Another week and another failure of the Conservative Government to deliver Brexit. This sentence could have been written any time since 2018. On this occasion, it is the Letwin amendment, which simply stated that Parliament should see the Johnson deal set down and passed in legislation, before giving it a meaningful vote of support. The fear was not that Johnson deal would pass, but if it did not, then we would be leaving the Eu with no deal on the 31st of October.
Predictably enough, there are again howls of complains from the rightwing press. Letwin, Corbyn (who has finally agreed to a second referendum) and Speaker John Bercow are the three main villains of the day. One irony of course is that Oliver Letwin said he will support Boris Johnson’s deal. His amendment is to ensure that if the legislation failed to pass through parliament before the end of October, that the United Kingdom would not leave with no deal in place. This is one of the reasons why the Letwin amendment passed: parliamentarians from all sides of the Brexit debate backed it in order to avoid the disaster that a no-deal exit would be, both for the UK and the EU. If the atmosphere had been more calm and rational in the Commons, perhaps the Johnson government would have accepted the point without demur. They did not.
Grass root Leavers are understandably frustrated with this. “Why can’t we just leave?” they ask. They talk of their anger, and I am certain they are sincere. But I ask Leavers to stay for a moment, pull up a sandbag while I’ll try and explain how it looks from the other side.
There are some Remainers who will never accept the outcome of the 2016 referendum. Honestly, I’m almost in that camp, but not quite. My own reason is that the public debate was not long enough: the Scottish referendum of 2014 ran for two years verses the three months for the EU referendum. Unlike the Scottish experience, three months was simply not enough to look in depth for either Leave or Remain cases. That level of examination has occurred since we had the vote in 2016.
That is my own view, others with have their own reasons, whether to accept or reject the outcome. Let’s get to the basic fact: Leave won.
So, what was the question again? Ah yes: Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
Right, so Leave won. I wasn’t happy about this but there was a level of leaving I would have accepted. Was I, or any other Remainer asked what this would be? No. Not in the slightest. The debate that followed, both in parliament and in the country, was “Your side lost: shut up.”
So, what was the question again? Ah yes: Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
Right, so Leave won. I wasn’t happy about this but there was a level of leaving I would have accepted. Was I, or any other Remainer asked what this would be? No. Not in the slightest. The debate that followed, both in parliament and in the country, was “Your side lost: shut up.”
Well, no. What did not appear on the ballot paper was how we were going to leave. The Leave side promised many things, none of which they have been able to deliver. Without consulting the rest of us, they continued to argue and bicker as to the nature of their victory. Theresa May’s negotiations with the EU was purely in reference to her own party in parliament. It was only after its failure to pass through the Commons were other parties consulted. By then, it was too little, too late.
The fundamental issue is that Leave won but then thought it was a winner-take-all game. Not once has there been any serious offer to engage the whole nation as to the nature of our leaving the EU. I would have settled for a Norwegian-style deal. I can see some Leavers being unhappy with that. So am I. But at least I was willing to compromise. Like Norway, it would have addressed the fisheries issue, which to me was the only real gripe the Leave campaign is justified over. What a Norwegian-style deal wouldn’t satisfy would be the issue of immigration from European countries. As I said through, we would all had to have compromise. The UK would have been free to have a flexible and changing relationship with the EU while avoiding most of the hard economic outcomes that leaving entails.
Such consultations should have began soon after the 2016 referendum. They did not, so we find ourselves in the en passe yet again. I can see why Leavers would be deeply unhappy with the prospect of a second referendum. If you lost, and the polls suggest that you would this time, it is not as if you would shut up and go away either. So where do we go from here?
As far as Remainers are concerned, what is at stake is the very nature of our nation. Leaving would most probably ultimately split the Union, both with Northern Ireland and Scotland. Leaving would also enable an economic and cultural revolution, with the Conservative Party (and Brexit auxiliaries) leading the change to a US-style Britain and an unregulated corporate society. Neither of these were on the 2016 ballot paper either. That is why Remainers are calling this a coup, a revolution.
If Leavers really wanted to heal the country, the first thing you should do is stop telling Remainers to shut up and get over it. We will do neither. Hundreds of thousands of people marching through Westminster on Saturday, and 6.5million signatories to the petition to rescind Article 50 are testaments to this. Ah, but what about the 17.2 million you cry? You won the referendum to Leave: you did not win any majority, not even in Parliament, as to how the UK is going to leave.
It is little wonder then that Remainers continue to campaign to stay in the EU. We have been offered no other alternative.
At this time, I cannot see anything else but to go for another referendum. A lot of damage has been done and this is not going to heal easily. An election under the current first-past-the-post system will not be democratic enough because all it takes is about thirty five percent to get an effective majority. I am a bit surprised but a blog I wrote in 2018 on the nature of a second referendum, in its basic format of a two-stage question, has aged pretty well. The only difference now is that the Johnson Deal is closer to the Canada-style free trade deal than May’s deal. https://martinveart.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-second-eu-referendum-whats-on-ballot.html
If Leave won again, I would stop campaigning on the issue of EU membership and instead campaign on the future of our relationship of the EU. If Leavers lost, I would welcome their input on the nature of the Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union. What is totally clear is that whatever happens, none of us can return to business as usual. As a country we have changed. We really do have to start listening to each other.
If Leave won again, I would stop campaigning on the issue of EU membership and instead campaign on the future of our relationship of the EU. If Leavers lost, I would welcome their input on the nature of the Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union. What is totally clear is that whatever happens, none of us can return to business as usual. As a country we have changed. We really do have to start listening to each other.
