Brexit is not just a series of accidental shambles with large and long term negative consequences. It comes with an internal logic driven by ideology. The ideology is fundamentally flawed and that will lead to it’s eventual failure.

Theoretically, one can argue about the merits of UK leaving EU on a purely rational merit. But the Brexit is driven instead by a right-wing ideology with three pillars:

  • the primacy of will and emotion vs. reason and careful analysis
  • tribal division vs. cooperation
  • violence vs. compassion

Will and Emotion vs. Reason

This is best captured by “the will of the people” as enough argument to drive Brexit. It assumes that people cannot change their minds, it is used as a pressure to not think, to not look at the facts. It assumes that there is little value in reason, that one can argue for anything anyway, therefore the only valid compass is “the will”.

Another example is “leave means leave” or “Brexit means Brexit”. These are circular reasoning fallacies designed to create adherence by emotion while misleadingly looking like an explanation.

Another example is the rejection of experts e.g. in statements during the leave campaign, but also in practice e.g. by firing Ivan Rogers for telling inconvenient truths.

Will and emotion are particularly ill-suited to deal with a complex situations like EU membership.

Tribal Division vs. Cooperation

From this ideological point of view, free movement of people, goods and services, that we have within Europe, is perceived as burden, not as an asset. This stems from seeing the world as a zero-sum situation, assuming that when one wins, someone else must loose.

This drives separation of UK from Europe on as many cooperation structures as possible, the focus on borders and immigration, separation into Leavers and Remainers, separation of Mainland from Northern Ireland, separation of England from the other British nations.

It has deep origins, even to using different language for the same things. Theirs are “unelected bureaucrats” ours are “civil servants”. Theirs are “EU immigrants” ours are “expats”.

It’s always about “us” vs. “them”, where “us” is an ever smaller group. Fundamentally it is a form of racism.

Violence vs. Compassion

The Brexit ideological preference for appeal to violence has it’s origin into it’s right-wing roots, in plain incitement to violence such as: “and if this [Brexit] is not delivered there will be widespread public anger in this country of scale, in a way that we have never seen before [audience cheers] and if that happens … then I will be forced to don kaki, pick up a rifle, and head from the front line [more audience cheers]”.

These extreme views result in wider publicity in the media than they deserve, and it’s tolerated more than it should be, as long as the speaker smiles and issues timely “it was taken out of context” statements.

But it continues in mainstream Government Brexit strategy.

Remember “strong and stable”, the slogan of the 2017 election? It’s a choice of words which is the very different from “compassionate and rational”. So are are choices of words that are violent/emotional, such as “betrayal”, “enemy of the people”, “humiliation”, “irreparable damage”.

Then there are forms of pressure.

Why insisting on not having parliamentary scrutiny? Why insisting “it’s my deal or no deal”, knowing that no deal is the worse scenario? As a threat, to distract from the observation that “my deal” is only better than a very bad deal (“no deal”), but worse than staying in EU.

Like the communist regimes that required violence to get into power and last, Brexit needs force, threats, pressure and coercion because it is lacking convincing arguments.

Bad Maths

52% is not a large majority. It is not 98%. Theresa’s May Brexit choice is not even representative for the 52% that voted leave. I don’t think anyone has a clue why 52% voted to leave, other than it was the result of a very effective leave campaign, and a failure of political leadership.

The Brexit ideology is to divide and not care, fueled by ‘will’ and ‘want’ not by ‘here is the argument why this is a good idea’, so it will eventually hurt and alienate enough people to loose the majority.

Over the long term the demographics works against Brexit, younger people are more likely to vote Remain, and that’s likely a Cohort, not a Life-cycle preference. This will eventually loose even the ‘will of the people’ argument.

Closing remark

In the response of the Government to the petition signed by 6 million people to revoke article 50 and remain in the EU, the argument is that that’s what people wanted, and misleadingly implies a 80% majority behind it. It lacks any argument that Brexit is objectively a good idea compared with staying in EU. What we have, due to an unfortunate sequence of events, is a Government working hard to deliver a right-wing ideology bad idea.

EU is not perfect. There are many countries involved, there is almost always some misguided lunatic in power in one of them, making collaboration harder than it should be, as Britain clearly proves these days. But Britain will be better off by working closely together with its neighbours in the EU. It can shape and influence it’s fate better from within.

To say that good things will happen out of Brexit is to say that disease resulted in good things like vaccines and antibiotics. Some good things will happen out of Brexit, like its eventual failure, but overall it’s going to be a miserable experience.