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In the whole Brexit debate it seems to me that one thing is clear: there’s a disconnect between some of the realities in the UK and on the continent, which leads to intuitive misunderstandings (thread)
Let’s start with politics: the UK first-past-the-post two party system sets completely different incentives from the proportional multi-party-systems on the Continent. (I’m not saying better or worse, but different)
The thoroughly trained and excellent intuition of UK politicians (@GregHands has excellent political instincts) do not apply easily to the continent as I would argue is illustrated here
@GregHands The tweet refers to Weber being out of the game. He was the Spitzenkandidat of the largest political group. In a two-party system not selecting him would be the end of Spitzenkandidaten. But in a multi-party system?
@GregHands Here’s the composition of the EP. EPP is the largest group, but any two-party combination S&D+Greens, S&D+Renew Europe, Greens+Renew Europe beats them (the latter is close and I’m not sure will stand ultimately). 
@GregHands But that’s not the only intuitive difference. The other is law v. politics. In the UK there is a clear winner: politics. Supremacy of parliament means that “unconstitutional” really just means “not ok, of course until parliament changes its mind”.
@GregHands There is no judicial review of statutes. No written constitution to limit parliamentary power. There’s the ECHR and EU law and both caused an irritation in the system that has never been digested.
@GregHands Continental systems (and most countries elsewhere including most common law countries) have a written constitution and judicial review that can kill unconstitutional laws.
@GregHands That means the fight law v. Politics is not clearly won by politics. Law has a strong hand. That is at times challenged as a matter of political discussion (the debate in the US has the title “countermajoritarian difficulty”), but it is the reality. academic.oup.com/icon/article/1…
@GregHands Here again the very real difference leads to lot of intuitively wrong takes. On both sides of the channel. Make of this what you want - an argument for Brexit, for change, for more compromises. For me, it is an argument for early education on a variety of systems.
