Brexit: simply an omnishambles or a major policy fiasco?

ABSTRACT

The collective concerns of this Special Issue are twofold. First, it advances possible explanations of how the Brexit issue arose. Why was Britain’s membership of the EU thought to be so problematic for so many members of the British political elite and ultimately for a majority of voters? In a nutshell, how did we get to June 2016 and the Brexit Referendum? Secondly, the Special Issue examines how the issue was managed (or mismanaged) following the referendum result up until the Withdrawal Agreement in March 2019. Drawing on the varied contributions in the Special Issue, this introduction contains our own overview of the Brexit saga, distinguishing idiosyncratic processes from the more general trends that to led to Brexit and its aftermath.

KEYWORDS:

• Brexit
• omnishambles
• fiasco
• depoliticisation
• free movement
• nationalism

Brexit and the merging of satire and political reality?

Political satire and the reality of politics have been hand in glove in Britain for a very long period. For example, the 1980s TV series Yes Minister captured ministerial/civil service relations better than any academic article. Similarly, the more recent political satire TV series, In The Thick of It encapsulated perfectly the seemingly serial chaos of elite politics in Britain. Each episode depicted a truly shambolic system of decision-making. The first episode of the third series, broadcast in 2009, featured the Minister for the (fictional) Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship being involved in a series of disasters, prompting the now famous rebuke from the Government’s Director of Communications, as follows: ‘Jesus Christ, you are a fucking omnishambles, that’s what you are. You’re like that coffee machine, you know: From bean to cup, you fuck up’. The term omnishambles, meaning a situation which is shambolic from every angle, became so established that it was awarded the word of the year prize by the Oxford Dictionary in 2012, the judges saying that it had crossed over into real life in that year. Whatever happened in Britain in 2012, it pales in comparison with the Brexit omnishambles enacted in Britain’s House of Commons during 2019. Real life policy-making made the fictional shambles depicted in In the Thick of It seem quite mundane. One of the lasting images of 2019 was of Speaker John Bercow repeatedly yelling, Order, Order, Order amidst scenes of what can only be describe as total disorder. The British political elite most certainly presided over a policy process that was an omnishambles of monumental proportions. The process lurched from one shambles to the next, totally undermining images of Britain as having a well-oiled, smooth running policy-making machine. Each stage of the process fitted the dictionary definition of shambles perfectly, namely ‘a state of confusion, bad organisation’. This led to a situation where office holders lost the ability to steer, let alone control, the policy process, with little or no understanding of what the short-term or long-term outcome would be. Our use of the term omnishambles is rather similar to the definition of fiasco used by Baines et al. in this volume who see fiasco as meaning to ‘suffer a complete breakdown of performance’ (Baines et al., 2020, p. 743).

However, rather like a play in which the rehearsals go badly but the play turns out fine on the night, it is at least possible that an omnishambles does not turn out to be a policy fiasco or blunder in the generally accepted sense (of ending in policy failure). Policy fiascos and blunders might be rather different to an omnishambles, although ‘policy fiasco’ is a commonly used term which has a considerable degree of elasticity. For the purposes of this Special Issue, we have consciously avoided binding our contributors to a strict definition of policy fiasco (and, on reflection, we had better used the term omnishambles, as this has no implications regarding actual policy outcomes).

Indeed, there appears to be no clear, robust, and agreed definition of what a policy fiasco is. As Oppermann and Spencer argue ‘ … there is, however, very little agreement on the precise conceptualization of fiasco, with many authors referring to alternative concepts such as failure, mistake, crisis, disaster or blunder as synonyms’ (Oppermann & Spencer, 2016, p. 644). For example, Jennings et al. use ‘blunder’, ‘failure’, ‘fiasco’, ‘breakdown’, and ‘disaster’ interchangeably (Jennings et al., 2018, p. 2). In their seminal study of policy-making in Britain, King and Crewe prefer to use the term ‘blunder’. Starting with the dictionary definition of the verb ‘to blunder’, namely ‘to move blindly, flounder, or stumble’ they go on to define a blunder as follows:

 … an episode in which a government adopts a specific course of action in order to achieve one or more objectives and, as a result largely or wholly of its own mistakes, either fails completely to achieve those objectives, or does achieve some or all of them but contrives at the same time to cause a significant amount of “collateral damage” in the form of unintended and undesired consequences. (King & Crewe, 2014, p. 4)

This definition is an important reminder that much of the literature on policy fiascos etc. is actually about policy outcomes, where policy-makers’ objectives (good or ill) were not actually achieved. The cases under study are usually about where a policy did not achieve its stated aims or even made the problem much worse, as King and Crewe suggest. However, with Brexit, we do not know whether Britain’s exit from the EU will be a success or failure. The Brexiteers are convinced that it will be a huge success – and many already consider Britain’s actual exit from the EU on 31 January 2020 as such a success –, but the Remainers are just as convinced that it will be a massive failure. We will probably not know for at least a decade. As Jenkins-Smith et al. argue, ‘policy processes are ongoing, without a beginning or an end’ (Jenkins-Smith et al., 2018, p. 142). 31 January 2020 is not the end of the Brexit policy process by any means, as the post-Brexit policy process will be characterised by at least two key features. First, Britain’s trading relationship with the EU and the rest of the world will have to be hammered out in tortuous trade negotiations. Secondly, Britain will have to decide what to do about a huge raft of ‘domestic’ public policy which emanated from the EU over decades (Richardson, 2018a, p. 120). Being absolutely ‘free’ of EU legislation (itself only possible under a hard Brexit), does not suddenly replace EU legislation with new ‘home made’ legislation overnight. The ‘Brexit game’, at the time of writing (February 2020) is just beginning. If it is a game of two halves, we are not yet at half time. As Bovens et al. point out, ‘assessments of success and failure in government are  …  dependent upon temporal, spatial, cultural, and political factors’ (Bovens et al., 2001, p. 20). They cite the example of the Sydney Opera House, which has featured in many studies of ‘planning disasters’, but where the dominant assessment has evolved over time. How many people think of this iconic building as a planning disaster now? Thus, the passage of time can change perceptions of policy success and failure quite radically. Currently, however, the Brexit process appears to meet one of the criteria for the use of the term ‘blunder’ suggested by King and Crewe, namely ‘a really serious blunder is also likely to be widely – possibly universally – acknowledged to have been such; there is usually generally agreement on the point’ (King & Crewe, 2014, p. 4). Focusing on the process at least, there is little doubt that, to put it mildly, the Brexit process was not a pretty sight. This characterisation of the general perception of the Brexit process comes quite close to one set of indicators of political failure or success suggested by Bovens et al. nearly two decades ago, as follows:

Indicators of political failure or success are political upheaval (press coverage, parliamentary investigations, political fatalities, litigation) or lack of it, and changes in general patterns of political legitimacy (public satisfaction with policy or confidence in authorities and public institutions. (Bovens et al., 2001, p. 21)

The Brexit process appears to match this list fairly well, but one particular problem in analysing fiascos etc. is that policy fiascos are not neutral events. As Bovens and ‘t Hart argue ‘ …  “success” and “failure” are not attributes of policy, but rather labels applied by stakeholders and observers’ (Bovens & ‘t Hart, 2016, p. 654). One person’s policy success might be seen as another person’s policy fiasco. For example, what President Donald Trump might see as succeeding ‘bigly’ (sic), might be seen by the many of us in a somewhat different light. All of the contributions in this Special Issue inevitably reflect the authors’ own perceptions of Brexit, with perhaps a collective bias from all of us that the Brexit process has not been a pretty sight, whatever label is attached to it. Our collective task is to suggest a range of (not mutually exclusive) possible explanations of how this saga came about. Thus, the contributions highlight different causal mechanisms, although in truth, there is not going to be one main explanation for the Brexit (process) fiasco.

We also need to note that Brexit, though certainly a mega-policy, is in principle not fundamentally different to any major policy change. In trying to address the question ‘how did this happen?’ it is useful to remember Kingdon’s warning that it is almost impossible to trace the origin of a policy proposal. He cited a US respondent as follows, ‘This is not like a river. There is no point of origin’ (Kingdon, 1984, p. 77). At a superficial level, one might argue that Brexit is an exception to this generalisation in that the Referendum in 2016 was the origin of the process. However, there is a huge amount of historical context to the Referendum as a key event, one example being the lack of goodness of fit between the EU and UK legal systems as suggested by Schmidt (Schmidt, 2020). One even might argue that there is a significant element of path dependency at work in the Brexit story. Brexit did not happen simply due to the Referendum. The Brexit story is more likely a story of slow tectonic forces at work, leading to the spectacular eruptions, first in 2016, then throughout 2019. Thus, we first discuss the idea that Britain never quite ‘fitted’ the EU and might have been destined to leave at some point. We then explore the possibility that the EU itself contributed to the Brexit fiasco and might have been engaged in some kind of ‘slow burn’ blunder itself. We then conclude with some reflections on Brexit as a purely domestic policy problem.

Britain as always an ‘awkward partner’: destined to walk out eventually?

One obvious starting point for explaining Brexit is, of course, Britain as an 'awkward partner' in Europe (George, 1990). In George’s seminal work, he began his Introduction with a statement that has by now become conventional wisdom. Thus, he wrote:

On 1 January 1973 Britain became a member of the European Communities, twenty-two years after the first of those Communities was created without British participation. Within a year of achieving membership, Britain was already regarded as something of an awkward partner, a reputation that has remained through to the time of writing. (George, 1990, p. 1)

The thirty years since George made that observation may have cemented that image throughout the EU, with Brexit probably adding the epithet ‘incompetent partner’ to ‘awkward partner’! It should be no surprise, then, that at some point, the marriage would end in divorce or, as Frosini and Gilbert put it, ‘Brexit was an accident waiting to happen’ (Frosini & Gilbert, 2020, p. 761). The narrative might be that Britain joined for the wrong reasons (a marriage made in Hell not in Heaven), the EU as a partner developed more and more habits that Britain did not like at all, and, finally, Britain thought it could find better partners outside the marriage. No more explanation needed, ‘the origin of the river’ is clear enough. Yet this narrative is, surely, just too simple. First, we have no robust measure (or indeed definition) of ‘awkwardness’. For example, how do we know that Britain has been more ‘awkward’ than, say France, still remembered for the ‘empty chair’ episode in 1965? Was Mrs Thatcher any more ‘awkward’ in her 1988 “Bruges Speech” than President De Gaulle in 1965? However awkward Britain may have been, it was never threatened with the Article 7 procedure (the so-called nuclear option) as is the case with Hungary and Poland today. Thus, the Polish President argues that Poland has the right to regulate its internal legal order, notwithstanding the Treaty obligations to obey EU law and respect EU rulings.

Equally importantly, does ‘awkwardness’ as a concept distinguish between being awkward at the policy-making stage in the EU and being awkward at the stage of implementing EU policy? If we focus on EU policy-making, might it be that Britain has often articulated concerns that other member states shared but were reluctant to raise so clearly and publicly? As George himself notes, when discussing the Thatcher period after 1984:

 … Britain was not quite as isolated as may have appeared from the headlines in its doubts about some of the developments within the EC which the Delors Commission was promoting. The main reason for Britain appearing as an awkward partner was the willingness of the British Prime Minister to speak out forcibly on these issues while others kept diplomatic silence. (George, 1990, p. 208)

This passage suggests that one should be cautious in accepting the notion that the Brexit problem is purely a British problem due to a long history of Britain being ‘awkward’. As Daddow and Oliver point out, the title of George’s book was an awkward partner, not the awkward partner. Indeed, they argue that Britain, whilst certainly being awkward at times, has actually been a constructive and influential partner much of the time, most notably regarding the Single European Act, economic reform, but also in other policy areas such as deregulation, privatisation, climate change, and even animal welfare legislation (Daddow & Oliver, 2016). Britain was initially a reluctant partner, but having joined late it adjusted quickly to the European Communities’ ‘ways of doing things’. As Spence noted in 1993 ‘ …  British arrangements for the co-ordination of European policy are generally reckoned to be the most effective of any of the Member States’ (Spence, 1993, p. 53). In some respects, Britain became the model of how to co-ordinate EU policy at the domestic level. Similarly, British pressure groups were quick to learn the Brussels game and became effective lobbyists within the European policy process (Mazey & Richardson, 1992). They were at the same time pro-European and were well used to (indeed, liked) the type of bureaucratic politics practiced by the Commission. The UK government also seems to be rather successful when it comes to achieving its policy objectives at the EU level. Analysing data from 125 pieces of EU legislation in the period between 1996 and 2008, Hix finds that rather than being marginalised in the EU’s legislative process ‘the UK government has been closer to final policy outcomes than most governments’ (Hix, 2015). Hence, 'awkward' surely cannot mean that Britain is losing, rather that it is winning!

Some might correctly posit that Britain used to be a main driver behind policy differentiation, i.e., the demand for treaty-based opt-outs and EU secondary law exemptions or special provisions. The UK was hardly alone in its quest to ask for treaty as well as secondary law differentiation. Duttle et al. (2017) show that EU secondary law differentiation is most pronounced in EU member states in which there is a strong principled opposition to the integration of core state powers. Yet, Britain is not alone in this regard. Together with other ‘Northern’ member states (such as Denmark, Sweden, but also Ireland), Britain negotiated wide-ranging primary as well secondary law exemptions from the integration of core state powers, such as monetary policy and justice and home affairs. Differentiated integration has become a permanent feature of the EU and EU policy-making, reflecting the EU’s growing heterogeneity from enlargement and strong opposition in some member states against the integration of core state powers (Leuffen et al., 2013; Rittberger et al., 2014). It is thus simply impossible to characterise Britain as an awkward partner, let alone the awkward partner.

The same holds if we look at the implementation of EU policy. As Schmidt points out (though believing that ‘the UK has always been a difficult member of the EU’, Schmidt, 2020, p. 781), Britain’s common-law tradition ‘implies that the UK’s administration is more attuned to implementing case law alongside legislation’ (Schmidt, 2020, p. 783). Indeed, the research on compliance with EU law conducted by Börzel et al. has Britain bracketed with Denmark, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg ‘ …  whose compliance records are exemplary’ (Börzel et al., 2010, p. 1364). Along with the Netherlands, the UK seldom violates EU law (2010, p. 1366). Their research findings point to a huge puzzle, namely ‘why EU-skeptical countries such as the United Kingdom and Denmark comply much better with European Law than states that are highly supportive of European Integration such as Italy, Portugal, and Belgium’ (2010, p. 1367). Finally, their findings contain a possible clue to the UK having acquired the awkward partner tag. They see the UK as scoring high on the capacity to implement EU law. France and Italy score much less well. Thus, ‘although the United Kingdom is as powerful as France and Italy, it complies better with European Law thanks to its bureaucratic efficiency’ (2010, p. 1382). To be sure, Britain is justifiably known for fighting its corner in the EU. This might be defined as ‘awkwardness’ perhaps but this behaviour might simply be rooted in a strong cultural belief by British negotiators that, whatever becomes EU law, Britain will do its level best (including ‘gold plating’) to implement it. As Börzel et al. point out, countries such as France and Italy ‘ …  are less sensitive to enforcement costs’ (Börzel et al., 2010, p. 1381). If one is going to be relaxed about actually implementing a policy, one can be equally relaxed about agreeing to it!

It is, therefore, at least possible to turn the ‘awkward partner’ narrative on its head. History will judge, but it might just be that Britain was actually quite a good member of the EU, contributing constructively (and sometimes playing a leading role) in EU policy-making, fighting hard when it felt the need to (just like every other Member State), and not regarding laws properly passed by the EU as simply ‘cheap talk’ to be ignored in practice.

Moreover, if we take British policy actors as a whole (i.e., the British Government, British civil servants, British interest groups, and British implementing agencies), it might be more accurate to characterise Britain as a quite professional, co-operative and successful European partner rather than typecasting Britain simply as the awkward partner. From this perspective, it might therefore be argued that it was not inevitable that Britain would leave the European family at some point, as Britain’s policy-making elite was rather well integrated into European policy-making, and the EU and the UK had learned to live together rather well.

As indicated above, we are not suggesting that the processes by which Brexit was achieved were not an omnishambles or, indeed, a total fiasco, but in terms of how that shambles came about in the first place, we wonder if the ‘awkward partner’ narrative has very much to contribute by way of explanation. Thus, we now turn to a very different explanation, namely the exogenous contribution that the EU possibly made to the setting of the Brexit agenda in the first place.

It takes two to tango: has the EU been itself engaged in a slow-burn blunder?

It is easy to blame British governments (particularly under David Cameron, but also under Theresa May, and Boris Johnson), together with the British electorate for the Britain’s exit from the EU. However, was the Brexit fiasco a purely British fiasco? This seem implausible. Thus, the long-term role of European elites, and the EU institutions which they created and expanded surely played some part in the emergence of the Brexit fiasco and, indeed, in the more general (rather long-running) crisis within the EU. Might it be that the seemingly inexorable expansion of EU public policy and of supranational authority laid the bedrock of Brexit? Those of us who are confessed Europhiles might find the argument hard to swallow, but is it possible that the EU itself has been engaged in a ‘slow-burn’ omnishambles caused by task expansion and centralization? For example, Leuffen et al. argue that:

the EU covers all policy fields. Having started as an economic organization, it has expanded into all areas of public policy including foreign policy, internal and external security, and the protection of civil and social rights. Although its competences vary from issue-area to issue-area, there is hardly a field of policy-making that is not shaped in some way by the EU. (Leuffen et al., 2013, p. 4, emphasis added)

So great has been the EU’s expansion into policy areas traditionally the reserve of nation states, that academic debate has developed on how best to characterise the EU, a state or an international organisation? For example, Leuffen et al. argue that’ the EU ‘ …  is like an international organization in some respects but more akin to a state in others’ (Leuffen et al., 2013, p. 2). Somewhat similarly, Richardson argues that the EU is in fact a ‘policy-making state’ as ‘ …  the range of policy areas in which the EU has at least some remit is now quite vast  … ’ (Richardson, 2012, p. 14). Not only has the EU encroached on national policy-making, including core state powers (see Genschel & Jachtenfuchs, 2015), it has moved ‘ …  towards a more coercive top-down policy style’ (Richardson, 2018a, p. 124). This steady task expansion combined with a reliance on regulation has extended well beyond the EU’s own borders. For example, Bradford argues that ‘EU regulations penetrate numerous aspects of people’s everyday lives around the world. The Brussels Effect affects the food they eat, the air that they breath, and the products they produce and consume’ (Bradford, 2020, p. xv). Her empirical analysis demonstrates that the EU is what she terms a ‘ global regulatory hegemon’ (Bradford, 2020, p. 3; see also Young, 2015).

Whatever type of ‘beast’ the EU has become over time, there now is much talk (again!) about ‘Europe in Crisis’. However, (like Brexit) the EU’s own crisis did not suddenly fall out of the sky. Indeed, nearly a quarter of a century ago Jack Hayward captured perfectly the problem which is now at the heart of the EU’s current crisis. Thus he wrote:

Monnet-style European integration relied upon behind-the-scenes influence of a few self-conscious agents of change. The negotiating skills of technocrats and the political skills of statesmen secured inconspicuous compromises without arousing public fears. By the 1990s, unification by stealth became increasingly difficult to sustain, as elite concertation was less able to achieve consensus and public acquiescence in the complex processes of EU decision-making risked turning into public alienation. (Hayward, 1996, emphasis added)

What Hayward saw in 1996 has, surely, come to haunt the European elites today. The main causes of Europe’s current crisis are probably twofold. First is the general phenomenon of European integration itself. Though one could argue about characterising the EU as a ‘policy-making state’, there is no dispute that the EU has created a huge panoply of European legislation which has plenty of bite at the national level, as we have argued above (and as Bradford argues, also at the global level). Secondly, the integration of core state powers in general, and the specific policy area of immigration in particular, have had a disproportionate effect on the attitudes of national electorates towards EU membership. As Hooghe and Marks argue, political competition in the EU is profoundly affected by the emergence of ‘a transnational cleavage, which has as its core a political reaction against European integration and immigration’ (Hooghe & Marks, 2018, p. 109). Drawing on Lipset and Rokkan’s cleavage theory, they note:

Lipset and Rokkan had no idea that the containers of the (then) main cleavage, nation states, were going to be transformed around the turn of the twenty-first century. Territorial identity as a motive for conflict was thought to be a thing of the past. Nationalism was viewed as the dead-end result of inter-war fascism, never to be repeated … but they were unable to see that national sovereignty might be deconsolidated in authoritative design. (Hooghe & Marks, 2018, p. 113, emphasis added)

According to Hooghe and Marks (2009), it is the growing mis-match between supranational integration, and the political communities people identify with, which has become a root cause of the current discontent with the EU. EU integration has become politicised and contested in the political mass arena, where identity politics assume a prominent role. In a telling passage they go a long way to explaining how Brexit came about. Thus:

Nationalism has long been the refuge of those who are insecure, who sense they are losing status, and who seek standing by identifying with the group. The promise of transnationalism has been gains for all, but the experience of the past two decades is that it hurts many. Hence, opposition to transnationlism is for many a populist reaction against élites who have little sympathy for national borders. (Hooghe & Marks, 2018, pp. 114–5)

The Brexit referendum vote was clearly a vote against the political ruling class in Britain, but it was also a vote against the European-level elite. As Bogdanor has put it, ‘the referendum was a genuine grass roots insurgency, a revolt from below’ (Bogdanor, 2016, p. 350, emphasis added). In fact, the revolt is a rare example of authoritarian populism breaking into ‘normal’ politics in Britain. As Crewe argues

authoritarian populism has always had a place in British political life. But its impact on elections, parties and government action has been – at least until the Brexit Referendum – remarkably limited, a case study in the capacity of the UK political institutions to impede the conversion of a significant and strongly held block of opinion into public policy. (Crewe, 2020, p. 17)

From the perspective of European elites, it might be comforting to present Brexit as just the most recent example of British exceptionalism within the EU, yet Hobolt warns otherwise. She argues that:

although the attitudinal data show that Britain is something of an outlier in terms of Euro-scepticism, there is a growing divide within the EU both economically and culturally between those who feel left behind by the forces of globalization and those who have benefitted from it. The former group favours a “drawbridge up“ policy of less European integration, closed borders, and fewer immigrants, whereas the latter group are in favour of greater openness and international co-operation. (Hobolt, 2016, p. 1272, emphasis added)

Thus, there is at least a case to be answered by the EU in terms of the causes of Brexit. As Schmidt notes ‘ …  Brexit can also be read as a warning about fundamental problems in the EU integration process  …  constitutionalising policy choices, accepting case law rather than political preferences, implies the danger of shifting political contestation to another level’ (Schmidt, 2020, p.790, emphasis added). Edema and Kelemen, somewhat earlier, also warned of the effects of the judicialization of EU policy-making, arguing that the tendency to produce detailed inflexible regulations was deeply rooted in the EU’s political system, with a predilection for ‘judicial enforcement of strict legal norms’ (Idema & Kelemen, 2006, p. 116). Hobolt and Rodon point to the possible consequences of the ‘Europeanization’ of domestic electoral politics. Thus, ‘Europeanization’ has not, they argue,

 …  provided a panacea to democratic politics in the Union. On the contrary, the domestic contestation of the EU presents a new kind of challenge to the European policy-makers, not least when public opinion and populist politicians turn against European solutions to collective problems. (Hobolt & Rodon, 2020, p. 161)

Thus, the EU itself might have been involved in two kinds of blunder perhaps? First, has it been partaking in some kind of ‘slow burn’ blunder, with political elites pushing integration generally too far and too fast for its peoples to swallow? Many scholars speak in favour of this interpretation. As the political mainstream pressed on with integration to address transnational policy challenges, it helped unleash the forces of popular anti-European opposition that policy-makers actually sought to contain. Integration by depoliticisation was a time-honoured recipe for mainstream political elites: It allowed policy-makers to combine functional and technocratic problem-solving at the EU-level without facing opposition and contestation about Europe at home. Van der Eijk and Franklin (2004) characterised the EU as a “sleeping giant” waiting to be awakened, and the political mainstream sought to prolong its slumber by keeping the giant ‘deliberately sedated’ (Mair, 2007, p. 13). Now, the sedative has worn off and the sleeping giant has unleashed the forces of politicisation and anti-EU opposition. Short of alternative sedatives, the pro-European political mainstream is struggling to come to grips with its new interlocutor. Brexit is merely one of many possible consequences of the giant’s awakening and hence of a fundamental transformation of political competition in the EU.

Secondly, did the specific policy of free movement of workers (a principle which we ourselves support) turn out to be a policy disaster of considerable proportions because of its serious unintended consequences for the support of the integration project as whole? Had the free movement policy been much more constrained in the first place, and had the ECJ not been so active in developing the free movement regime (Schmidt, 2020), would the EU have been in so much trouble now? The lesson from Brexit for liberals is, as Crewe argues, ‘ …  to recognise that throughout Europe, rapid and large waves of migration across national borders are followed by the electoral advance, sometimes into government, of radical-right parties that threaten liberal values and, usually, democratic institutions’ (Crewe, 2020, p. 29). In the Brexit case, the British discovered that the single market also meant freedom of movement of and for people. And they could not do anything about flows of people without ‘taking back control’ (Frosini & Gilbert, 2020, p. 764).

The domestic policy problem

King and Crewe suggest, ‘in previous generations, foreign observers of British politics viewed the British political system with something like awe. Government in Britain was not only highly democratic: it was astonishingly competent. It combined effectiveness with efficiency’ (King & Crewe, 2014, p. ix, emphasis added). However, they go on to observe, ‘[s]adly, the British system is no longer held up as a model, and we suspect that one reason is that today’s British governments screw up so often’ (King & Crewe, 2014, p. ix). King and Crewe’s seminal volume is replete with examples of British governments screwing up. We, therefore, need to be careful in seeing the Brexit omnishambles as something especially unusual. It is possible to argue that it was business as usual! To be sure, Brexit was a rather spectacular and long drawn- out omnishambles, but it was certainly not a unique example of the British policy-making process not running smoothly. Indeed, it is possible to fit the Brexit case into a quite different narrative about the British policy process, which might lead one argue that the real puzzle would have arisen if Britain had managed the Brexit process well. Certainly, for much of the post-war period, British policy-making could be accurately characterised as emphasising ‘ …  the importance of bargaining and consensus, leading to a more consensual policy style via a process of power sharing between government and interest groups, so called governance’ (Richardson, 2018b, p. 215). The process emphasised fact based, deliberative policy-making. However, the post-1979 period (beginning with the election of Margaret Thatcher) has seen major changes in the British policy style, notably a considerable weakening of the civil service, the increasing role of political advisers in government, the arrival of ministers who are deeply committed to a particular set of ideas, and a considerable weakening of interest group influence (for a fuller discussion of long-term changes in the British policy style, see Richardson, 2018b, and for a discussion of government by ‘permanent campaign’ and the weakening of civil service influence see Diamond, 2019). One of the strangest aspects of the Brexit saga is the lack of interest group influence during the whole process. The lack of business influence (which appears to be continuing post-Brexit) is especially odd, but it was difficult to find any well-established interest group clearly in the leave camp. It is not that the interest groups did not bark. They certainly did (and are still doing so). It is that their bark no longer had any bite. Those interests who knew where the post-Brexit shoe might pinch were simply ignored. Having played a significant role in getting the UK into Europe, and having played a major role in the UK’s long period within Europe, interest groups played little or no role in the UK’s exit from Europe. Also, they appear to be struggling to gain any influence over the UK Government’s negotiations with the EU post-Brexit, particularly regarding the possibility that the UK will not align itself with EU rules after 31 December 2020.

As King and Crewe put it, one component of a policy-making system that emphasises careful deliberation is ‘ …  conferring and taking council, of reaching out’ (King & Crewe, 2014, pp. 386–7). An overriding feature of the Brexit saga was the determination of politicians to ignore civil service advice (and advice from the Bank of England), ignore warnings from interest groups, and to regard ‘expert’ as a pejorative term. Indeed, this shift from what used to be standard operating procedures in British policy-making seem to have facilitated outright deceit in the Referendum. Thus, Bains et al. argue that ‘if conventional, instrumental politics led by experts and analysts had played a bigger part in designing the complexities of leaving the EU, then the straw casing of deceit may have been removed  … ’ (Baines et al., 2020, p. 757). Dunlop et al. also point to policy process problems playing a major part in the Brexit fiasco. They argue that ‘the policy setting was well-suited to reflexive and epistemic learning following the referendum’ (Dunlop et al., 2020, p. 703, emphasis added), but ‘learning shifted to the realm of hierarchy as the Article 50 negotiations got underway’ (Dunlop et al., 2020, p. 705).

Thus, it is not that the Brexit problem of itself was impossible to solve, as McConnell and Tormey argue. To them, ‘ …  the narrative that Brexit was a near impossible challenge, does not stand up to close scrutiny’ (McConnell & Tormey, 2020, 692). Instead of a rational debate between experts, the policy dispute ended up more like a religious war, with both sides utterly convinced that they were right. The policy dispute was between two rival advocacy coalitions where strongly-held belief systems played a crucial role. As Jenkins-Smith et al. note, ‘ …  policy actors have a three-tiered belief system structure. Deep core beliefs are fundamental normative values and ontological axioms … which are not policy specific’ (2018, p. 140). They also note that:

 … people are motivated instrumentally by goals but are often unclear how to achieve those goals, and they are limited in their cognitive abilities to process stimuli such as information and experience … Additionally, given limited cognitive abilities, individuals simplify the world through their belief systems and are, therefore, prone to biased assimilation of stimuli. (Jenkins-Smith et al., 2018, p. 140)

For the role of ‘limited cognitive abilities’ in the Brexit saga, one need look no further than the thinking of the International Trade Secretary (no less!) in July 2017 who believed that a Brexit agreement would be ‘one of the easiest in human history’ (quoted by McConnell & Tormey, 2020).

Now, as McConnell and Tormey point out, even long standing and deeply entrenched religious disputes, as in Northern Ireland, can be resolved (McConnell & Tormey, 2020, p. 685). However, Brexit, whilst having the obvious overtones of a religious divide, such as in Northern Ireland, is different in at least one respect, namely that one side could (and, in the end, did) have an outright win. The Brexit policy game was a winnable game and both side new it, unlike in Northern Ireland where, after a long period of terrible conflict, both sides came to realise that neither could have a clear win. Thus, Brexit was an especially ‘wicked’ policy problem as a key condition for a solution was absent because the two camps had little interest in compromise. In practical policy terms, there were endless compromises that could be made in terms of Britain’s relationship with the EU (as history had shown, many times) but each side had an unshakable belief that it could win. However, perhaps the leave camp was more single minded or at least had the more coherent narrative? As Spencer and Oppermann put it, ‘ … the power and resonance of the Leave story in the 2016 Brexit referendum was enhanced by the relative consistency of its romantic narrative, while the Remain story was weakened by its inconsistent mix of narrative genres’ (Spencer & Oppermann, 2020, p. 679).

The problem presented by the existence of two competing advocacy coalitions with irreconcilable belief systems was, of course, hugely compounded by the fact that the two advocacy coalitions crossed traditional party lines, thus turning Brexit into a ‘wedge issue’ which provoked bitter intra-party divisions (Heinkelmann-Wild et al., 2020, p. 723). Put simply, Brexit appears the type of cleavage which Lipset and Rokkan’s classic study suggested appear in fully mobilised polities. Such cleavages, in one way or another, ‘all express deeply felt convictions about the destiny and mission of the nation, some quit incohate, others highly systematized … ’ (Lipset & Rokkan, 1967, p. 23). The combination of this deep cleavage and the tactics employed by the two camps, namely ‘opting for a politics of intransigence’ (Heinkelmann-Wild et al., 2020, p. 723) produced a situation which, as it turned out, could be resolved only by an election result in which one side had a clear and emphatic win.

In the event, the omnishambles trundled on in parliament month after month (and, in that sense, the Westminster Model had re-asserted itself over policy community policy-making). Indeed, it is possible that the endless omnishambles actually strengthened support for the Conservatives in the 2019 General Election. The main Conservative Election slogan, ‘Get Brexit done, Unleash Britain’s Potential’, seems to have chimed with many voters weary of the long Brextit saga who possibly felt ‘Please get this over with’!

Perhaps the ultimate irony of the 2019 election is that the Conservatives were very successful both in convincing voters that they could clean up a mess which the Conservatives themselves had created (starting, of course, with Cameron’s fateful decision to hold a referendum in June 2016), and managing to avoid any serious discussion of the huge policy problems that would need to be solved in the period after Brexit. In a sense, therefore, the finale to three years of Conservative omnishambles ended with a rather polished last act by someone, Boris Johnson, generally thought to be a bit of a buffoon. The team might have appeared to be a bunch of total amateurs, but we all need to remember that they won the game by a good margin!

So, how did this all happen? As we suggest, there are many possible causes, but we conclude with a pithy but wise observation from a committed European, the late Ralf Dahrendorf. He was introducing a conference at Oxford University on the theme of ‘European elites and their peoples’. The title of his Introduction perhaps solves, in a mere six words, the Brexit puzzle. The title was Mediocre Élites Elected by Mediocre Peoples’ (Dahrendorf, 1996, p. 1).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Jeremy Richardson is an Emeritus Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Canterbury, NZ.

Berthold Rittberger holds the Chair of International Relations at the University of Munich.