I think another problem with the Brexit referendum is that other than those who were particularly au fait with politics, I dare say that EU membership was not something that the vast majority of the public particularly cared about or comprehended the benefits and drawbacks of prior to the referendum.
I’m not saying that “all Brexit voters didn’t know what they were voting for” or anything to that effect. Plenty of Brexit voters had very valid reasons for voting to leave, and the same goes for Remain voters.
However, I do think that there should have been stronger education around what Brexit would mean, or at very least, more transparency around possible hypothetical scenarios that could have arisen as a result of us leaving the EU. Prior to the events of 2016, EU membership was a fringe issue that only certain politicians and some members of the public who were particularly interested in politics had strong views on. I dare say that if you’d walked up to the average Brit prior to the referendum being brainstormed and the Brexit campaign happening and asked them their views on Britain’s EU membership, they would have struggled to give you much of an answer. It wasn’t something that really affected the average voter compared to other political topics like the economy, education or healthcare.
Prior to the referendum, I don’t think many people held overly strong views on EU membership, and I’d wager that many didn’t have a strong knowledge of what being in the EU or outside of it meant. EU membership gave the UK some very intangible things that many voters probably took for granted and didn’t really think about prior to Brexit. It also brought disadvantages that many may not have known about or comprehended.
With this in mind, I do feel that either the vote should not have been put to the public, or that both sides should have been more transparent about what the respective outcomes would have resulted in rather than resorting to fearful rhetoric. I’m not saying that any voters “didn’t know what they were voting for” or didn’t have valid reasons for voting to Remain or Leave, but I think that general public knowledge regarding the UK’s EU membership was quite low. There should have been education on the matter and greater transparency from both sides. I remember the Brexit campaign painting a very positive vision of the future where we’d hold all the cards and still gain access to things like the single market. Things like “No Deal”, which became a very real possibility just a few years later, were dismissed as “Project Fear”. Had there been more transparency, I dare say that many people on both sides of the debate might have voted very differently.
Building on this slightly, I knew of people who voted for Brexit based on things that weren’t necessarily anything to do with EU membership, but were instead a protest against the government. For instance, a friend of my nan’s voted to leave because she didn’t get her pension at 60. Someone my dad knew voted to leave because she couldn’t get an appointment with her GP.
