posted 28th April 2025
Remember Brexit?
Perhaps you’d rather forget it. The three and a half years between the referendum on membership of the European Union in June 2016 (in which 52% of voters opted to leave) and the UK’s exit from the EU in January 2020 were immensely traumatic for British society. They brought down two prime ministers and split the country into opposing tribes of Remainers and Leavers.
Unlike an election, in which voters choose MPs to represent them in parliament, where they will take decisions on many different issues, a referendum involves posing a simple question to voters, asking for a Yes / No response. So, for example, the Brexit referendum asked voters Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
Referendums look like democracy at its most simple and direct. Ask people what they want to do, then do what they say – easy. But Brexit wasn’t easy. What went wrong?
The Brexit referendum presented as very simple something which was in fact enormously complex. The UK’s relationship with the EU was based on hundreds of different laws, treaties and agreements, formulated over several decades, expressed in thousands of pages of densely argued legal prose, all of which had to be renegotiated in immense detail. Leaving the EU was not like cancelling a mobile phone contract. It was more like a messy divorce at the end of a long marriage, in which lawyers haggle over every last detail of a couple’s life, from ownership of the family home and custody of the children down to splitting up the coffee mugs. And we, the British people, were the kids, looking on in sadness and frustration as Mum and Dad tore each other apart, too busy arguing to remember to make our packed lunch, wash our gym kit or help us with our Maths homework. To make it even more confusing, it now looks like Mum and Dad want to get back together; recent polls have suggested a majority of people believe Brexit was a mistake.
Referendums don’t have to be that bad. They can be used well. Two countries which have used them well are Switzerland and Ireland.
In Switzerland, referendums have been used regularly for many years at every level of government from the lowest to the highest. They have decided questions all the way from changes in animal welfare standards on dairy farms to whether women should have the vote. Unlike the Brexit referendum, during which the then prime minister David Cameron refused to make any plans for how Britain should leave the EU if that was the chosen option, voters are always told exactly what they will get if the proposed measure passes (‘... temperatures in cowsheds must not drop below sixteen degrees centigrade …’) meaning they can have a properly informed discussion about the issues. One consequence of Switzerland’s referendum culture is that politicians take great care to ensure that their policies command popular support before they enact them, for fear of having laws overturned in a future referendum. Also, because Swiss people are so often asked to make well informed decisions on very specific issues, they tend to feel listened to, helping to build a culture of trust and solidarity.
In Ireland, a referendum took place in 2018 - just two years after the Brexit referendum in the UK - on a no less divisive issue. Unlike the Brexit referendum, it resolved the issue very clearly and did not tear the country apart.
The referendum was on whether to remove from the Irish constitution a clause which made abortion illegal. Abortion was a highly charged and emotional issue in Ireland. The Catholic Church, which opposes abortion under all circumstances, was deeply embedded in Irish culture for hundreds of years, but had recently lost much of its power following a series of abuse scandals. The referendum could easily have split the country down the middle.
One of the reasons it did not is that it was preceded by a Citizens' Assembly, an example of deliberative democracy in practice. The Citizens’ Assembly selected a range of people from across Irish society to consider the evidence on abortion in depth. They heard from doctors, philosophers, theologians, and from women with real life experience of abortion; from people opposed to abortion and from those who wanted it legalised. Many people changed their minds in the process. Hardline opponents of abortion saw that there might be times it was the only option; passionate pro-choice campaigners came to understand why some people might believe abortion was wrong.
The vote in the referendum went two to one in favour of repealing the law against abortion. Unlike the Brexit vote in the UK, the vote left very little legacy of bitterness: people on both sides felt they had been listened to. While the Catholic Church in Ireland continues to teach that abortion is wrong, it has accepted the change in the law, and is not seeking to overturn it.
Referendums work best with questions which can and should be reduced to a binary choice, and when the precise course of action following the result is made clear before the vote. They are also more likely to work well when they are preceded by intelligent, well-informed discussion.
Advantages of referendums
- They are simple and easy to understand.
- Everyone's vote counts equally.
- They can provide a final resolution of a question.
Disadvantages of referendums
- They can reduce complex questions to a simple binary choice.
- Splitting issues in two can cause polarisation, forcing people into two opposing camps, with damaging consequences for social cohesion.
- Particularly in a close result, large numbers of people on the losing side may feel ignored and resentful, with no opportunity of redress.
- They don’t necessarily provide a final resolution of the question, as circumstances change, and people change their minds.
Motions that go with this topic
1. This house would ban referendums
2. This house would use citizens’ assemblies to decide action on climate change / other issues.
3. This house would hold a referendum on rejoining the EU.
4. This house believes referendums are the highest form of democracy.
