The Biggest Lesson to Glean from Brexit
Brexit has turned into a political catastrophe for Great Britain. Many people are now wondering how could that have been avoided.
Brexit was a referendum, a special election for a single issue. As a practical matter, one lesson to be learned is that, whereas there were but two options on the ballot, Brexit as an idea actually included three options: remain, leave with or without a deal, or leave, but only with a deal formally accepted by Parliament. Overcoming that problem would have required, in addition to recognizing all options under consideration, some method for reducing the options in a series of votes.
In recent years referenda have become increasingly a part of political life in democracies. I have encountered more than one exposition ruminating on whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, they make democracy more direct. On the other hand, they may or may not truly represent the will of a majority ‘the people’. A referendum passes if it gets a majority of the votes cast on way or the other.
That brings us to what I think is the biggest lesson to be learned from Brexit: a referendum should at least require a majority of registered voters for it to pass. That way, not voting for a change would be a positive vote for the status quo.
That would make referenda inherently more conservative. I don’t see that as being necessarily a bad thing, given the big changes they can entail.