Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain

by Fintan O'Toole

There was a headlong plunge in English support for the basic proposition that ‘England should be governed as it is now with laws made by the UK parliament’. In 1999, when the Scottish Parliament was just established, 62 per cent of English respondents agreed with this status quo. By 2008, this had fallen to a bare majority, 51 per cent. But by 2011, support for the status quo had collapsed even more dramatically to a mere 24 per cent and by 2012 it was down to 21 per cent. On the most fundamental question of democratic governance – who should make our laws? – over three-quarters of the English were out of sympathy with the existing arrangements. Instead, 36 per cent wanted England to be governed exclusively by English MPs at Westminster; 20 per cent wanted to be governed by a new English Parliament and 8 per cent wanted to see the establishment of devolved regional English Parliaments.10

This is an astonishing statistic. It was unreflected in open public discourse.