already high, has become even higher with the realization that Brexit will not solve voter problems, and has ironically not even led to a consensus on the mandate Brexit gives to politicians.
We British feel let down as well as shocked. After all, our current leaders embody every quality we have been taught reflect fitness for office: Eton, Oxford, PPE (possibly the premier degree course in the UK), First Class Honours, Presidency of the Oxford Union, a Classical education, wit, erudition, style, pedigree – all words you associate with the essence of the British elite, as indeed embodied by Boris Johnson and David Cameron.
Along with these personal ‘merits’ are institutional ones that form the bedrock of British politics : Westminster as the ‘mother of parliaments’, Britain’s lack of a revolutionary tradition or repeated civil wars, occasionally bumbling but essentially decent politicians, a ‘winner takes all’ parliament which fuses prime minister, party and parliament into perhaps the most stable government in the Western world, as well as an absence of fringe parties – again, so many cliches the British like to brandish to justify their superiority over dictator-prone Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal, and Republican but unreliable France.
Unfortunately, these clichés have turned into falsehoods. The psychological damage of Brexit lies in the way Britain’s self-image has been dismantled before the eyes of an incredulous nation. Brexit is not a rebirth, it is a nail in the coffin of British political and institutional credibility. Our ‘meritocracy’ has failed to produced the right leaders. And our institutions have not only failed to protect us, but been made to look inadequate and out of date.
David Cameron certainly looked the part – slick, posh, nice suit, the right schools, to the extent that we overlooked his brief stint in PR and absence of other qualifications when he became PM. As he stood with his fashionably skinny wife close by, responding to the wreckage of his referendum plan, surely many regretted that they relied so much on his telegenic presence, pedigree and flip charm.
Like all gamblers, he looked good while he was winning. Cosseted by his independent wealth, too inexperienced to have known bitterness, he frivolously played for ever bigger stakes – first on Scottish independence, then on the EU.
That the referendum on the EU he organized set the bar for such a momentous decision at just 50% was bad enough. But it was badly thought out for deeper reasons. Britain’s stability has been due to being an ‘indirect democracy’. In the 18th century, Edmund Burke famously told his electors in Bristol, that he was not their ambassador, but their representative. Further, that his loyalty lay with the parliament representing the country as a whole, not with the small and partisan group which elected him. Burke’s letter to his Bristol electors is a cornerstone of English political philosophy. Yet Cameron used a tool, the referendum, alien to British tradition and inherently ineffective in settling an issue permanently. Instead of sticking to the centre, and to his party’s principles, he tried to outflank political rivals on the Right.
Referenda in the UK are especially toxic because they potentially place the people in direct contradiction to parliament. Indeed, this is exactly what has happened, with majority of MPs on both sides preferring to remain.
Further, the referendum has split both parties, meaning it is not clear what each party stands for, and making it impossible for either of them to claim they can legitimately run the country.
This vacuum is unprecedented and indicates a constitutional crisis on top of an economic and diplomatic crisis. It is impressive that Cameron managed to destroy a system honed for hundreds of years to prevent precisely this.
The referendum had other problems. By not dissolving parliament and calling an honest election on EU membership, Britain has ended with a unignorable mandate for action, but with ample room for debate concerning the ‘why’ people voted. This is significant given there were two Leave campaigns, which claimed to be separate but relied on each other.
Thus, unelected Nigel Farage of one campaign, appealing to anti-immigration sentiment, relied on the star power of elected politicians to obtain publicity. Boris Johnson conflated his campaign with the Farage campaign to tap the same popular rage – only to claim brazenly after the Leavers won that the vote had not been about immigration, and that he disagreed with Farage on reducing immigration.
The scampering for the exits of the architects of the crisis is startling in its speed. The three main culprits, Cameron, Johnson and Farage have already departed.
Britain’s image is tarnished. In a few short weeks, a handful of venal men has trashed our hard-earned reputation for stable government, centrist voters and pragmatic policy. As the situation worsens, it is unclear whether we can regain it, or if it is lost for ever.
