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Journal of European Public Policy Volume 30, 2023 - Issue 11: Special Issue:
British Policy-making After Brexit. Guest Editors: Patrick Diamond and Jeremy
Richardson
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Introduction

THE BREXIT OMNISHAMBLES AND THE LAW OF LARGE SOLUTIONS

Patrick Diamonda School of Politics and International Relations. Queen Mary,
University of London, London, UKCorrespondencediamond@qmul.ac.uk

&
Jeremy Richardsonb Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and National Centre
for Research on Europe, University of Canterbury, Canterbury, New Zealand
Pages 2235-2250 | Received 02 Aug 2023, Accepted 03 Aug 2023, Published online:
13 Aug 2023
* Cite this article
* https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2023.2245425
* CrossMark

In this articleArticle contents

Related research
* ABSTRACT
* An omnishambles as a critical juncture
* Policy frames; the law of large solutions; the law of unintended
consequences; and government overload
* The importance of policy frames
* The law of large solutions
* The law of unintended consequences
* Overloaded government
* Acknowledgements
* Disclosure statement
* Footnotes
* References

* Full Article
* Figures & data
* References
* Citations
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ABSTRACT

The UK’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) in 2016 unquestionably
represents a critical juncture in British politics. Yet the intervening years in
which the terms of Britain’s withdrawal have been painstakingly negotiated by
the UK political elite appear less of a watershed, even if there have been
significant alterations in particular fields of public policy. Path dependencies
have reasserted themselves derailing the process of ‘getting Brexit done’, while
the constraints and unintended consequences confronting policy-makers in the
polity and politics have become increasingly apparent, not least on the issue of
how far in practice to pursue regulatory divergence from the EU. The framing of
Brexit as a ‘critical juncture’ has fuelled unrealistic expectations while
contributing towards growing disillusionment among citizens. Amidst the ensuing
chaos, Brexit appears more than ever to be an omnishambles of epic proportions.

KEYWORDS:

* Brexit
* critical juncture
* path dependency
* policy frame
* unintended consequences
* policy fiascos
* overload

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* Correction

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AN OMNISHAMBLES AS A CRITICAL JUNCTURE

In a previous Brexit Special Issue of this journal, Richardson and Rittberger
argued that political satire and the reality of politics have been hand in glove
in Britain for a very long period and that ‘the political satire TV series, The
Thick of It encapsulated perfectly the seemingly serial chaos of elite politics
in Britain’ (Richardson & Rittberger, Citation2020). They cite a particular
episode of the series involving the Minister for the (fictional) Department of
Social Affairs and Citizenship. Her hapless performance prompted the now famous
rebuke from the Government’s Director of Communications: ‘Jesus Christ, you are
a fucking omnishambles, that’s what you are. You’re like that coffee machine,
you know: From bean to cup, you fuck up’. They go on to argue that:

… real life policy-making made the fictional shambles depicted in The Thick of
It seem quite mundane. One of the lasting images of 2019 was of Speaker John
Bercow repeatedly yelling, Order, Order, Order amidst scenes of what can only be
describe as total disorder. The British political elite most certainly presided
over a policy process that was an omnishambles of monumental proportions. The
process lurched from one disaster to the next, undermining images of Britain as
having a well-oiled, smooth running policy-making machine. Each stage of the
process fitted the dictionary definition of shambles perfectly, namely ‘a state
of confusion, bad organisation’. This led to a situation where office holders
lost the ability to steer, let alone control, the policy process, with little or
no understanding of what the short-term or long-term outcome would be.
(Richardson & Rittberger, Citation2020, p. 650)

Perhaps the greatest paradox of Britain’s decision to leave the EU is that,
although the process itself has been an omnishambles, the actual decision was
undoubtedly a critical juncture in British post-war politics, quite possibly the
most consequential policy decision since Britain gained acccession to the then
European Community in 1973. In practice, ‘the European question’ has often
dominated post-war British politics and has produced two critical junctures of
historic proportions: first to step on the escalator of European Integration,
and then in 2016 deciding to get off the escalator. As Capoccia and Kelemen
argue:

… many causal arguments in the historical institutionalist literature postulate
a dual model of institutional development characterised by relatively long
periods of path-dependent institutional stability and reproduction that are
punctuated occasionally by brief phases of institutional flux – referred to as
critical junctures – during which more dramatic change is possible. (Capoccia &
Kelemen, Citation2007, p. 341)

They go on to suggest that ‘the causal logic behind such arguments emphasises
the lasting impact of choices made during those critical junctures in history’
and that (citing Pierson, Citation2004) ‘junctures are “critical” because they
place institutional arrangements on paths or trajectories, which are then very
difficult to alter’ (Capoccia & Kelemen, Citation2007, p. 342). Tellingly (for
both Brexiteers and Remainers), Capoccia and Kelemen echo Pierson’s warning.
They argue that, ‘actors’ choices during the critical juncture trigger a
path-dependent process that constrains future choices’ (Capoccia & Kelemen,
Citation2007, p. 348). The problem for policy-makers is that it is extremely
difficult to predict how a critical juncture will play out over time. For
example, Oliver, who sees Brexit as a critical juncture for the UK’s
international role, identity and status, argues that ‘Brexit has, for good or
bad, disrupted the international options open to UK policy makers’ (Oliver,
Citation2023, p. 2). Similarly, Bradbury et al see Brexit as a critical juncture
in the politics of UK devolution, insisting that there ‘ … is compelling
evidence that Brexit initially affected UK parties’ territorial strategies by
increasing the extent to which they produced policy proposals pertaining to
shared rule’ (Bradbury et al Citation2023, p. 18). However, they issue a
warning, which we echo. They write: ‘our analysis encompasses only the early
stages of Brexit as a critical juncture; its implications are likely to unfold
over many years’ (Bradbury et al., Citation2023, p. 19, emphasis added).

This quotation captures very well one of the main aims of this special issue.
Our task is to analyse empirically the implications and constraints that
confront policy-makers across a range of key policy sectors as the British
Government seeks to ‘get Brexit done’, while assessing the scope for the
transformation of public policy. While the referendum decision to leave the EU
in 2016 did unquestionably represent a critical juncture in British politics,
the intervening seven years of withdrawal negotiations have been characterised
as much by stasis, fiasco and muddling through, despite the UK Government’s
intension to maximise regulatory divergence from Europe and reclaim national
sovereignty. As such, Brexit appears in practice less like a critical juncture
since the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) was signed. The context has been one of
significant constraints being imposed on policy-makers, while attendant path
dependencies have gradually reasserted themselves, even if in strategic sectors
such as defence and foreign affairs, higher education, and agriculture (Martill,
Citation2023; Corbett & Hantrais, Citation2023; Greer & Grant, Citation2023)
there have been observable changes in policy direction as a consequence of
Brexit. It is important to grasp the temporal dimension of the Brexit process,
as change has unfolded over time. After the 1973 critical juncture, it took many
years for British policy-making to become fully Europeanised, but path
dependency was gradually overcome, so much so that Britain became one of the
most effective European players, espousing and benefitting from those European
policies that suited its interests, while sometimes opting out of those that it
found objectionable. Indeed, as Schimmelfennig notes, ‘After Cameron’s
re-election in 2015, he first negotiated to consolidate and expand the UK’s
exemptions from EU policies as a member state’ (Schimmelfennig, Citation2018, p.
1154).

The central question for the Brexiteers is can Britain buck the path dependency
rule again? Clearly, some critical junctures do eventuate seismic changes,
notwithstanding the power of path dependency. For example, the early 1930s was a
critical juncture in Swedish history, leading to the construction of a modern
social democratic state (Rothstein, Citation1998). However, it ought to be
remembered that the Social Democrats were in government from 1932 to 1976, a
period long enough to overcome the obstacles of path dependency. In the Brexit
case, we aver that leaving the EU was unquestionably a critical juncture.
Britain left a club of which it had been a member for nearly half a century with
far-reaching consequences. However, we go on to argue that there were certain
features of the Brexit decision itself, combined with structural characteristics
of the current British policy-making process, that will present huge challenges
in the post-Brexit era. These challenges are likely to perpetuate stagnation and
stasis as much as far-reaching policy change.

POLICY FRAMES; THE LAW OF LARGE SOLUTIONS; THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES;
AND GOVERNMENT OVERLOAD

There is now a surfeit of studies of how Brexit came about, reflecting the fact
that the Brexit decision had multiple causes. Our particular view on the ‘how
did we get here’ question places considerable emphasis on long-term systemic
changes in the British policy process which facilitated Brexit as a critical
juncture in British politics (for overviews see Diamond, Citation2021; Gamble,
Citation2018; Richards et al., Citation2022; Richardson, Citation2018). While it
is an oversimplification to rationalise Brexit as the revenge of the
economically disadvantaged in ‘places that don’t matter’, UK policy-making since
the late 1970s had produced large disparities in prosperity between geographical
localities that fanned the flames of popular discontent with the existing
political and policy settlement (Rodríguez-Pose, Citation2018). In the absence
of such changes, what Bogdanor (Citation2016:, p. 348) terms ‘a revolt from
below’ might well have been stifled in the corridors of Whitehall and
Westminster. Our purpose here is to briefly outline what we view as the main
characteristics of the meta-policy decision to leave the EU. In doing so, we
draw upon classic theories of the policy process.

THE IMPORTANCE OF POLICY FRAMES

We begin with what, in hindsight, is at the root cause of the Brexit problem:
the way in which Brexit was ‘framed’ from the outset. Ideas are powerful and
consequential in politics, yet for ideas to get traction in public debate, they
need to be simple to understand and easily communicated. As Goldstein and
Keohane put it:

By ordering the world, ideas may shape agendas, which can profoundly shape
outcomes. Insofar as ideas put blinders on people, reducing the number of
conceivable options, they serve as invisible switchmen, not only by turning
action onto certain tracks rather than others … but also by obscuring the other
tracks from the agent’s view. (Goldstein & Keohane, Citation1993, p. 12)

Ideas and policies are linked via ‘policy frames’ which heavily influence the
way policy-makers view policy problems. To borrow Goldstein and Keohane’s
terminology, frames are like switchmen, turning action onto certain tracks. Once
policy-makers are wedded to a particular policy frame, it then shapes subsequent
policy choices (and, as in the case of Brexit, can marginalise hitherto
important policy actors). This is not to suggest that policy-makers have a
monopoly of resorting to frames. Complex problems are, well, complicated! We all
need ways of coping with complexity. As Rein and Schön attest, ‘a “frame’ is a
perspective from which an amorphous, ill-defined problematic situation can be
made sense of and acted upon’ (Rein & Schön, Citation1991, p. 263).

Membership of the EU is, on the face of it, a simple idea, as straightforward as
joining any club voluntarily. However, the EU is not any old club. Since its
inception the EU has become a complex, multi-layered and, above all,
interconnected and increasingly dense policy system. Moreover, it is not like
Topsy, who ‘just grow’d like that’. It was designed as a multi-national
policy-making structure to address a particular set of policy problems, but has
since widened significantly its policy remit. EU scholars have long debated ‘the
nature of the beast’, but the creation of the Single Market has had profound
implications for national sovereignty. As McNamara recently argued: ‘Markets
require rules, made and enforced by governments, and modern market-making has
therefore unfolded as an intrinsic part of state-building. While the European
Union is not a state, it has not been immune to these processes’ (McNamara,
Citation2023, p. 1). However, the EU is about much more than market regulation.
Its policy remit runs so wide that it is possible to see it as at least a
‘policy-making state’ (Richardson, Citation2012, pp. 12–21). Herein lies the
core of the problem of EU withdrawal facing the UK. The Brexit policy frame was
perfectly simple: ‘break free and regain national sovereignty’. The reality, as
this Special Issue demonstrates so clearly, is that Britain was deeply embedded
in the EU (see Dayan et al., Citation2023; McGowan, Citation2023; Mitsilegas &
Guild, Citation2023; Garcia, Citation2023; Greer & Grant, Citation2023; Gravey &
Jordan, Citation2023; Sanders & Flavell, Citation2023; McGowan, Citation2023),
as an active (and very often constructive) member-state. Of course, there were
policy areas where the EU was active, but where Britain was less than
enthusiastic (see Copeland, Citation2023; Corbett & Hantrais, Citation2023).
More importantly, whether Britain liked it or not, a huge proportion of
Britain’s public policy and regulatory landscape was in reality ‘EU made’ public
policy. It was not ‘made in Britain’. Moreover, the over-arching frame (‘regain
our sovereignty’) was underpinned by an even simpler (but equally erroneous)
frame which Glencross terms ‘cakeism’, by which he means ‘the notion that the UK
could keep certain benefits or not suffer costs after Brexit’ (Glencross,
Citation2023, p. 995). Glencross notes that the origins of ‘cakeism’ can be
found in the ideas of Conservative and New Right think tanks originating in the
early 1990s. Similarly, Figuiera and Martill attest that Britain’s strategy,
‘evidenced a poor understanding of the organisation from which it was
withdrawing. First-and-foremost it was based on the assumption that the EU would
offer Britain a highly bespoke form of association which would match the
exceptional position it had enjoyed as a member state’. (Figueira & Martill,
Citation2020, p. 1872)

THE LAW OF LARGE SOLUTIONS

The Brexit policy frame has, inevitably, run up against the law of large
solutions in public policy. This ‘law’ was developed by Aaron Wildavsky four
decades ago, as he was puzzling over why public policies failed so often. His
answer was simple (and correct!): it was, ‘because the Law of Large Solutions in
Public Policy – when the solution dwarfs the problem as a source of worry – is
inexorable’ (Wildavsky, Citation1980, p. 62, emphasis added). Wildavsky’s
central thesis was that public policy solutions themselves become perplexing –
and even bigger – problems. In a nutshell, ‘the evils that worry us now spring
directly from the good things that we tried before’. He believed this phenomenon
to be especially true for big policy problems since they usually, ‘create
solutions so large that they become the dominant cause of the consequences with
which public policy must contend’ (Wildavsky, Citation1980, p. 63). In the case
of Brexit, one needs to look no further than the Northern Ireland Protocol to
see the wisdom of Wildavsky’s observations. The Windsor Agreement, on the face
of it, has ‘solved’ the particular problem of how to avoid a land border on the
island of Ireland without cutting Northern Ireland off from the UK internal
market (Kelly & Tannam, Citation2023). Yet there is no guarantee of frictionless
trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland despite the Windsor Agreement,
while history is likely to judge that achievement as the British Government
having merely reached base camp one in the post-Brexit mountain climb.

Having only just begun to understand the inordinate complexity of the Brexit
process, in May 2023 the UK Government announced that it is was amending the
Retained EU Law Bill (REUL) that had been announced in the 2022 Queen’s
Speech.Footnote1 REUL goes to the heart of the UK’s post-Brexit policy dilemma
and illustrates the sheer scale of the policy problems which the Brexit process
has created. The British Government must decide what to do about a swathe of
legislation and regulations that have accumulated during fifty years of UK
membership of the EC/EU; undertaking this convoluted and intricate task has been
compared to attempting to unscramble an omelette. The post-Brexit challenge is
to decide, first, how much of this EU legislation is to be ‘unmade in Britain’,
and secondly, the specific content of the ‘unmade in Britain’ public policy.

The Government’s initial solution to the problem as outlined in the 2018 EU
(Withdrawal) Act was to create a category of domestic law through which EU
legislation would be retained until Parliament had the opportunity to review and
where necessary amend that legislation (Grogan & Barnard, Citation2023).
Nevertheless, in May 2023 Ministers announced that they could not continue with
the Bill as it was presently drafted, removing the Sunset Clause (which fell in
December 2023 reiterating there would be ‘automatic revocation’ of all retained
EU law), while providing Parliament with a list of the legislation that fell
under REUL (Rutter, Citation2023). Although backbench Conservative MPs blamed
the risk-averse civil service ‘blob’ for excessive caution and lack of urgency
in dismantling EU laws, the Government accepted that setting a hard deadline for
resolving decisions on which legislation to retain was administratively and
politically unwise (despite the fact that Rishi Sunak had promised to scrap all
EU laws ‘within 100 days’ during his campaign to become Conservative party
leader and Prime Minister in the autumn of 2022). Barnard and Grogan
(Citation2020) calculate that since 2018, only 196 items of retained EU law have
actually been repealed while 182 items were amended.

Yet even in its amended form, the REUL Bill raises serious questions. The first
relates to the sheer quantity of legislation that Parliament will be expected to
scrutinise. Scrapping rules and regulations that now seem minor or insignificant
may actually be hugely consequential for the Conservative Government’s
traditional allies, notably the private sector and in particular small business.
Indeed, British business interests often played an active and influential role
in the formulation of those very rules through their effective lobbying
activities in Brussels. There will also be long-term consequences for a whole
raft of interest groups, notably the trade unions (Copeland, Citation2023;
Gumbrell-McCormick & Hyman, Citation2017), women’s organisations (Sanders &
Flavell, Citation2023), environmentalists (Gravey & Jordan, Citation2023),
groups directly affected by foreign policy and trade policy (Martill,
Citation2023; Garcia, Citation2023), and corporate interests in the financial
sector (James & Quaglia, Citation2023). Decisions will partly depend on the
effectiveness of interest groups in lobbying Parliament, although the current
Government has not been particularly inclined to work with external stakeholders
since the Brexit process began seven years ago. As this Special issue
illustrates, there are sectoral variations in the degree to which British public
policy might diverge from existing EU policy over time, with the ideology of
parties and factions within them likely to play an important role in certain
cases. If there is significant change, it will have distributional consequences.
For example, the presumption that de-regulation and ‘cutting red tape’ is
inherently desirable (another simplifying policy frame), is not a notion with
which all businesses agree. Separate UK regulatory frameworks fit the ‘regain
our sovereignty’ frame, but do they sit comfortably alongside the need for
businesses to avoid having to comply with several different regulatory
frameworks? Diverging from EU public policies will provoke a backlash from those
(many) interest groups who benefitted from EU membership and will eventually
present a strong challenge to those inclined towards a top-down, dirigiste,
policy style. As Kelly and Tannan point out, ‘muscular’ approaches risk taking a
wrecking ball to carefully crafted policies designed to solve intractable
problems (Kelly & Tannam, Citation2023).

Moreover, the EU itself has a view on regulatory divergence by Britain. Just
because it is no longer in the EU, it does not mean that Britain is a unitary
actor that faces no external constraints on its policy decisions. The reality of
constrained policy choices is one the short-lived Truss Administration
discovered to its cost in autumn 2022 when forced to abandon a major package of
tax cuts intended to enhance post-Brexit competitiveness in the face of a
collapse of market confidence due to ballooning levels of UK government debt.
The importance of effective consultation with interest groups who are a huge
repository of knowledge about the practical workings of EU public policies has
yet to be acknowledged. The lack of engagement so far merely increases the
potential for policy errors and blunders. As King and Crewe note: ‘ … Britain’s
political system is a power-hoarding system … ministers and officials, although
ready to consult others, are usually reluctant to engage fully with them and to
see them as active participants in the policymaking process’ (King & Crewe,
Citation2014, p. 389).

The second issue is that the quantity of legislation related to REUL is unknown:
returning to our mountain analogy, no-one knows how high the mountain actually
is. The Government has identified around 2420 legislative items; however,
researchers estimate that there may be more than 5000 separate pieces of
legislation that fall within the scope of REUL (Rutter, Citation2023) if we take
into account the considerable amount of EU ‘soft law’ and other policy steering
instruments that are an important part of the EU’s policy toolkit (Hartlapp &
Hofmann, Citation2021). There are also concerns that the civil service lacks the
capacities and skills to scrutinise the amount of legislation involved (Diamond,
Citation2023). The Retained EU Law Bill highlighted the capability gap, since it
requires the civil service to examine each item of EU law in some detail: in the
Department of Business alone, there are over 300 pieces of legislation (Grogan &
Barnard, Citation2023). In the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs (DEFRA), there are 1781 separate legislative items that have to be
examined, 40 per cent of the total across Whitehall (Alim & Foster,
Citation2023).

Thirdly, the crucial relationship between REUL and devolution remains uncertain.
One issue is that the devolved governments generally have less capacity to
examine EU legislation and determine what items to retain (Grogan & Barnard,
Citation2023). Moreover, there are inevitably disagreements between the UK
government and the devolved administrations over key policy issues, given
conflicting interests (Greer & Grant, Citation2023; Gravey & Jordan,
Citation2023). Yet in the absence of clearly defined inter-governmental
arrangements for conflict resolution within the UK devolution settlement,
protracted disputes and policy failures are the likely result.

Finally, the policy issues and dilemmas raised by Brexit are deeply
interconnected and cannot be resolved within existing institutional silos. Yet
Whitehall as the engine of central government policy-making in the UK has long
been characterised by chronic siloization: the fragmentation of policy agendas
between functionally separated departments. While departments have subsumed an
array of post-Brexit functions since 2016, there has been little effort to
fundamentally rethink the machinery of central government. The present
Government exhibits no appetite for a march through state institutions as part
of a radical, Gramscian, reform of the state. Indeed, there is evidence that the
REUL process may have actually encouraged greater conflict between departments
(Rutter, Citation2023). Resolving the complex policy issues thrown up by Brexit
entails institutional collaboration which is greatly hindered by departmentalism
(Diamond, Citation2023). Moreover, the centre of UK government is paradoxically
too weak to break down silos. Effective joining up of policy-making has been the
exception rather than the rule in Whitehall while Brexit has so far done little
to alter that predicament. As Rothstein’s study of the construction of the
Swedish welfare state demonstrated, the processes following critical junctures
do not always run smoothly as ‘ … the structure of state agencies may well
determine the future of policies’ (Rothstein, Citation1998, p. 17).

Finally, the Government is still giving itself the power to amend any piece of
legislation related to REUL. Yet without adequate parliamentary scrutiny,
Ministers in future governments could water down legislation and deregulate key
sectors of the economy without proper consultation or due safeguards being in
place, leading to unintended consequences which subsequent policy-makers will
then have to resolve. The democratic deficit would be very considerable.

The REUL Bill and the debates around it merely underline the lack of robust
analysis, followed by inadequate policy design, which pervade the post-Brexit
policy process. Space does not permit a thorough review of the current British
policy style, but we refer to non-Brexit examples that illustrate perfectly the
parlous state of British policy-making. We turn to a major policy initiative,
the so-called ‘levelling up’ agenda designed to address regional economic
disparities. The recent study by Coyle and Muhtar drew attention to, ‘the policy
churn, policy silos and fragmented and often incoherent spatial governance
structures characterising the UK combined with the absence of institutional
mechanisms for learning from experience’ (Coyle & Muhtar, Citation2023, p. 2).
These authors draw similar conclusions in their previous analysis of a different
policy area, namely industrial policy. Almost echoing the serial chaos to which
Richardson and Rittberger referred, they note that ‘in March 2020, in the middle
of the worst peacetime economic downturn in modern history and to the dismay of
policy-makers, economists and business leaders alike, the Conservative
Government abolished the 2017 Industrial Strategy and the independent Council
monitoring it. In its place, the Government published a new ‘plan for Growth’
(Coyle & Muhtar, Citation2021, p. 1). Coyle and Muhtar remark that the
characteristics which lead to chaotic action of this kind are, ‘lack of
information feedback from economic evaluations to policy setting, such that
immediate political considerations outweigh economic criteria in setting
direction of policies; and as a result of the inability to learn, policy
inconsistency and coordination failures’ (Coyle & Muhtar, Citation2021, p. 1).

THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Alas, we know that policy-making even in normal times is subject to the ‘law of
intended consequences’. Policy implementation rarely goes smoothly, even with
carefully designed policies. Most policies rely on co-operation between long
chains of public and private actors who help to ensure the policy is properly
implemented. The British policy system was, as King and Crewe have argued,
particularly prone to blunders long before Brexit (King & Crewe, Citation2014).
It is no surprise, therefore, that post-Brexit Britain quite quickly saw some
unintended (and unwelcome) consequences of EU withdrawal. For example, in July
2023, The Guardian newspaper reported:

A leading Tory Brexiter on Sunday calls on ministers to reopen the UK’s borders
to tens of thousands of young workers from EU nations in order to tackle acute
post-Brexit labour shortages that he says are driving up inflation. In an
extraordinary admission of the failures of immigration policy since the UK left
the EU, former Tory environment secretary George Eustice said Rishi Sunak’s
government should begin bilateral negotiations with EU nations immediately, with
a view to offering young Europeans under 35 the right to two – year visas to
work in this country. (The Guardian 08/07/23)

This ‘confession’ by a Conservative Brexiter relates to a very obvious and
central policy area: labour supply. However, we suspect that the list of
unintended (and surprising) consequences will grow exponentially, simply because
the policy process leading to Brexit was incapable of anticipatory
policy-making. For example, did anyone foresee that Brexit could have adverse
effects on Britain’s world leading Grand Prix industry? Yet the effects were
sufficiently serious for the seven British-based Formula One teams to meet the
Prime Minister to argue for the easing of post-Brexit border crossing and permit
problems. As one team boss put it, ‘car parts, every time you (go) back and
forth, it is problematic. It's not efficient … It could be a lot better. It used
to be a lot better before Brexit’ (Reuters 06/07/23). The issues of nuclear
safeguards and radiation policy after Brexit presents the same generic feature
as with the Grand Prix industry, yet with potentially much more serious
consequences. As one study put it, ‘unlike other energy systems in the UK,
nuclear would encounter serious negative impacts to its industry due to
Brexit … the UK will have significant gaps in responsibility that are currently
undertaken by Euratom (and other EU institution) that will need to be filled by
UK bodies’. The authors of the study concluded: ‘The current approach appears to
be undertaken in an ad-hoc manner. However, with 40 years of EU legislation to
cover it does not appear to be a sustainable approach’ (Callen et al., 2019, p.
1420). It is serious that problems moving Grand Prix parts around Europe might
eventually threaten an industry that employs 40,00 people in the UK; but this
problem pales in comparison to managing efficiently, and safely, our nuclear
safeguards and radiation policy.

The cumulative effect of unintended and unanticipated consequences of Brexit
that have directly impacted the lives of ordinary British citizens range from an
under-staffed social care sector resulting from a chronic shortage of EU
workers, to lack of food supplies in the shops with further consequences for
consumer price inflation. As John Curtice pointed out in June 2023: ‘ … the UK
economy finds itself in the grip of the worst inflationary spiral since the
1970s and facing the prospect of a record decline in living standards’ (Curtice,
Citation2023).

The scale of the post-Brexit problems is reflected in a significant shift of
public opinion. Essentially, Brexit has become much less popular. For example,
Curtice notes that in a poll conducted in June 2022, ‘there was already a narrow
majority – of 53% to 47% in favour of rejoining the EU … now, however … (after
leaving out those expressing a preference) as many as 61% are in favour of
rejoining the EU, while only 39% back staying out’ (Curtice, Citation2023). The
law of unintended consequences appears to have resulted in a significant shift
in public perceptions of the consequences of Brexit.

There are, of course, many causes of unintended consequences, yet some could
have been anticipated during the Brexit process. As Dunlop et al attest, there
were numerous opportunities for policy-makers to learn from experience during
the initial stages of EU withdrawal. Dunlop et al note that, ‘ … the policy
setting was well suited to reflective and epistemic learning immediately
following the referendum … instead learning shifted to the realm of hierarchy’
(Dunlop et al., Citation2020). Figueira and Martill came to similar conclusions.
Drawing on the theory of bounded rationality, they argue that: ‘ … the dearth of
planning in the Brexit example … enabled policy-makers to fall back on prior
(and incorrect) assumptions of their own … Eurosceptic ideological
predispositions motivated distrust of key sources of reliable information’
(Figueira & Martill, Citation2020, p. 15). These analyses point to a common
cause of policy errors elaborated by Robert. K. Merton in his seminal article,
The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action. He observed that:

Error may also be involved in instances where the actor attends to only one or
some of the pertinent aspects of the situation which influences the outcome of
the action. This may range from the case of simple neglect (lack of systematic
thoroughness in examining the situation) to pathological obsession where there
is a determined refusal to consider certain elements of the problem. (Merton,
Citation1936, p. 901, emphasis added)

In the Brexit case, it is not that relevant information and expertise was
unavailable. Far from it. For example, many interest groups had warned of the
possible adverse consequences. Even key, hitherto powerful, insiders warned the
government too. Thus, the former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney,
blamed Brexit for the rising inflation and interest rates that have afflicted
the UK economy. In an interview in The Daily Telegraph newspaper on 17 June
2023, Carney remarked:

We laid out in advance of Brexit that this will be a negative supply shock for a
period of time and the consequence of that will be a weaker pound, higher
inflation and weaker growth’. He continued: ‘And the central bank will need to
lean against that. Now that’s exactly what’s happened. It’s happened in
coincidence with other factors, but it is a unique aspect of the economic
adjustment that’s going on here'.

Carney’s argument was that the fall in the value of sterling driven by Brexit
has fuelled inflationary pressures in Britain that are stronger than in other
industrialised nations. Prior to the EU referendum, Carney was criticised by
pro-Brexit politicians for making ‘doomsday’ arguments about the likely negative
impact of EU withdrawal on the British economy. He insisted that the UK’s
economy would become qualitatively smaller as a consequence of Brexit. The
problems that have arisen post-Brexit, should, therefore, occasion no surprise.
There were plenty of warnings from authoritative sources both within and outside
government.

OVERLOADED GOVERNMENT

Finally, we return to the age-old question about British government in the light
of Brexit: is it now so overloaded that it is unable to function effectively?
The father of the overload thesis, Anthony King, was deeply pessimistic when he
wrote his classic analysis in the 1970s, Overload: Problems of Governing in the
1970s. His argument was clear cut: ‘Let us begin by reminding ourselves of some
of the indications that the business of government in Britain has become more
difficult. The number of such indications is vast’ (King, Citation1975, p. 162).
In a perceptive tribute to King after his death in 2017, Mick MoranFootnote2
reduced King’s analysis to three key propositions, as follows:

First, the business of government has become more difﬁcult. A symptom of this is
the proliferation of failed policies, some large, some small. Second, ‘the range
of matters for which British governments hold themselves responsible – and for
which they believe that the electorate may hold them responsible – has increased
greatly over the past ten or twenty years … and is still increasing at a rapid
rate.’ This is the connection with King’s aphorism that nowadays people look not
to God or the market for help, but to government: ‘the hungry sheep look up and
reckon that they have a least a reasonable chance of being fed … government
[has] come to be regarded, in Britain at least, as a sort of unlimited-liability
insurance company.’ Finally, the account is tied explicitly to the language of
overload: ‘just as the range of responsibilities of governments has increased,
so, to a large extent independently, their capacity to exercise their
responsibilities has declined. The reach of British government exceeds its
grasp. (Moran, Citation2018, p. 29; citing King, Citation1975)

Yet the thrust of Moran’s own analysis of King’s work on overload is that King’s
pessimism has not been born-out by subsequent developments in British politics
and policy-making. For example, the privatisation of the nationalised industries
in the 1980s and 1990s (as well as measures of de-regulation) removed a huge
policy burden from government, almost at a stroke. King’s analysis was, Moran
concludes, too heavily influenced by events at the time. However, Moran concedes
that despite major changes in UK politics that he believes undermine aspects of
King’s thesis:

… parts of the (King) analysis … still ring true. Three stand out. First, the
history of policy making in the United Kingdom is still a history of
fiasco … Second, the style of partisan argument which King believed contributed
to excessive expectations has, if anything, become even more strident … Finally,
while I show below that government in the 1980s and 1990s did indeed turn off
the expectations tap in ways that King failed to foresee, the very methods used
to turn off the tap actually created fresh expectations and fresh ambitions on
the part of government. (Moran, Citation2018, p. 31)

We conclude, therefore, with a reflection on Brexit that fits King’s deeply
pessimistic account. First, we believe that post-Brexit policy-making is likely
to produce serial policy fiascos. Secondly, partisan argument is as intense, if
not more so, than during the Referendum campaign. Finally, the Brexiteers
created excessive and unrealistic expectations amongst citizens, epitomised by
the promise on the side of the ‘Brexit bus’ that Brexit would deliver an extra
£350 million a week to the NHS. That voters are increasingly disillusioned is of
little surprise. All in all, the UK government is as divided over Brexit as
ever: it faces a monumental policy task in deciding what to do with thousands of
EU public policies; and, to top it all, the (now reconfigured) populist revolt
has the potential to intensify in the years ahead as the failure to deliver on
popular expectations of withdrawal from Europe becomes ever more apparent.
Brexit remains a critical juncture in British politics, but the Westminster
Government has, so far, been unable to fulfil its objective of enacting Brexit
as a critical juncture that would transform UK politics and policy-making. In
short, the British governing class is confronting a polycrisis of its own
making.

Is there now any way out of the post-Brexit morass? The temptation for Ministers
has been to further centralise power in Westminster and Whitehall in the name of
reasserting national sovereignty, in so doing intensifying the likelihood of
recurrent policy failures and fiascos. Yet leaving Europe ought to create
opportunities for institutional reform given the British state’s long-running
orientation towards stagnation and inertia. There is a vision of fundamental
change in which outside the EU, the UK government embraces wholesale reform of
the British state through decentralisation alongside a less dirigiste
policy-making style that effectively addresses the multidimensional policy
challenges that Brexit has thrown up by systematically involving external
interest groups. However, on present form, the likelihood of the UK political
class seizing that opportunity appears extremely remote (see Dudley and Gamble
Citation2023).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank Berthold Rittberger for his perceptive comments on an earlier
draft, as well as Jon Pierre for his help in clarifying our thinking on critical
junctures.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

CORRECTION STATEMENT

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected
in the online version. Please see Correction
(https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2023.2275860).

NOTES

1 Some legislation was not included in the Bill, notably primary legislation
relating to financial services and taxation.

2 Sadly, Mick Moran died only a year after his tutor, Tony King, in the same
year that he published his tribute to King.

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