Why did Britain not look to other countries for examples of best practice, asks expert

Brexit was too complex to be decided by referendum and should have been left in the hands of elected representatives, not voters, Jared Diamond has said.

Speaking at the Hay festival on Saturday about his latest book, Upheaval, an analysis of world crises, the US historian said both individuals and nations could solve crises by “having a model of someone or a country who had a similar problem and solved it successfully”.

Britain had “little experience” with national referendums before the 2016 vote, he said, having only held two: the 1975 vote to remain in the European common market, and the 2011 vote on the UK’s parliamentary voting system. However, he said, in 2016 Britain could have looked overseas for examples of best practice, including Wisconsin and California in the US, two states that regularly hold referendums, and Italy, which has held more than 70 national referendums since 1946. Some of these have included divisive social issues, such as divorce and abortion, key to shaping the national identity of the country at the heart of Catholicism.

“From these, we have experience – we know subjects that are suitable for referendum and not, and we know how to run a referendum and not,” he said. “Subjects that are suitable for referendum are issues of society values that do not involve complicated questions of economics.”

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Italy’s history of referendum questions were excellent, he said. “They were not complicated and Italians voted strongly to figure out: ‘who are we?’ But Brexit has the disadvantage: yes it involves national identity, something about which you feel strongly, but it also involves very complicated issues of economics. That’s a subject for which you elect representatives, representatives who will deal with these complications and crawl off to a corner to learn all this stuff. It’s not an issue to present to voters.”

Past referendums around the world had demonstrated the need for a decisive majority and a certain level of turnout, he said. “For important issues that involve change, it should be a decisive vote. You should not decide something with a 51.9% vote. In California, referendum with heavy fiscal consequences require 60 to 66% of voters. Why did Britain, the leading democracy, not look to other countries for models on how to hold a referendum?”

The possibility of a second referendum, he said, provided the UK with an opportunity to look abroad for examples of less divisive public votes. “But I hesitate to rub into Britain not using other countries as models, because my own country, the United States, is perhaps the worst democracy in the modern world for refusing to look to other countries for models. Don’t make our mistake please.”

Asked what advice he would give if he was a therapist faced with Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn as clients, he said: “You are not going to like this advice, but I’d say resign and make way for better leaders.”