I’ve been loosely following the events persisting in the Brexit issue of Great Britain. Many people are protesting (EU supporters march in London, denouncing Brexit vote), and the leadership is in turmoil (David Cameron’s dumb referendum). Both articles emphasize for me the huge need for emotional maturity in the leadership of a mature culture, underlining that the Brexit process is NOT a good example. Leaders need to be statespersons, not politicians, the subject of a previous post (What values would be important . . ., part 3) and one that I will likely expand upon in the future.

The denouncing article notes:

One organizer, comedian Mark Thomas, says British MPs should not legislate for an exit based on a result driven by anti-EU campaigners exaggerations and distortions on immigration and EU spending. “We would accept the result of the referendum if it was fought on a level playing field. But it was full of misinformation,” Thomas said.

The Cameron article notes that the leadership of Great Britain is now in turmoil, and underlines:

In a functioning representative democracy referenda are almost always a bad idea. They necessarily reduce complex policy choice to a light switch. They never unite, but divide. . . . Edmund Burke, the intellectual father of British Conservatism. Burke understood that a representative democracy was not a menu from which you chose the issues you were electing representatives to decide — and the ones you retained a personal veto on. Our politicians are elected to make the hardest and most painful choices, not merely to decide what to spend where. . . . Burke defined the obligation eloquently: . . . “Government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment and not of inclination … Your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment: and he betrays instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”