From David Cameron to Keir Starmer, the decade-long drama of Brexit is a graveyard of British prime ministers. These leaders fell because they kept trying to insert a new kind of politics revealed after Brexit into old political forms. Ten years ago, Brexit falsified three presuppositions underwriting twentieth-century politics: that mass democracy could be managed to achieve progressive goals, that a sovereign state could be divided between government and administration, and that the British nation was divided on class lines rather than ethnic lines. At each stage, the falsification also pointed toward a new kind of twenty-first century political practice that has come into full view.
Brexit’s first casualty was the confidence that mass democratic institutions could be steered toward progressive ends. Tony Blair’s Labour party was the apotheosis of this exercise in manufacturing consent. Blairism mastered the focus group, the push poll, and the constant communication spin in order to nudge refractory segments of the population to where they needed to be. It was a success, rewarding Labour with huge majorities. The opposition, having failed to mobilize against Blair in a cogent way, decided to copy him instead. When Labour lost the 2010 election, self-proclaimed “heir to Blair” David Cameron took up that legacy of managed democracy—a choice that led directly to Brexit.
Cameron did his best to imitate his master, but he was a careless pupil, just as he’d been at Eton. Cameron obeyed the letter of Blairism, but not its spirit. Blairites talked often about encouraging popular participation in politics and introducing direct democracy. Yet they never did something as ill-advised as calling a national referendum. Cameron did. In 2013, he promised that if he won re-election in 2015, Britain would vote on leaving the European Union.