A second referendum will sort everything, or maybe not
Nigel Farage wants us to believe that if the 2016 referendum does not result in the complete separation of the UK from the European Union, then democracy itself – perhaps even its very self – will have been traduced and the people betrayed. This is rubbish. But even if it was true, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.
Democracy is an evolutionary process. Until quite recently, most Britons were opposed to gay rights and same-sex marriage. Now they are fine with both. Three years ago, immigration was the most important topic in British politics and the driving force of the referendum. Now it isn’t. The fact is, the people can’t be relied on to make the right choice at any given moment anymore than a morbidly obese man can be trusted to avoid a lunch of steak and kidney pie followed by apple tart and custard. They have to be persuaded over time of what is true and what is reasonable and what isn’t.
During the referendum campaign, both sides lied their heads off. Leave campaigners started from the premise, since disproved, that EU migrants were an imminent threat to the British way of life. They wanted Poles and others removed, so that, like Farage, they no longer had to listen to “foreign” in the pub or supermarket or on the train home from work. Subsequently, after a retrospective rhetorical switch by, among others, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, they were assured that they had in fact voted Leave because of the “undemocratic” nature of the European Court of Justice (as if our domestic courts were ever elected) or because they wanted the UK to become “Global Britain,” trading feely with Mars.
At the same time, Remainers, of whom I am one, displayed the arrogance and sense of entitlement of a demographic used to getting its own way. The Cameron government built its case around a core of truth about the economic benefits of EU membership that they then blew up to the point at which it became a lie that exploded in their faces. They promised economic armageddon within a matter of weeks; what they got was a slowdown.
What is clear is that I’m not alone in my insouciance in respect of the democratic deficit. The two thirds of the electorate who didn’t bother to take part in last week’s European elections were handed the perfect opportunity to express their dismay over the way things are going. They chose not to take it. I have no doubt that, if pressed, many who sat on their hands would claim they did so in order to register their contempt for the process – though how that moves things along is beyond me. But isn’t it more likely that they weren’t going to waste precious time over something as abstruse and remote from their everyday lives as the nation’s future?
Last night’s Europa League final between Chelsea and Arsenal was played in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, 2,900 miles from London. I wonder how many of the thousands of fans who struggled to make it to the shores of the Caspian Sea bothered to cast their vote last Thursday. In most cases, I suspect, it won’t even have crossed their mind.
So much for the will of the people.
Not that Farage and the Brexit Party are in any mood to give ground. According to the former commodities trader, the Government has a sacred duty to respect the 17.4 million people who voted Leave in 2016 entirely without regard to the feelings or interests of the 16.1 million who voted Remain. It is as if the Leave verdict was like an execution: irreversible. But if there is a second referendum on the EU and the result goes the other way – especially if the outcome is more clear-cut than last time round – which of the two views expressed should be regarded as definitive? If the people change their minds, are they in some way betraying themselves?
Referendums are a particularly crude means of deciding complex issues. David Cameron was certainly under pressure to offer one, but he should have heeded the old barristers’ adage – never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer. We live in a representative democracy and Parliament is supposed to be sovereign. Indeed, it was to restore the untramelled authority of the Commons that the Leave campaign was launched in the first place. MPs – dolts and charlatans though some of them are – are paid to take big decisions on our behalf. They argue, they propose, they compromise. Sometimes they even listen. And where mistakes are made, they try to put them right.
Operating on the premise that we are all fallible and that no one parliament can bind its successors, they take the view that nothing is final and that the best that can be achieved without a thumping majority is improvement by increments. The fatal flaw of the referendum is that it conferred the power of final judgement on “the people,” many of whom were ignorant of the underlying issues and about as objective as a football fan at the Cup Final. To make things worse, MPs, once robbed of the point of their existence, didn’t know how to respond.
If it was left up to me, there wouldn’t be a second referendum. There would be a general election at the end of June, following which the Commons, regardless of who ended up as prime minister, would be required to make up its mind within six weeks and save what it could from the shambles of the last three years. The Brexit Party would probably win at least 50 seats and ally with the Tory rump to press for a No Deal departure. On the other side of the aisle, having first agreed pacts on the ground to avoid cancelling each other out, the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP and others would likely experience a similar surge in support. Everything would then depend on Labour, led by the increasingly Theresa May-like Jeremy Corbyn, the bulk of whose members would probably agree to a version of the deal already negotiated with Brussels provided only that it was allied to membership of the Customs Union.
A settlement along these lines would, in my view, be passed by a majority of MPs, if only out of sheer exhaustion, with Nigel Farage, for all his bluster, reduced to the political equivalent of Francis Bacon’s Screaming Pope. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t end there. Short of an improbable all-party pact to keep the final decision literally in-House, the deal would then have to be put to a second, confirmatory vote, with No Deal and Remain as the alternatives.
The ballot paper, inevitably, would read something like this:
Part One
Parliament has agreed an exit deal for Britain from the European Union that has been endorsed by the European Commission. Do you accept or reject the deal?
• ACCEPT _____
• REJECT _____
Part Two
If a majority of voters rejects the parliamentary settlement, would you wish Britain to leave the EU without a deal (No Deal) OR to continue as a full member (Remain)?
• NO DEAL ____
• REMAIN ____
It is, of course, possible that No Deal would win the day, allowing Nigel Farage to crack a bottle of English sparkling wine against the bow of HMS Royal Sovereign. Or voters might choose to take us back to the future and come down on the side of Remain. But – speaking as a top QC who has never lost a case (Editor: are you sure?) – I doubt it. Compromise, through gritted teeth, would be seen as the only rational way out of the Brexit nightmare.
Thereafter, having quietly reaffirmed our membership of Europol, Euratom, Erasmus, Galileo and the European Space Agency, Britain would be free to negotiate its long-term trading relationship with the EU and tackle all the issues that since Cameron’s departure from Downing Street have piled up in Parliament’s in-tray. John Bercow could retire to write a musical about his time as Speaker, and the rest of us could carry on watching football.