Idiot's Guide to Brexit

Boris finally got what he’s been wishing for, but most people think he should have been more careful about that. In Season 2 of Idiot’s guide, I will spare you my bloviating and regurgitating, and instead offer coverage by others that I find illuminating. In  this piece in The American Interest , my friend Michael Mandelbaum offers a lucid appraisal of Boris’s options, concluding that “none of the four paths he can follow is likely to lead to a happy ending, or indeed any ending at all.” And in  this piece in the Guardian,  Johnathan Freedland moans that  “ The leave vote is consolidating before our very eyes, while the remain vote is hopelessly fragmented.” Freedland  pleads with Remainers to form a bloc, “with or without Labour,” to oppose the no-Dealer bloc now crowding around Boris.   Then, there is this email from my friend Julian Huppert, who served as Lib Dem MP for Cambridge during Cameron’s tenure as PM, and who is still much...

We should be campaigning for a different referendum. The first posed a voice between a well-defined policy (remain) and an ill-defined policy (leave). Today! 's no-dealers insist that in 2016, 52% voted "to leave with or without a deal." this is plainly wrong. More nuanced is the claim A 2nd ref is unlikely, becaue it seems undemocratic to ask the same question about policy a 2nd time, though none thinks it undemocratic to ask the same question about who their MP should be a second time. But we shouldn’t be discussing whether it is appropriate to ask @Leave or remain?@ a second time. Most people agree it was a stupid question, because voters could believe that “leave” would mean whatever they hoped (or were told by Boris and co) that it would mean (“cakeism”). New parliamentary elections could be a form of second referendum if the parties staked out clear positions on remain and leave with no deal, since those are the only to realistic options. However, bo...