A number of MPs seem
to think so. Their argument goes as follows. Although the Withdrawal
Agreement (WA) is not about trade (beyond the backstop), and trade is
dealt with in the Political Declaration that is not legally binding,
a vote for Theresa May’s deal will be taken by her as endorsing her
wish for a hard Brexit. In that case parliament should instruct the
government to pursue a much softer Brexit now, because it is better
to do that now than later (especially if later never happens).
Indeed it is
plausible to argue that the current impasse in parliament would not
have happened if May had gone for a soft Brexit (something close to
BINO: staying in the Customs Union (CU) and Single Market (SM)) from
the start. That, it could be argued, was the appropriate thing to do
when the vote was so close. Another way of putting the same point is
that there may not have been a majority for Leave at all if it had
been clear that this involved leaving the CU or SM.
The narrow vote
for the Welsh Assembly in 1997 is an interesting example in this
context. It was even more narrow (it was won by 50.3%). As a result,
according to this thread
from Richard Wyn Jones, the winners went out of their way to involve
some of the losers in the discussions about how the Welsh Assembly
would work. [1] So if May had thought about uniting the country
after the 2016 referendum she would have proposed some form of soft
Brexit. Instead she tried to unify her party rather than her country,
and the rest is history.
Although trying to
unite the country would have been the right thing for any good Prime
Minister to do (as May will probably find out today), I think the
implication that subsequently a soft Brexit would have passed a vote
in parliament is less clear. We return again to the critical point
that a soft Brexit is not a compromise between a hard Brexit and
Remain. Something like BINO is, for Leave voters, worse than Remain,
because it gives away sovereignty compared to Remain with nothing
gained in return.
Soft Brexit is
Brexit in name only, and assuming Article 50 would still have been
triggered there would have been two years during which Brexiters
would have kept telling us that a soft Brexit is pay and obey with no
say. And for once they would have been largely right. For a country
as large as the UK, having an external body choose your regulations
and trade deals when you have no say in that external body is a big
deal. It is the opposite of taking back control. I do not think soft
Brexit could have survived public scrutiny over two years.
This has important
implications for attempts in parliament to modify the Political
Declaration to commit to a soft Brexit before passing the WA. I can
see the attraction for many MPs: it would be the same attraction it
would have had to a statesmanlike PM after the 2016 vote. But there
is a distinct danger that the public will end up hating it. Remainers
obviously, but also most Leavers who will feel that they have been
cheated by parliament.
If you are one of the
MP’s going for this option and think I am wrong, there is an
obvious way forward that could get us out of our current impasse. (I
first heard this idea from @SimeOnStylites.) Combine your forces with
those going for a second referendum in the following way. Propose a
referendum between some form of soft Brexit (softer than May’s
deal) and Remain. That proposal could command a majority in the
house, and would still give people the option of throwing out the
idea if they preferred staying in the EU. [2]
[1] This all came to light in a rather amusing way. May included
this vote as part of her speech yesterday on why parliament should
support her deal. She ‘forgot’ that despite the referendum result
the Conservative party - including herself - voted against the
Assembly being adopted after the vote! This illustrates why all the talk of the democratic need to respect the 2016 referendum by May and the Brexiters is just an excuse to enact a policy they want. Full
story here.
[2] Of course Brexiters will complain, but they will complain just as
much if the soft Brexit option is passed in parliament anyway.
“Propose a referendum between some form of soft Brexit (softer than May’s deal) and Remain.”
ReplyDeleteSo there we have it. Only last week Simon Wren Lewis posted an article which suggested that the 2016 referendum was a badly designed rigged vote (despite the fact that it was designed by Remainers). He is now telling us without a hint of irony that the matter can be resolved by holding a second rigged vote in 2019. The level of hypocrisy and intellectual bankruptcy here is breathtaking!
Increasing Remainers are calling for a People’s Vote but one when where the people’s choice is restricted so that ‘they don’t get it wrong again’. Let’s be clear. A substantial proportion of people favour Hard Brexit. If Hard Brexit isn’t on the ballot paper then it isn’t a People’s Vote.
Interestingly our local MP last night asked where next? She, I suspect, voted Remain but she recognised that the majority of her constituents didn’t and that May’s proposal did not address their wish. All the replies she received said go for Hard Brexit, there was even one reply from a Remainer who recognised that the Referendum result should be respected that Hard Brexit was appropriate. I must admit the response surprised me since I had assumed that social media was dominated by Remainers.
Only recently, Simon Wren Lewis posted an article asking why Leavers thought that a People’s Vote would be undemocratic. Perhaps before he asks other people that question he should answer it himself. If he believes in democracy then he should explain why it would be appropriate to hold a second vote with no Hard Brexit option.
The reason why Leavers are wary of a People’s Vote is clear. If the referendum had gone the other way, there is no way that there would be a second vote now whatever happened. There is no such thing as asymmetric democracy, so a second vote is essentially antidemocratic. Additionally Leavers do not trust elitist Remainers who such as Simon Wren Lewis who propose holding a rigged vote.
Surely with the mess currently being made in respect of the countries future I wonder if handing sovereignty back to the rabble that sit in the HoC is a sensible thing to do?
ReplyDeleteFrom Paul Levine, University of Surrey. p.levine@surrey.ac.uk
ReplyDeleteOf course the notion that a second referendum is fundamentally undemocratic is quite absurd, a point Simon has repeatedly made. But the form of the proposed referendum can expose this absurdity further. The problem with a simple Remain or Leave with whatever deal has been agreed is that a significant number of voters who are so anti-EU as to favour Leave with no deal would feel betrayed. Indeed on democratic grounds they would be justified in doing so.
So Leave with no deal needs to be a third option. Of course three options with a transferable vote can be on the ballot paper. But a better way is to have two stages: at stage one the question is if we leave do you favour the agreed deal or no deal?; at stage 2 in the light of the result for stage 1 do you favour Remain of Leave?
The contrast between this stage 2 vote the original referendum could not be more extreme. In the latter case what we were promised (if anything) was a Brexit that would entail all the benefits of a single market without membership (a "cakeist" Brexit actually implied by one of Labour's tests). In my proposal the referendum would carried out in full knowledge what Leave actually entails. And No-Dealers would have their say.
So what would we expect the outcome to be based on the most recent polls? These seem to be suggesting something like Remain 50+, no deal 40- and a compromise deal such as Norway or customs union up to 10 percentage. So stage 2 is likely to be between Remain and No Deal. One would expect the majority of compromise voters to favour Remain rather than No Deal, so we should end up with a convincing Remain vote without betraying anyone.