Jimmy Tidey
Jul 10, 2017 · 1 min read

That’s exactly the opposite of what I’m trying to say. Brexit may or may not have been an appealing proposition to voters. It turns out it was.

Quite separately, their are the strategic incentives for those who campaigned to Leave. Those incentives, in at lease some ways, meant they might choose to support Leave in the belief it would actually lose in the referendum. Or they might choose to support Leave in the belief they would be at a tactical advantage which ever way the referendum went.

Their incentives departed from the normal ‘guess what the voter wants’ model. If they had a crystal ball that showed a future where Leave lost, they might still have seen an advantage in campaigning for Leave-especially if it was a narrow loss.

I don’t think Farage was sufficient for Brexit, but I’d guess he was necessary. That’s not really the point I’m making. The point I’m making is that he created (probably not deliberately) the context in which incentives were so weird, by forcing a referendum.

    Jimmy Tidey

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    PhD on digital systems for collective action. Developing Localnets.org Twitter mapping tool. jimmytidey.co.uk/blog