For the Revolution Settlement of 1689 was not the triumph of a party, but an agreement of the chief parties to live and let live. The balance of Whig and Tory, each jealous of the other and both jealous of the Crown, served to protect the liberties of the individual Englishmen from the onslaughts of power.---George Macaulay Trevelyan (1938) The English Revolution, 1688-1689, 173-4.
No one seems capable of stepping forward and offering reassurance. The Leavers, who disagreed on what Brexit should look like, do not think it is their responsibility to set out a path. They reckon that falls to Number 10 (where they have appeared in public, it has mostly been to discard the very pledges on which they won the referendum). Number 10, however, seems to have done little planning for this eventuality. It seems transfixed by the unfolding chaos; reluctant to formulate answers to the Brexiteers’ unanswered questions. As Mr Cameron reportedly told aides on June 24th when explaining his decision to resign: “Why should I do all the hard shit?”--The Economist (June 26, 2016)
It's often said that whatever the real evils of a sovereign, first-past-the-post-parliament, it at least ensures stability and leadership as opposed to the kind of designed, perennial gridlock one sees Stateside and the purported instability and indecisiveness of coalition governments chosen by single-constituency, proportional parliaments. From that vantage point the past week in British politics has been quite astonishing (maybe unprecedented, but I leave that to experts).
For, the two major parties are imploding at the same time without any clear alternative waiting in the wings; the referendum has generated acute political and market uncertainty, and, despite the existence of a care-taker government, nobody can be found to trigger article 50. While it's not impossible that things will stabilize before long, the specter of an impotent care-taker government haunts British political life (at least until September when the Conservatives are supposed to replace Cameron).* This is especially so because if they could get away with it, the political and economic elites would like to find a way to nullify the referendum. While the Belgians recently managed to function just fine during "a total of 541 days of negotiations and 589 days without an elected government," and, in fact, thereby avoiding the damaging austerity politics popular in surrounding countries [it's a perfect, so-called natural experiment], the Belgians were familiar with lengthy coalition talks--it's part of their political mores.
The aftermath of the Brexit vote has really been quite extraordinary: it's peace-time, without hyperinflation, and, while many people have suffered during the last decade, there has been no general economic implosion prior to last week's referendum. The Labour party's problems may be attributed to the recent change in the way its leader is selected: it used to be a vote among its representatives in the Commons and has become a kind of primary among its (purported) membership. In effect, the Labour party's parliamentary party has used the occasion to try to undo its membership's choice. That is to say, by aiming to make the Labour party more democratic, the party has created a permanent tension between the interests and strategy of the parliamentary party and the membership's views. (While the situation is different Stateside, one may say that the Democrats' so called, super-delegates are designed to prevent exactly such an outcome. Currently the Republicans lack some such mechanism.) The Labour party's problems are, in some sense, irrelevant because they are not in power, although their internal division makes a national unity government unlikely.
The Conservatives' problems are of their own making. By this I do not just mean their long-standing internal tensions 'over Europe' that precipitated this referendum. Rather, because parliament is sovereign in the British system (and has been so since 1688-9), a referendum fits uneasily in the British system. There have been only three (national) British referenda (there have been more at the various local levels, including Scotland's recent one)--two of which involved the EU. And, as we are now learning, the British system is not well designed to handle a referendum that goes against the government. In fact, European experience could have taught the British that in countries where referenda are rare, they also become a referendum on the government or on wider cultural issues. Here the experience of the Scottish referendum is non-trivial: its campaign unleashed nationalism not just in Scotland, but also a reactive (and previously latent) narrow nationalism in England (which helped influence if not decide the last election for the House of Commons because Labour was viewed as too close to if not reliant on Scottish nationalism).
There are two underlying morals here. First, due to the increasing role for direct democracy, the old (more republican) British system in which parliamentary parties were rather powerful, is coming under strain. As a consequence, Britain is becoming more like the rest of Europe in which the 20-30% of the electorate that is nationalist-welfarist-authoritarian will be increasingly assertive and can expect to be represented more aggressively at the national level. If the United Kingdom falls apart, it is increasingly likely that given first-past-the-post, this segment of the electorate can reasonably hope to win national English elections until there is an effective coalition of more cosmopolitan and liberal elements to oppose it.
Second, it's time to recognize, anew (see the quote from Macaulay Trevelyan) that it was not exclusively the rules/institutions and incentives that ensured the functioning of the previous system. But that shared mores and an underlying mutual trust -- at least among those in politics -- that there was a fundamental commitment to minimal unity played a central role. So, while the current care-taker Cameron government has the form that belongs to authority and can undoubtedly pass laws and handle day-to-day operations (etc.), it lacks the matter that allows genuine authority. My suspicion is that until Article 50 is triggered, this authority will be uncertain.
*I thank Chris Brooke for correcting an earlier version of this post on this point.
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