Are referendums democratic - or not? Let's get real.

I have kept my counsel with remarkable restraint for the past couple of years, but I’m sorry. I can do so no longer. Which is by way of a rant warning, but really… I have had enough of the continually repeated mantra, “Another referendum would be anti-democratic.”

Picture: LSE.ac.uk

For one thing you can’t have it both ways. For another it’s clearly fallacious. For a third I gather that if the government threatens that, if the House of Commons fails to approve Mrs May’s compromise Brexit deal, it will be presented for a vote again when, presumably, the markets’ negative reaction will have spooked MPs into changing their mind. For a fourth far from another referendum being a rerun of the June 2016 one, this would be the difference between voting on substantial proposals and voting on a promise of unicorns – and don’t dare tell me that the “ordinary voter” is too dim to understand what’s being proposed.

The pressure for a referendum came in the first place from the arch-Eurosceptics who had long peddled their myths about the EU. Now they have turned into a “research group” of sloganising Brexiteers who have been revealed as wearing the emperor’s clothes, or pin-striped suits. But they can’t have it both ways. They can’t claim that another referendum would not be democratic – if the first one was. Once you let the referendum cat out of the bag, as the logical Swiss know, there’s no way you can capture it again. It’s entirely democratic to say to the people, “Almost three years ago you voted by a small majority that we should leave the EU. Since then our keenest Brexiteers have been negotiating and this is the best package that your government have managed come up with. Is this what you want? The alternatives are to leave with no deal (which would mean the following…) or to stay in the EU and influence its decisions from within."

By the way, I have little patience with the Brexiteers’ bogus claim that the fact that both the Tories and Labour at the last election included implementing Brexit in their manifestoes indicates that 82.5% of people were in favour of that policy. What rubbish! I certainly voted for one of those parties. That does not indicate that I was voting for their every policy, but for the whole package that I judged would be best for the country and the team I trusted more. I suspect that is true of every voter in every election. That means that one is not entitled to extrapolate that each person who votes for a party also is endorsing each of its policies. It’s a fallacy. I voted to remain in Europe, but hoped that the parties would in the end see sense.

It's also a fallacy to call one plebiscite (referendum) an exercise of democracy and another a denial of democracy. You can argue that holding any referendum is a denial of representative, or parliamentary, democracy, based on the premise that the people vote for representatives they trust to debate and make informed decisions on their behalf. The 2016 referendum bears this out. The decision to hold a referendum was an abdication of parliamentary responsibility in the face of a fierce populist onslaught on the principle of parliamentary democracy.

There were rumours put out last week that, if Mrs May’s deal was not voted through on 11^th December, then the MPs' Christmas break might be put off for another vote, I assume in the hope that there will enough hoo-hah from industry and the financial markets that they will change their minds. Their Christmas might even be cancelled! Hang on! If a second referendum is antidemocratic as is argued, how can a repeat vote in Parliament be democratic? You can’t have it both ways.

Another referendum on the other hand wouldn’t be a repeat vote. The issue is now quite different from June 2016. Then the question was simple: In or Out? But the evidence was all hypothetical. For example: Out, and the economy would suffer. Out, and the NHS would benefit by £35 million a week. Out, and we'll "regain control". Now we have a potential agreement for withdrawal and have concrete evidence for what would be entailed in the UK’s departure from the EU. And many MPs see that it is the worst of all worlds. I suspect more MPs are unhappy with the agreement now than ever were sceptical about the EU. What a pity they weren’t more effective in advocating its benefits all along.

As Brexiteers were wont to tell us and I agree with them, ordinary folk are quite capable of understanding facts and issues. The trouble before June 2016 is that they weren’t given them – because they weren’t known. We now know a whole lot more, for example about net migration, housing, schooling and the health service. We know exactly what the terms of the withdrawal agreement are. If the electorate was trusted once, why not trust them again? Perhaps the additional number of 18- to 20-year olds might affect the vote, which probably the Brexiteers fear. But in my opinion the outcome of any referendum is by no means a foregone conclusion. I fear Michael Gove might be right, "“I actually think if there were a second referendum people would probably vote to Leave in even larger numbers than they did before." However his claim that the very act of calling a second referendum would damage faith in democracy and rip apart the social fabric of this country would very much depend on him and his ilk. If damaging democracy becomes their strapline then a large minority of the population will swallow the bait, ignoring the fact that parliamentary democracy has already been damaged and relegated to being of less importance than plebiscite democracy. Were they to resist the Dominic Cummings' policy of social media slogans and discuss the real issues, it would be possible to reach the most desirable outcome of settling one way or another the present stalemate which is poisoning the UK’s body politic. 

I don't envy Theresa May and the Procrustean bed she chose to lie on. She has shown amazing courage in the past year as ministers have deserted her. I hope she will show yet more courage in trusting the people one more time. She might be surprised at the outcome. Will she, the government and MPs be prepared to take the risk of asking the country anew?