Brexit, a multitude of decision-making case studies

Whether you think Brexit is a good thing or a bad thing, the process so far is a catalogue of spectacularly poor decisions. What can we learn from them?

“Life is journey, not a destination”, a widely misattributed quote goes. The same might be said about the interminable Brexit process. And just like life can be more interesting if it is treated as a journey, so Brexit delivers some interesting observations, in particular regarding some the decisions that were made along the way. Can we draw some lessons from this?

Of course we can. Let us start at the beginning: prime minister David Cameron’s decision to hold the referendum. Was that a good decision? Leavers and Remainers might well give different answers to this question. But the quality of a decision should not really depend on whether one likes the outcome. We must dig a bit deeper, and try to keep an impartial viewpoint.*

Cameron’s choice

Strictly speaking, Cameron had no choice: the EU membership referendum was a Conservative Party manifesto commitment in the 2015 election. But while the government had a moral obligation to hold it, it was free to choose how to execute it. When you decide to pursue a course of…