Another Angle on the Brexit Mess

Photo via Unsplash @AlevTakil.

By Darren Katz, Founding Partner

One of the great conundrums of the Brexit disaster is that there isn’t a consensus in the UK Parliament for any one solution.  The constituencies of harder Brexit, softer Brexit, and no Brexit have fluctuated, but none has ever maintained a majority. The roots of this problem lie in the wording of the 2016 referendum. Because the referendum asked people simply whether they wanted in or out of the European Union, the slender majority who voted leave had very different ideas about what leave meant.

That fact, along with the shameful lies of the Leave campaign was enough to get the Leave vote slightly past the post. In a fascinating article in the New York Times, the authors argue that a quirky election in the US helps explain the Brexit mess.

In the US case, a small-town mayor was arrested on corruption charges and subject to a recall election.  He lost the recall election 62-38%. But the second part of the election asked voters to elect a new mayor.  However, the indicted mayor got the same 38% of the vote in the new race against four other candidates and was the highest vote getter. The mayor was therefore both recalled and reelected. This happened because even though a majority of the people agreed he was not fit; the same majority couldn’t agree on a replacement and thus he won. Brexit indeed…