Without taking a political stance on Brexit and the perceived incompetence of lawmakers to make it work, there are a few simple reasons why Brexit was predestined to be a headache, to say the least.
Assumptions
In 2013, when the then Prime Minister David Cameron promised a referendum on the European Union membership he assumed that the majority would vote remain.
After “losing” the referendum he assumed that if he quits somehow the other grown ups in Parliament will come to their senses and ignore the non-binding vote.
Everybody assumed that there is a smart person somewhere who knows exactly what to do.
In 2016 when the Britons went to the polls it was at the height of a refugee crisis. A lot of voters were misled to think they were voting on immigration and voted leave, which brings us to the next problem.
Ambiguity
The options given to the public couldn’t have been vaguer regarding aim and consequences – Leave or Remain.
It is like a teenage daughter asking if she could go out. You would ask a few more questions and depending on the answers you would make a decision. She might want to go to a Disney movie with friends or to a sex orgy with a drug dealer, both are just “going out” but with widely different aims and consequences.
There was no clear message on why Britain should leave the EU, what they wanted to achieve and what the consequences were in either case. If there had been a document like Operation Yellowhammer then, it would be safe to presume that a few more people would have looked up what the EU is before the referendum, instead of searching the internet for answers after voting to leave.
The Basics of Negotiating
Despite all the unknown variables and no real plan on what Brexit should achieve, the British Government went forward with their plans to leave the European Union and triggered Article 50 of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty in March 2017.
It might have been helpful if the people responsible for making an exit deal with the Union had freshened up their negotiating skills before stumbling through meeting after meeting, constantly postponing the divorce date because they didn’t know what they were fighting for.
Mary Corrie from The Negotiation Society summarized the main problem of the negotiations into one sentence.
Stop Selling Start Negotiating
Looking back, it seems Theresa May didn’t pay attention to the critical difference between trying to sell an idea and negotiating a deal. Her team was too preoccupied in trying to sell the idea of Brexit instead of making a deal that would sell itself. The result was a pseudo deal that was more a letter of intent than a concrete exit out of the European Union that quite predictably didn’t pass a vote in Parliament, no matter how often she tried.
After Theresa May’s resignation her party voted for Boris Johnson who has no plan except Brexit or Bust. He seems to believe that deals and negotiations are overrated, the best strategy is to crash out of the Union and worry about Ireland, food shortages and trade deals later.
As the Germans say – Once you’ve lost your reputation, you have nothing left to lose.