The question that Leavers and Remainers still can’t answer

Why did Britain vote for Brexit? As Parliament gazes into the abyss, the question seems worth asking, even if I don’t pretend to be able to offer a simple answer. And that’s the point, really. Britain is teetering on the brink of a grand failure of policy and politics because, insofar as anyone involved has even wondered why a majority of voters rejected Britain’s political-economic settlement in June 2016, they have generally come up with simple, shallow answers.

Among No Deal Leavers, most explanations for the referendum result these days refer to “control” (especially over immigration policy) or “sovereignty” or some nebulous idea of the economic opportunities that lie in different trading arrangements. 

Among those Remainers who want to stop Brexit, the level of analysis is often even worse: 17.4 million people voted the way they did because they were lied to, because they didn’t understand what they were doing, because of a promise on the side of a bus, because Facebook, because Russia.

Any and all of those things could, of course, have been factors in the referendum vote.