Brexit Is a Crisis of Leadership, Not Democracy

• Autore: Thom Brooks
• Carica: Professor of Law and Government Dean of School at Durham Law School, United Kingdom
• Pagine: 399-401

OBITER DICTUM

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2531-6133/10490

UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA LAW REVIEW

ISSN 2531-6133

[VOL.4:2 2019]

This text is released under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

399

Brexit is a Crisis of Leadership, not Democracy

!

In June 2016, the United Kingdom saw a surprise result with 52% of voters

supporting the country's leaving the European Union. This was a surprise on

many levels not least that 'Remain' was the dominant c ampaign and ahead in

virtually every poll throughout the contest. While this result is sometimes

discussed as a rise in popular nationalism, it is best viewed as a crisis of

political leadership - where Bre xit is a means, not an end, to a Conservative

partisan project which also explains the failure of two Prime Ministers to enact

it and a third to 'get Brexit done' as promised.

The first point is that Brexit didn't originally mean Brexit. At the

beginning, the purpose of Brexit was to stop UKIP from draining support from

the Conservatives. Then Prime Minister David Cameron entered office in an

unwanted coalition government in 2010. A large part of the reason was that

many Tory vo tes had gone instead to UKIP and its vot e share was growing e ach

election. So to stop it, Cameron offered a referendum on the UK's membership

in EU. His plan was never for Britain to leave, but to get voters to leave UKIP.

The plan was remarkably successful. At the 2015 general election,

Cameron managed what few Prime Ministers achieve: an increased number of

MPs and overall majority. UKIP's votes had collapsed and his trick had worked

ensuring his Conservative government would continue. On the heels of his

surprise national victory, Cameron raced to conclude the referendum

campaigning against Brexit - to get it over with and then get onto his domestic

legislative agenda. Obviously, things did not go as he planned.

The second point is that Brexit then came to mean not Brexit, but

becoming the next Tory Prime Minister. Leadership rivals all claimed they

could bring the country together but the real issue was unifying the Tories.

When Cameron resigned, it was only Tory members of Parliament who were