Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Brexit Britain Is Tired of Weak Leaders

Voters says they want strong leaders, but that doesn’t mean they are giving up on democracy.

April 10, 2019 at 9:00 AM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

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Photographer: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg

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After almost three years of wrangling and gridlock following the 2016 European Union referendum, more than half of British voters say they long for a strong leader. It’s not an unreasonable demand in the current bleak situation.

The 2019 “Audit of Political Engagement” by the Hansard Society (a group co-led by the speakers of the two houses of the U.K. parliament) shows that opinions of the country’s system of government are at their lowest point in 15 years and that 54 percent of Britons say the U.K. needs “a strong leader who is willing to break the rules.”