The biggest question that emerged at last week’s conference on referendums at New York University was how to understand what people meant when they voted. [...]
Another finding was that dissatisfaction with the government was not significantly correlated with Brexit voting: the British referendum at least does not seem to have been hijacked as a protest vote against the incumbent government. [...]
Vaizey traced the causes of the Brexit vote from David Cameron’s decision to pull out of the EPP, the EU-wide grouping of centre-right parties, when he ran as leader. The appetite for a referendum was whetted by the supposed betrayal of the promise of one on the Lisbon Treaty (Eurosceptics paid no attention, Vaizey said, to the “small print” of Cameron’s promise: “...unless it has already been ratified”). Plus there was the “relentless blaming of the EU for absolutely everything that went wrong”.
However, Vaizey said that he didn’t think that ultimately a referendum could have been avoided. He drew a parallel with Scotland, where he said that if London had stood against agitation for devolution and then for an independence referendum, it would only have increased the “pressure-cooker” effect.
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