Defense & Intelligence Policy, Business and Technology

Win or Lose, the Brexit Vote Shows How Hard It Is to Defend the EU

Foreign Policy: When David Cameron decided to hold a national referendum on the United Kingdom’s continuing membership in the European Union, he must have thought that this would provide a relatively easy of way of settling a dispute within the Conservative Party that had simmered for decades, occasionally breaking out into open warfare. Although the EU was not exactly popular with the majority of the British public, most of them appreciated the material advantages it offered, such as freedom to travel and the possibility of spending your retirement years in places where the sun shone and the living was easy. Moreover, it was a well-established truth about referendums that in the face of uncertainty voters tended to support the status quo – witness the referendum on Scottish independence, and before that the even more decisive rejection of a change to the voting system for parliamentary elections.

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