After the Brexit: Navigating without a Compass

Could the United Kingdom take another vote? Of course it could; no legal obstacles stand in the way. A referendum, being a national consultation, implicates other nations only insofar as its result is duly reported to them. Suppose a critical number of British citizens were to become convinced that they had been deceived and that Nigel Farage, among others, had brazenly lied to them. Suppose Parliament were to act on the petition for a second referendum that, at this writing, has already gathered the signatures of more than three million Britons. Or suppose that Parliament might just be reluctant to ratify a vote of this scope without first consulting the legislative bodies of the other groups that make up the United Kingdom (notably the Scots).

None of these possibilities is likely. But none is unthinkable, either. And nothing prevents the sovereign people in Parliament assembled from citing one of them (or another) as grounds for reconsidering its earlier decision and changing course. Unique circumstances breed unforeseen outcomes. More evidence that, as Marx liked to say, history is more imaginative than man and often takes dramatic turns.

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