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this post might be too long, and it may be information that some find pretty general knowledge but just in case some members here haven't known this its worth trying to explain.
democracy can not work when you have the levels of inequality we have today. this is not inequality that is limited to the UK only, but its inequality that involves the entire world. inequality is what ensures a democracy never works, ( democracy by definition means "rule of the people" when you translate it from its greek origin) and it is exactly what Karl Marx refers to as the class struggle. the class struggle is the age old conflict between the ruling business class ( merchants, traders, land owners, massive corporations, banks, and multinationals who are simply too big to fail or collapse) and the working class or workers if you will ( farmers, slaves, the working class). what democracy does is it gives power to the average joe, which makes him capable of changing policy which does not always mean good news for the ruling class who have differing interests, and hence why the ruling class or what we call today as the under 1% simply dislike democracy because quite simply it moves the power from their hands to the hands of the general population. lets not forget that politicians need money to run for office and to run for elections and hence the ruling class pretty much are in the driver seat for the simple reason that wealth brings power and vice versa, this means the politicians in return will ensure the interests of what Adam Smith calls the master class are maintained, enhanced, and protected. consider for instance what Aristotle ( the name of his book is: politics) had to stay on democracy, according to him democracy is actually the best political system however its main flaw is that it enables the poor to gang up on the wealthy taking away much of their power and subsequently their riches. to counter this pickle he predicted democracy would face as a result of inequality he suggested creating what is known as the welfare state in an attempt to reduce inequality which in return would reduce the corrosive power it had over democracy.
James Madison on the other hand reached the same conclusion as Aristotle however he proposed a different solution. Madison believed that power had to be in the hands of the wealthy and or the ruling class as they were the most responsible. this in practical terms was enforced via the senate which was home to the rich minority and hence maintained their power despite giving the poor the vote ( NOTE at the time the senate was not elected but was appointed), which just like the welfare idea was meant to ensure that the masses would not gang up on the minority who had the riches and there fore the majority can not rob the minority of its wealth. as a result of this set up democracy does not entirely mean power to the people.
Now to put this into the brexit context, and here its strictly my point of view and is therefor not to be considered as a fact. with the referendum i feel the people just replaced one ruling elite with another ruling elite ( i,e out with Brussels in with the ruling elite in london) . the big elephant in the room which is the economical hardships the people felt were not the result of immigrants but in fact the result of the neo-liberal economical policies that were applied back during thatchers time. however you can't really scapegoat that, so the immigrant reason was in part the scapegoat used to make sure the blame was not set on those who benefited the most from the neo-liberal economical views. the out vote does not mean that the average british citizen who feels he has been robbed of his job thanks to the immigrants will get his or her job as a result. NOTE: i am in no way or form implying that the citizens who voted out purely based their choice on their hate for immigrants not at all, i am fully aware people have had issues with how the EU goes around handling issues thanks in part to their bureaucratic system among other reasons.
the same principle in my opinion applies to the whole fiasco taking place in the US presidential elections, the level of inequality has led to the scapegoating of other factors that in reality don't play any role in the state things have reached too with regards to the growing gap between the rich and the poor. throw in things like fear, which truly works as evident by the rise of trump and you pretty much get a clear picture of how these tactics work, it goes with out saying once in power chances are trump won't fulfill any of the over the top rhetoric's he pledges in his rallies.
there are factors off course that are used to ensure the masses are herded towards a specific point of view, things like education ( an uneducated population is much easier to mold) couple that with the power of mass media and you pretty much have total control over the masses who will be ready to accept the scapegoat presented to them when in reality the issue at hand has very different reasons behind it.
if some one is interested in more details you can start off with these then find your way around to more sources:
aristole:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle
james madison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison
karl marx: the class struggle
and finally i recommend watching : the requiem for the american dream.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3270538/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1