The fatal flaw in the Brexit referendum
Months before the 2016 EU referendum, then-Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond admitted a fundamental truth: the Leave campaign couldn’t say what a vote for Brexit would mean.
On that basis alone, the referendum should never have taken place in the form it did. Or, at the very least, the EU Referendum Act 2015 should have included a safeguard: a second vote to approve the actual terms of leaving.
Instead, the government and Parliament allowed a referendum where one side campaigned for a completely undefined outcome.
No other established democracy would hold a binding vote where one option was an open-ended question.
The result? A catastrophic failure of governance and a shocking lack of duty of care to the country.
▪ A vote for the unknown
Throughout the campaign, Leave campaigners contradicted each other. Some claimed the UK would stay in the Single Market, others insisted on a total break.
No one explained how Northern Ireland would be handled outside the EU. In reality, those making promises had no power to implement any of them.
Voters were asked to choose between Remain – a known reality – and Leave, a concept with no agreed definition.
They had no way of knowing how negotiations would unfold or what Brexit would actually look like. This wasn’t the fault of voters – it was a reckless failure by politicians to ensure clarity before putting such a momentous decision to the public.
▪ A government that knew better
Philip Hammond himself acknowledged this in Parliament in February 2016:
“Those who are proposing that we should leave don’t know what they are proposing to the British people, because they can’t know… The British people cannot know until afterwards what the proposition is that they would be voting for.”
This was not an accidental oversight – it was foreseen and ignored.
Parliament knew the risks yet pressed ahead regardless. The result has been years of turmoil, division, and economic damage.
The lesson? A referendum on an irreversible decision must be based on facts, not vague slogans.
The British public deserved better than to be led into the unknown.
- Related video: Tory minister Philip Hammond admitted before the referendum that voters couldn’t know what they were voting for.
