Why has Brexit broken British democracy?

I do rather think this piece is over complicating what's happened since the 2016 Brexit vote. 

For the first time in many years, decades in fact, the political class were faced with a decision, made by the electorate as it was deferred to them, that they disagreed with, and didn't want to enact. 'Losers consent' was withdrawn, and the social contract continually trashed to avoid having to accept the vote. 

Everything that's happened since stems from that political failure. 

Yes agree interesting article that makes some useful points, but not so sure the suggested solutions are that insightful. In many ways the majoritarian-consensus distinction on its own may be overly simplistic. It’s more a clash between direct participatory democracy and indirect representative democracy that cross-cuts any types of democratic culture.

For example it is not unknown for the majoritarian structure to accommodate coalition building when required at times of perceived crisis (2010-15 Coalition and earlier examples). Perhaps it is just that Brexit is a unique crisis that involves a foreign third party – the EU. Just too many players are involved in the issue making resolution a long drawn out process - the initial phase of which, a UK government-EU agreement acceptable to the UK parliament, is hopefully close to resolution as I write).

One can’t help thinking that the divisiveness caused by Brexit hasn’t been helped by MPs continuing to act as representatives rather than seeing themselves in the unique circumstances of Brexit as delegates tasked with undertaking the wishes of the electorate to leave the EU. The referendum should have been seen as a vote on the principle, leaving it to parliament to agree on the ‘how’ to leave. But too many MPs decided to make caveats that even stretched to support for continuing to remain on the grounds of some voters’ ignorance, bigotry etc). Although the referendum was not legally binding it was presented as being politically binding by government and in parliament’s triggering of Article 50. MPs’ behaviour was unfortunately assisted by the release under FOIs of how about one-fifth of parliamentary constituencies voted, and then a rather foolish attempt to ‘estimate’ from these how all other constituencies probably voted using a less than robust methodology that was unable to provide a margin of error for the estimate. This then allowed MPs to feel justified in continuing to represent the ‘views’ of their constituents and ignore the national vote

Although I don’t share Peter Booth’s pro-Brexit perspective he’s right to point out that the idea of a EU referendum was legitimate in the context of a lack of a proper mandate as the EU’s nature changed, and despite the apparent promise of all three parties in the 2005 General Election to hold a referendum on the proposed European Constitutional Treaty (2004), later forgotten by the Blair government after the ECT morphed into the Lisbon Treaty (Cameron, For the Record). Unfortunately when the referendum was finally held it was over Cameron’s selective ‘renegotiation’ and little attempt in his rushed timescale (for partisan reasons he wouldn’t wait until 2017) to better educate the voter through citizens’ assemblies (i.e. deliberative democracy) before making their decision, as now advocated by Anthony Painter (and Rory Stewart) in any second referendum. 

Anthony is right about the whole process showing a failure of leadership – a Conservative leader adverse to building ‘consensus’ even in her own party, and a Labour leader with an anti-EU record and AWOL, as Cameron puts it, during the 2016 referendum campaign.

But overall I’m not as pessimistic about the post-Brexit future and agree with Leon Grandy that British democracy is not necessarily broken. The increasing consensus between the main parties over the need to call a halt to austerity and increase public spending going forward is surely cause for optimism despite arguments over the extent of spending plans in the light of what remains a somewhat fragile economy.

One can obviously go on and on dissecting Brexit, but I think I’ll leave my thoughts, for what they’re worth, there for now.

We urgently need to get rid of our First-Past-The-Post electoral system, as it leaves millions of people disenfranchised, and therefore disengaged from politics. Moving to proportional representation could revitalise Britain. People would be able to vote for the parties they believed in, knowing that their vote would count. In elections that use PV we have seen how this kind of voting can produce results that are significantly different from those at Westminster elections. In Parliament parties would absolutely need to work together as equal partners to create concensus political programmes. Some parties might well not survive. The sooner we get rid of structural majoritarianism the better.

Personal note: I am a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Green Party. and also, in my view, not one single problem facing British society will be resolved by leaving the EU, as the EU was never the cause of any of them, so I am an unashamed "Remainer".

I am surprised that Anthony Painter did not himself suggest a change in our electoral system as an at least partial remedy to the problem he identifies. Denis Loretto rightly advocates proportional representation, but not all forms of PR are necessarily any improvement over First past the post (FPTP). Israel has pure PR with seats being allocated as nearly as possible to the percentage of votes cast for each of the various parties in contention. This leads to the creation of many small parties, with the result that a majority of seats requires the collaboration of enough small parties to get the total over 50%. This gives the last party to agree disproportionate influence over the policies of the resulting coalition, quite often insisting on things the larger parties would never want if they could avoid it. Pure PR also puts all power in the hands of party managers to decide who gets to stand as a candidate for that party, whether and when MPs are deselected, and the MP’s careers in Parliament.

The Single Transferable Vote (STV) system has much more to commend it. To avoid making this note too long, readers should see why the Electoral Reform Society recommends it (https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/). It produces a close approximation to a proportional result, while allowing electors to vote primarily for individuals and not parties. Crucially it does not encourage a proliferation of small parties, but still gives all of, say, five parties fair representation. It is used in both halves of Ireland (for the Dail and the NI Assembly), in Scotland for local authority elections, and has this year been adopted by Wales for their next Assembly election. It was only last week I heard an Irish politician mentioning that their use of STV encourages consensual politics, in contrast to the tribal warfare in Britain.

Citizen assemblies have their place in reaching a consensus on a specific complex topic, such as the contents of a written constitution, but are not in my view, any substitute for debate and decisions in a more satisfactorily elected parliament than we have now.

Nice article.  But I for one don't think that Brexit has broken British democracy (yet) - after all Brexit hasn't happened - yet.

But it is undoubted that the Brexit related machinations of a Parliamentary democracy, with a newly ascendant Parliament have seriously undermined confidence in that institution, and the broader role of Government in Society.

Historically, treaties were strictly Government issues, not Parliamentary ones. Only recently (since the 2010 Constitutional Reform and Governance Act) has Parliament had an explicit role in what was a prerogative matter. 

The decision to seek a Plebiscite on Brexit will likely be judged by history as a truly awful decision. The business of Government is hard enough - having to pay attention to the electorate makes it almost impossible.