In 2016, just over half of the British public Britain voted to take Britain out of the European Union. Sadly it's not the first time in history that a nation has fallen for  siren sounds and voluntarily voted away the best options for its future. So who is to blame ?

• David Cameron. Obviously it is firstly the fault of the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, for taking such a reckless political gamble as to have the nation's future determined by referendum, rather than by the normal parliamentary process. For the best part of 400 years, Britain has relied on Parliament and elected governments to manage the affairs of the country, and take the important decisions. That's what parliamentary democracy is all about; as a system, it is not perfect, but it is generally accepted to be the least imperfect of the different models of governance that are available.
     Today, in western democracies,  we elect governments to run our countries, on the assumption that those governments will rely on expert evidence and advisers to take the best decisions. Inevitably the decisions are not always the best possible, and the experts can get things wrong, as they did over Iraq with Weapons of mass destruction. But we elect parliaments and governments to make decisions, on the assumption that those making the decisions generally understand the issues.
    In a referendum, a collective decision is taken by people many of whom fail to understand the issues, and enough of whom vote on the basis of impulse or prejudice, or for people who best instrumentalise popular prejudices and fears.  Populism is a great vote-winner, when populist politicians offer rosy visions of the future, however unlikely these visions may be.
     David Cameron succumbed to an illusion that is fatal to politicians; the illusion of invincibility. When he called the referendum, not for one moment did he imagine that he could possibly lose, that the British people could possibly vote for Brexit. If he had done so, he would not have called the referendum. So the first person to blame for Britain's decision to leave the EU is David Cameron. His will be remembered as possibly the worst move of any British prime minister in the 21st century.
• The Labour Party. The Labour Party has to shoulder a heavy share of responsibility for Brexit, on account of its half-hearted support for the "Remain" campaign, and more generally because it has been unable to form a strong and credible opposition to the Conservatives since losing power in 2010. Had the party chosen the far more experienced and respected David Miliband as leader in 2010, rather than Ed Miliband, "Red Ed", it is quite possible that Labour would have returned to power after five years of Cameron Tory government, and the referendum would not have been called.
    Choosing the rather limp Jeremy Corbyn as leader further decredibilised the party. While it should have been fighting tooth and nail from the very start of the referendum campaign to get Labour supporters to vote "remain", Labour's effort was, until mid June, pretty half-hearted. Corbyn could only give the "remain" camp a ranking of 7/10 when asked how keen he was to remain in the EU; and not until two weeks before the election did the rest of the party suddenly realise that the result of a "leave" vote would not just be a disastrous British exit from the EU, but would also give the UK the most right-wing and labour-unfriendly government it has had for over a century. Labour's effort was too little too late.
• The Conservative Party. The Conservative Party should have taken decisive action decades ago to quell the Eursceptics on its right wing. Instead it just tried to accommodate them.
• British politicians and public officials generally speaking. Anyone who travels regularly to other parts of the European Union will have been struck by the difference between the way other countries display their participation in the EU with pride, while Britain seems to pretend the EU doesn't exist. Go anywhere in Europe, and the EU flag flies beside the national flag; go almost anywhere in Britain, and there is not an EU flag to be seen. A few town halls bravely fly the flag on official occasions, but most of the time it is just not there. No wonder British people feel a them and us divide between the UK and the EU.
     Instead of talking up Britain's role as a member of the Europe Union, UK politicians have too often referred to the European Union largely to blame it when things go wrong, rarely to comment favourably on the many benefits derived from it.
• The European Commission and the EU in general. The EU Commission must also take a good part of the blame for so many people in Britain choosing Brexit. The EU has moved forward at breakneck speed, since the EEC was first created, and it has done so with scant or no regard for public opinion in member states. When the EEC was just a collection of 12 states or less, its expansion was generally seen as a good idea. Once it passed the 20-state mark, many outside Brussels, including many national leaders and parliaments, became wary of expansion, but the Commission ploughed on regardless. Today it still wants expansion to include countries such as Albania and Turkey, even though public opinion across Europe, and local political opinion, is strongly against this. This way of operating cannot continue, as it will inevitably lead to the breakup of the whole European Union...  if it has not already done so.
    With regard to the Euro, the European Union seriously damaged its credibility by rushing into a project that attempted to unite countries with seriously different economies and living standards, within a single currency. Many experts said from the start that this was courting disaster. As generally happens, the experts were right, and disaster came with the collapse of economies across southern Europe.
    With the shambolic and fragile Euro as the most talked-about illustration of its achievements, no wonder the EU gets a bad press across large parts of the continent.
• The British media.  Unlike the media in other countries, the UK print media has long been controlled by neo-conservative Eurosceptic billionnaires, who are opposed to any form of "big government", and therefore by definition even more opposed to a "government" that in their view is just superfluous. Thus large parts of the UK media, notably the popular press, has for decades played a major role in promoting any story that damages the image or reputation of the EU, while failing to report the stories that show the advantages and benefits of the EU.  No wonder so many people, in the runup to the Brexit referendum, complained that they did not really know anything about Europe. 
• Boris Johnson. For putting personal ambition above the interests of party or country, for misleading voters with fantasy figures, and instrumentalising prejudices about immigration.