23 June – First or Last Word?

The image which for me most poignantly symbolises the outcome of the referendum appeared in The Times the following day: an EU flag hangs limply from a first floor window; below a passing London cabbie has unfurled a huge union jack through his driver’s window (image also published on Open Democracy). If, as one suspects, he’d voted Leave, he should have been astonished and exultant. But his expression is grim and apprehensive – as if he were bearing his standard into a warzone.

There’s no reason why we should place our faith in them, but the pollsters tell us that a significant number of Leave voters now regret their decision. They say that if only they’d known that the pound would fall off a cliff, if only it had been explained that £350 million a week would not immediately, or ever, find its way to the NHS, that the immigrants would keep coming, that our former European partners would be in no mood to do the UK favours, that Scotland may secede from the Union, that inward investment would dry up and jobs – perhaps theirs – would be at risk – then they would have voted differently.

 

Image courtesy of Mick Baker via Flickr

Now it’s too late. Four million signatures on a petition will not secure a rerun of the referendum. Nor should they. The result was close but clear. It can’t simply be cancelled.

But should that referendum be the last word on the UK’s membership of the European Union?

There are three important reasons why it should not.

• First, it gives rise to an apparent conflict between the will of the electorate and the sovereignty of Parliament which must be resolved.
• Second, the dubious reliability of some of the claims made during the campaign taken together with the slender margin of Brexit’s victory mean that we cannot be confident that the outcome represents the settled will of the electorate.
• Third, it cannot, partly for that reason, provide a clear mandate for our legislators. Voters were asked whether in principle they wanted the UK to remain in or leave the EU. But they were not in a position to judge whether in practical terms the consequences of exit would be preferable to the conditions of membership. Those consequences will only become clear in the months, perhaps years, ahead.

None of these issues would justify putting aside the decision of 23 June. In any event, it has already set the Brexit process in train. But it surely cannot be acceptable in principle, nor practically can it be in the national interest that such a far-reaching and irreversible decision should rest on so flawed a process and so doubtful an outcome.

For all these reasons, the electorate should be given the opportunity to confirm or overturn its decision of 23 June once the likely terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU are properly understood. In short, if democracy demanded that the people should have the first word, democracy demands with equal force that they should also have the last.

A Flawed Referendum and an Inconclusive Outcome

The referendum was flawed from conception to conclusion and much of the fault lies in the design of the process itself, or rather the lack of it. With a little forethought, a basic understanding of best practice elsewhere and more thorough planning, many of the problems we are now facing could have been avoided.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that for the leading players on either side the referendum was little more than a political game. Few were prepared for the outcome and even fewer for its constitutional, political and economic implications.

Indeed, the referendum was not held because the Government felt that it was constitutionally desirable but because the Prime Minister judged it an expedient means of appeasing the euro-sceptic wing of his party and neutralising the electoral threat of UKIP. He simply didn’t anticipate losing.

Image courtesy of Tom Evans via Wikimedia Commons

Had he considered that possibility, he may, for example, have made clear in advance that the referendum would be advisory rather than binding – as indeed it is – thus preserving the constitutional roles of both Parliament and the Government in responding to its outcome.

He could also have ensured that the electorate would be able to reach a properly informed decision by making clear at the outset that a leave vote on 23 June would automatically trigger a second, separate referendum when the UK’s negotiating position was known.

He could have allowed more time for the campaign in order to allow the debate to develop and the public to be fully aware of and engaged with it.

He could have established a threshold for change in order to remove the element of doubt from a narrow margin of victory.

He could have safeguarded the decision-making process by providing for an independent and authoritative means of disseminating reliable public information and auditing the claims of the rival campaigns.

He would not have had to look far to benefit from the experience and expertise of others. Ireland has held no fewer than 39 referenda on issues affecting its constitution, the last 11 under the aegis of a Referendum Commission.

Even a cursory study of the most recent, the (same sex) Marriage referendum held in 2015, would have been particularly instructive. First, the proposition itself was debated and developed over several months in an exemplary exercise in participative democracy organised by a Constitutional Convention. The 100-strong Convention was made up of 66 citizens selected at random but reflecting a cross-section of Irish society along with 33 Parliamentarians apportioned according to the strength of the political parties in the Dáil and Seanad, and an independent Chair.

Its recommendations (in favour of equal marriage rights) were then debated and approved by first the Dáil and then the Seanad before being put to the electorate.

Such an exhaustive democratic process, over the course of two years, not only ensured that the issues were well understood and debated and that every group and individual had an opportunity to express opinions and make representations, including in evidence submitted to the Convention. It also meant that the Irish Parliament could play its proper role and, ultimately, that the public could have confidence in both the process and, ultimately, its outcome.

The Yes Equality campaign for same-sex marriage in Ireland. Image courtesy of William Murphy via Wikimedia Commons

Moreover, the Referendum Commission performed one important function which was critically absent from our recent referendum. It has a key role in safeguarding the probity of debate and a responsibility to set the public record straight when campaign organisations promote arguments which are factually inaccurate or misleading.

The introduction of any or all of these or similar measures in the UK would have been contested and debated. But they – or at least some of them – would have provided much needed confidence in the integrity of the referendum process.

Without them, the status of its outcome is unclear and unsatisfactory, not least in the context of the UK’s constitutional settlement.

Legitimacy – The Problem of Direct Democracy

Implicit in the nature of our representative democracy is the understanding, of citizens as well as politicians, that the electorate cannot be expected and should not be asked to reach well-informed and sound judgements on every complex issue which confronts them. Instead, they send their representatives to Parliament and require them, on licence, to do that job for them.

In his column in The Telegraph a few days after the referendum, Boris Johnson argued that “the number one issue was control – a sense that British democracy was being undermined by the EU system, and that we should restore to the people that vital power: to kick out their rulers at elections.”

Image courtesy of AdamProctor2006 via Wikimedia Commons

But in side-lining Parliament and abrogating its powers, it could be argued that the referendum itself effectively subverted the principle of sovereignty. Though across party divides the House of Commons overwhelmingly supports the UK’s continued membership of the UK, its decision-making powers were stripped from it. Politicians whose vague plans for Brexit would never have survived the forensic scrutiny of their colleagues were turned loose to work their rhetoric on the public instead. The referendum’s outcome now means that Parliamentarians who reject Brexit by a margin of more than three to one must legislate to make it happen.

At the very least, this represents a serious conflict of mandates and a constitutional impasse. Does the referendum trump or usurp the sovereignty of Parliament? Should elected Members of Parliament set aside their own collective judgement and implement a plan which many believe will do catastrophic damage to the national interest?

This is not a simple question of democracy. It is rather a conflict between two legitimate concepts of it and the Government and Parliament have a duty either to determine which version they should uphold or find a way of squaring the circle.

A second, binding referendum held on the terms on which the UK can hope to negotiate withdrawal from the EU could come as near as possible to meeting that need – even if it cannot be known how those negotiations will be concluded. Only if the electorate then confirms its will to leave the EU, should Parliament – rather than the Prime Minister alone – activate Article 50 and put in train an irrevocable process.

The case for a second referendum is all the stronger given the growing concerns that the original decision was not well informed and reasonably made.

Reason and the Referendum

Very few democracies determine national policy by plebiscite. Of course it is not always practical to do so. But there are issues of principle too and they are as old as democracy itself.

Plato lived in its first golden age but he was no democrat. He believed above all in the primacy of reason and that the public good could not best be served by placing ultimate power in the hands of an electorate so easily swayed by the rhetoric of ambitious politicians.

This was not just abstract speculation: Plato watched as Athenian citizens allowed themselves to be persuaded into a ruinous war with Sparta which saw their city occupied, their power broken, their democracy usurped by oligarchs and the whole of Greece impoverished.

Irrespective of whether the decision of 23 June was right or wrong, it is legitimate to ask whether it was rational. Did we reach a judgement on the balance of the evidence available to us? Were we swayed by argument or by rhetoric?

Remain’s case was flawed in many ways: some of its claims were not well grounded; others were exaggerated. It focused too little on the positive benefits of membership and too much on the negative consequences of withdrawal. But its arguments were certainly the more firmly rooted in reliable evidence and supported by the more credible and numerous witnesses. Moreover, many of its warnings have been borne out by what has happened to the country’s economic and political landscape since the vote for Brexit.

But there is no doubt that Leave had the better slogans. Remain believed that ultimately voters who felt no real affection for the EU would behave rationally and avoid the risk that Brexit represented. Leave countered through a twin stratagem, first to neutralise rational argument and then to bypass it altogether.

The observation by Michael Gove, ironically Leave’s leading intellectual, that “the people of this country have had enough of experts” was perhaps the only response he could have made to the weight of evidence stacked against his campaign. Though its implication may be that it’s better to be led by people who don’t know what they’re talking about than by those who do, it was devastatingly effective. In essence, it gave people permission to disregard the urgings of their head in favour of those of the heart, to substitute emotion for reason.

Image courtesy of Paul Clarke via Wikimedia Commons

That this was a deliberate strategy was chillingly confirmed post-referendum by Arron Banks, the leading funder of the Leave campaign who is now considering the founding of a new political party. He noted that “the Remain campaign featured fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. It doesn’t work. You’ve got to connect with people emotionally.”

Here, Leave’s second tactic gave them free rein. “Take back control” was a brilliant slogan and one ruthlessly exploited by the campaign’s leaders. They did not seek to explain how control could be taken back, from whom, for what purpose and with what outcome but they did not need to. The three simple words resonated with people who felt that they had lost control over their lives and were ready to blame the EU and its proxies – immigrants, foreigners, bureaucrats – for both the economic disadvantages and the lack of national identity they so keenly felt.

Leave calculated that the constant repetition of their slogans – whether in TV debates or on the side of campaign buses – would more than compensate for the lack of consistency in its arguments. Thus it was that one old Etonian could cast himself as the people’s champion against the elitism of another, that while claiming that millions of Turkish migrants were set to invade the UK it could dismiss its opponents’ largely well-founded warnings of economic disaster as ‘project fear’, that it could accuse Remain of using dodgy data while the central plank of its own campaign was a much condemned but never corrected falsehood about the size of the UK’s budget contribution to the EU.

It all worked. Enough voters suspended their disbelief and voted Brexit. Leave won, not so much by the strength of its case or the weight of its evidence as by hook and crook. A referendum which should have seen a rational contest of arguments was won by cynical deception and clever manipulation, the extent of which became almost immediately apparent as within hours of the result Leave’s leaders began to row back from almost all their key pledges.

An Irish-style Referendum Commission might have provided much needed protection from the black propaganda of both sides. As it was, the BBC provided our best hope and it dodged its responsibility.

The one authoritative and more-or-less trusted organisation which could have helped voters distinguish between fact, fantasy and fiction simply stood aside and allowed nature to take its course.

The BBC’s concept of impartiality meant, rightly, that it could not take sides between Remain and Leave. But a public service broadcaster with a mission to inform and educate (as well as entertain) also chose not to distinguish between truth and falsehood, balancing every claim with the rival’s refutation whether or not it or either could be justified. True, its website featured an excellent Reality Check page. But how many voters burrowed beyond the news headlines to an analysis of the rhetoric behind them?

Some within the BBC are now acknowledging the need to reconsider its role in major national debates of this nature. That is welcome but the horse has bolted.

Plato was right: the risk of direct democracy is that those do not feel constrained by the rules of reason and free to appeal to irrational instinct gain an unfair but often conclusive advantage with often unforeseen and sometimes disastrous consequences.

In the circumstances, it is difficult to believe that the referendum decision was well-made or that it should stand, on its own, as the settled view of the electorate.

The Dangers of Division

Politicians have, with few exceptions, accepted the referendum’s outcome as final and, whatever their misgivings, committed themselves to implementing it. This may be the easy option but it is not necessarily the right one. It is also likely to pose more problems than it solves.

The referendum has divided the nation. Whether the Government pursues Brexit or somehow evades it, at least half the electorate will believe that it has been betrayed.

An unexpected and unreliable outcome has plunged country in chaos. The Prime Minister has resigned and the Leader of the Opposition has lost the confidence of his Parliamentary party. The economy is badly damaged and the UK’s future is at best uncertain. For the next two years at least, politics and government will be consumed by the consequences of this summer’s referendum and much else that needs to be done will remain undone.

The stakes are high. They have not only to do with the UK’s short-term political and long-term economic interests but also its social cohesion.

If voters did not have an informed and balanced understanding of the issues of EU membership, what were they actually voting for – or against? And why, after he had secured his victory and got his country back, did the taxi driver look so glum?

In the streets and on the doorsteps, it was clear that the Leave message had resonated. The issue of ‘control’ was important but concerns about immigration were a still more compelling motivation for the majority of voters, particularly among people struggling at the bottom of the economic and educational ladders. They did indeed want to “take back control” of decision-making, spending and borders. They were neither persuaded that the UK benefited from EU membership nor, ultimately, cowed by the warnings of Brexit’s consequences.

But for them hostility to the EU was at least in part a proxy for much wider grievances. These were the ‘real, ordinary, decent, oppressed people’ who, according to Nigel Farage, took the opportunity of the referendum to register a protest “against the multinationals…against the big merchant banks …against big politics… against lies, corruption and deceit”.

Many of them had principled objections to EU membership but many too – perhaps a majority – were simply voting against the status quo.

If this was at it seems a protest against the establishment, the privileged and powerful leaders of the Leave campaign may only be accidental beneficiaries. Moreover, their lease may well be short, particularly as those who secured their triumph for them begin to realise that they were duped and that Brexit has brought no relief for their hardships and grievances.

How will they vent their anger and frustration when they find that far from improving, life is becoming tougher for them as the economy contracts, jobs become increasingly insecure, taxes rise and public spending is cut and that the austerity they were seeking to escape is bearing yet more heavily on them?

The rise in reported racist abuse and assault provides the earliest indication of what might be to come. Leaving the EU on a false prospectus, especially if the price of Brexit is borne by those who can least afford it, could have very damaging consequences for us all.

As a nation, we ought to have as full as possible an understanding of what we stand to gain and lose from leaving the EU and to be confident that we have made the right decision. We are not currently in that position.

What Next?

The EU referendum process was flawed from beginning to end. Ignoring those deficiencies, as many politicians are currently are, does not make them any less serious or any less a potential threat to the national interest.

Running a referendum completely outside rather than integrated with our parliamentary system was one of the gravest mistakes. But it can be corrected. As the former Cabinet Secretary Lord Butler told The House magazine, “the referendum is merely advisory, and Parliament and the Government do maintain their sovereignty in law”. Though he warned that any attempt to frustrate the UK’s withdrawal from the EU would trigger a “major political crisis”, he also acknowledged that it would be “paradoxical” to prevent Parliament from acting as it sees fit.

Despite the furore it will cause, that is what should now happen. Parliament should insist on the holding of a second referendum which, when we are all properly aware of the consequences of leaving the EU, establishes the informed and settled will of the electorate.

It will take courage and conviction for politicians to take this course and it will be real test of our democracy’s robustness. But it can be done and, in the national interest, it should be.

 

Biography

Peter Bradley is the director of Speakers’ Corner Trust, a national charity which promotes free expression, public debate and active citizenship. SCT has developed a network of local projects in the UK and a national initiative in Nigeria which provide opportunities for people to speak about the issues which matter to them – from global warming to public services to football. SCT has also developed a number of programmes, including its online Forum for Debate, designed to stimulate and showcase ideas, opinion and debate.

Peter was the Labour MP for The Wrekin (1997-2005) and a member of Westminster City Council (1986-1996). He is a regular broadcaster and contributor to the press and author of AntiSocial Britain and the Challenge of Citizenship. He is a Patron of AFC Telford United.

Notes

• This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the Crick Centre.
• To write for the Crick Centre, email us at [email protected]