Boris Johnson took the Brexit delusion to extremes (Source: here)
A weird and uniquely British version of the Emperor's New Clothes exists in the United Kingdom as far as Brexit is concerned. On one hand, the Great British Public thinks Brexit is being handled very badly. On the other hand, British voters consistently fail to list Brexit among the country's top problems. Instead, they say, the top three problems are the economy, health care, and immigration.
Poll Question: How the government is handling the issue of Brexit in the UK (Source: here)
This is all a bit surreal. After all, Brexit lies at the root of all three problems. The continuing failure to recognise the link between Britains biggest economic problems and Brexit shows that many Brits still have no clue about Britain's true standing in the world, including the absolute imperative of belonging to a larger regional market.
Is collective psychology at play here? Is the trauma having made the most colossal collective blunder in British economic history - leaving the EU - simply be great to face?
A more likely explanation for Brexit denial is that the two big political parties in the United Kingdom - Labour and the Conservatives - as well as the press are not doing anything whatsoever to help voters to come to terms with their big mistake.
Labour and the Tories both stubbornly refuse to acknowledge any links whatsoever between Britain's economic malaise and Brexit, thereby enabling British voters to blissfully do the same. The British media, always sucking extremely hard on the teat of power, willingly collaborates in Brexit denial.
Labour and the Tories actually have perfectly good reasons to avoid public discussion of Brexit. For one, they avoid awkward questions about their policies to fix the Brexit problem, the only credible answer being to rejoin most, if not all, EU's core institutions. This answer scares both parties, since the British electorate remains as deeply divided over Brexit as ever. A strong directional position on Brexit would therefore split both parties right down the middle.
At this stage in the election cycle - and given Labour’s overall poll lead - Labour is of course particularly loath to rock the boat.
In a noteworthy break from the cosy consensus of silence between the media and the two political parties on Brexit, the Financial Times recently released a short video titled "We need to talk about Brexit".
The title of the video is a less-than-subtle reference to the 2011 movie "We need to talk about Kevin", which is about a mother's struggles to handle a psychopathic son and the horrors he has committed.
The FT appears to want to make Brexit an election issue. Or maybe the FT just wants to be in a position to say "Told you so!". Either way, debate on Brexit is certainly welcome!
The FT's film about Brexit and the reluctance of the British political establishment to discuss the subject (Source: YouTube).
One could be forgiven for imagining that British voters would also welcome a debate about Brexit. Both the big political parties are polling extremely badly on their handling of Brexit as shown in the chart below.
In almost any other developed nation, under such circumstances, one would expect rivals political parties to be licking their lips. Surely, voters' low opinions of the two main parties' handling of Brexit are a great opportunity to enter the political arena with an offering to voters - with clean pro- or anti-Brexit propositions as alternatives to the mealy-mouthed non-positions of Labour and the Tories!
Poll Question: Which political party would be best at handling Brexit? (Source: here)
Unfortunately, that is not quite how politics works in the United Kingdom. Genuine political renewal is extremely difficult, even in periods with severe voter discontentment. The reason: the British electoral system, commonly referred to as 'first-past-the-post' makes change almost impossible.
Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system solely assigns a parliamentary seat to the party that wins the most votes in any constituency, with zero seats going to second placed, third placed parties, and so on. The failure to count losing votes effectively bars newly formed parties from breaking the political duopoly of Labour and the Tories.
Unfortunately, first-past-the-post also has a deadening impact on policies. The two big incumbents have no incentives whatsoever to come up with actual proposals for how to fix Britain's worsening economic and political problems. The only thing a party needs to do to win is to be less shite than the other party! In fact, putting forward actual policies exposes parties to attacks from the other side and the media, so, simply put, it never happens.
A good analogy to describe the British electoral system is this: You and your friend go for a walk in the woods. You meet a hungry bear. You decide to run. But the bear runs faster than both of you. To survive, however, you don’t need to outrun the bear, you just need to outrun your friend!
Britain's 'bear in the woods' problem is that the two political parties focus on rivals instead of issues. Actual problems, such as Brexit, low productivity, income inequality, the collapse of public services, etc. are therefore allowed to fester, condemning Britain to long-term decline.
So, while the FT is right that Britain needs to talk about Brexit, it is far more important that Britain starts to talk about its political system. Without political reform nothing will improve.
Unfortunately, electoral reform is even further down the political agenda than Brexit. So don't hold your breath - the Great British Renaissance is still nowhere in sight.
The End