This is the most pointless, nerdy thing imaginable, but I’m going to post it anyway. As you may know, Britain has basically three options when it comes to Brexit:
- Remain: cancel the whole thing and stay in the EU.
- May Deal: go ahead with Brexit on the terms negotiated by prime minister Theresa May.
- No Deal: exit the EU with no deal at all in place.
A recent poll asked the British public what they thought about each of these options. Here’s how they responded:
Take a careful look at this:
- Remain is preferred to the May Deal.
- The May Deal is preferred to No Deal
- But No Deal is preferred to Remain.
This is an example of a hoary old political science result: namely that preferences are not transitive. Even if you prefer A to B, and B to C, you might still prefer C to A. However, real-life examples of this are hard to find, and textbooks often have to resort to obviously clunky, made-up examples. But this one is real! Textbook authors everywhere will be eternally grateful to the British public for this.