Brexit: an inevitable "perfect storm"?

There's an interesting narrative that explains that "Brexit" was an inevitable event for Britain. This author looked at a couple of different perspectives on this narrative recently, but it's also worthwhile to look at how a confluence of events, political short-termism and an intellectual failure at Westminster led to making "Brexit", and even now a "no-deal Brexit", seem inevitable.

The author has been reading "All Out War", a political masterpiece that explains the narrative of Brexit within the context of the Conservative Party. What's striking about the decision of David Cameron to call for a referendum on EU membership was how it was made to seem like an inevitable decision due to a combination of events and political self-interest.
The problem started when, in order to become party leader in 2005, he indulged the whims of the Eurosceptic right in his party by saying he would withdraw the party from the wider EPP group in the European Parliament. In spite of his rhetoric of being a strong leader, he gradually surrendered more and more ground to the hard-right fringe in the party; and once they smelt blood, they kept coming back for larger and larger bites. It became impossible to stop feeding the crocodile.
After he had failed to win a majority in 2010, his decision to join a coalition with the LibDems had two main political effects: it angered the hard-right within his party (leading to Cameron's need to appease them further, even if only superficially), and it also led to UKIP becoming the third party in British politics. Cameron's decision to announce an EU referendum in his "Bloomberg" speech in early 2013 was a sign of a political leader only capable of reacting to events: he felt forced into doing it due to the double threat from both UKIP to the party, and to the ever more vocal hard-right within the party itself.

Some question whether the referendum decision was really inevitable. The answer seems to be that had Cameron not acted when he did (with UKIP on course to win the 2014 European elections), he would have been challenged for the leadership soon afterwards by someone with the support of the hard-right in the party; and his successor would have demanded a referendum in any case. So seen this way, the EU referendum would have happened regardless, only under slightly different circumstances. The referendum, given the confluence of circumstances, seems to have an inevitable outcome.
Another "alternate narrative" would be to question what would have happened if Cameron had decided after the 2010 election to rule as a minority government instead of a coalition. Would there have been a referendum in that case? The LibDems as outside government might have become stronger in parliament by being able to challenge the Tories on key issues, while Cameron himself would have been much more vulnerable to challenges from the hard-right in his own party as a minority government (i.e. somewhat like the situation that May faces now).
But this is doubtless what Cameron would have thought himself at the time, and makes it all the more unlikely; Cameron ideologically had more in common with the LibDem leader, Nick Clegg, than those in the far-right in his own party, making the coalition something that would have temperamentally suited Cameron, given what we know of his personality. That "what if?" situation was never a likely one. The idea of a "historic" coalition would also have appealed to his more vain sensibilities (of wanting a "legacy"), while it would keep the hard-right in his party at bay. As was reported later, whenever the hard-right complained of a coalition policy, Cameron always blamed the LibDems; while whenever the LibDems complained of a coalition policy, Cameron always blamed the hard right. It was a politically-convenient, if typically short-sighted, strategy.

Winning the 2015 election made the referendum a certainty, while wider events in Europe - the migration crisis of that summer - made the referendum an even more politically-charged event. Losing the referendum was never something that Cameron seems to have seriously considered until perhaps the day of the vote itself (when he wrote a speech for both outcomes). As said elsewhere, because the referendum was manipulated by the "Brexit Agenda" into representing a plebiscite on the whole "status quo" of modern Britain, anyone who felt let-down by the government in some way could use the vote to express their frustration. Meanwhile, the heartstrings of the older cohort of the electorate were being pulled by a combination of nostalgia and hysteria to "take back control". The referendum result was not inevitable, but the combination of those factors already mentioned skewed the likelihood of the result going the way of "leave" enough to make the difference.

As the result caught the political establishment completely by surprise, how would they react to it? Thus far, the political establishment - in the guise of David Cameron - had reacted to events by giving in to their whims at almost every juncture. In short, the establishment had shown itself to be weak and easily-swayed, more interested in short-term political survival than thinking of the longer game. The same was shown to be true of his successor, Theresa May.
However, May's personality and perspective couldn't seem more different from Cameron's. At a time of apparent "national crisis", Cameron had formed the coalition; this had been an act that, on the surface at least, seemed to stick it to the hard-right, and put "national interest" before party politicking. Time would soon show the error of this kind view of Cameron's essentially self-serving character.
May's political assessment of the situation after the referendum lacked any of Cameron's political subtleties. Seeing things through the narrow lens of Westminster politics, leave had "won" (regardless of by how modest the difference was); by the adversarial rationale of traditional British politics, therefore, she decided with her adviser, Nick Timothy, that Britain had to choose a path outside of the single market and customs union. Cameron had "lost", and with it so had the whole liberal, metropolitan part of British society. Seeming even more short-sighted in her thinking than Cameron, May decided to completely dismiss the wishes and rights of half of the population. In her eyes, it seems they no longer existed as people.

This explained how May's first party conference as Prime Minister felt like a complete embrace (if not theft) of the cultural world-view of UKIP, with her government now transformed into a UKIP government in all but name. Given the adversarial nature of British politics, it seems inevitable that Cameron's successor would have been either a supporter of "leave", or someone (like May) who felt obliged to follow this course of action to the bitter end, regardless. May's character has since shown that her stubborn personality, and her intellectual rigidity, is what has marked how her key decisions (and missteps) have been made.
Given the unique circumstances posed by the referendum, the formation of a "national government" would have been a more sensible act afterwards. But as the "coalition" of 2010 was formed out of Cameron's opportunism rather than genuine bipartisanship, this only demonstrated that there was simply no real culture for such a thing in Westminster. Politics had become too adversarial and those in power lacked any intellectual flexibility. They had simply become good at finding the faults in others and someone else to blame for their own failings. It was simply the way things had always been done; to survive till the next electoral cycle, whichever way you can.

It is also this poisonous culture that has shown the deficiencies of Westminster when brought up against a genuine national crisis in "Brexit". Theresa May's manner of dealing with "Brexit" and the EU negotiations has been all about short-term survival.
Her early decision to leave the single market and customs union was to show she was "serious" about understanding Brexit, regardless of the longer-term consequences. Her decision to invoke Article 50 used the same narrow logic; to appease those in the party who thought she would somehow go back on her word. Since the negotiations with the EU started, it has always been about trying to find an approach that somehow appeased both sides of her party, with the EU as an afterthought. In the end, this has meant that, since invoking Article 50, every time she has prevented the party from self-destructing by finding some nonsensical stop-gap, she has only reduced yet further the amount of time available to get a deal from the EU before the time runs out. Short-term politicking only works for so long in the outside world.
In this way, Brexit has shown to the world the limited skill-set available to the British political establishment. As no deal that would be acceptable to the EU would be able to get a majority in Westminster due to the level of bitter division, the inevitable consequence is Britain leaving the EU without a deal. Something which is meant to politically impossible becomes unavoidable in the face of political infighting and indecision. All the evidence is that the government are more interested in avoiding the short-term blame for any chaos that happens, saying that it was somehow all the EU's fault. They will fall back on the age-old excuses, even in the face of their political self-destruction.

In that sense, Brexit looks more like an inevitable "perfect storm": with a "house divided" and a political class completely out of their depth, it's hard to see what the state of British politics will look like a year from now.