Thread by @dakami

I know it's a little presumptuous for an American to comment on Brexit, but hear me out.

One of the things I've really admired about British political architecture has been the concept of Shadow Secretaries. At any moment, there are certainly going to be parties not in power.

But political winds may change, new coalitions may form, and who is in charge of what may change. That new talent is *ready* for this eventuality, already trained and known and competent to the degree one can be without actually having the job -- that's pretty cool!

Of course, we have some of that in America -- ranking members from each party on each committee in our legislature -- but Shadow Secretaries deal directly with executing the burdens of statecraft. And they are burdens. Policy is *hard*, execution doubly so.

I like working systems, they're in somewhat short supply, and I've been trying to understand why. One thing you see in working systems is that they adapt to changing conditions. What worked perfectly before, may not work at all now. It often takes new leadership to handle that.

That the British system grooms, briefs, prepares, identifies, and supports that new talent -- it's succession planning, the mark of working systems that last. A sufficiently broken system eventually falls back to...politics by other means.

I like and respect the shadow concept.

So, now the touchy thing.

I do think Brexit is the will of the British people. I don't think *this* Brexit is. Like I said, policy is hard work, execution doubly so. I think people assumed triggering Article 50 would be a sort of forcing function, summoning required talent.

I think everybody's created situations they hoped would commit them to success. Doesn't always work out as planned, does it?

Again, I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of British society, let alone the roiling internal dynamics giving us Kremlinology West. But, if I may:

@threadreaderapp unroll me