Remainers Should Beware a Rerun of the First Referendum

[Originally published at steven.rose.postach.io on 25/09/18.]

The case for a second referendum on leaving the EU is compelling. For one thing, it's beginning to seem like the case for such a referendum will eventually become an irrelevant question. When the mechanism of decision making that is the British parliament fails to make a decision - the parliamentary arithmetic favouring no vision of Brexit or otherwise - the question will still loom ominously, at which point it is likely that the government will see fit to throw the decision back to the public. It's not very clear how else such an impasse could be resolved.

But even on its own merits, the idea is attractive. The question now, at last, could be clear. The first referendum was not an example of democracy in action. The question was ill-posed, and served to provide the conservative government the appearance of a mandate, and the false appearance of acting on behalf of the people's mandate, without this mandate existing. The cross in a box indicating a desire to leave the EU because the voter resents growing globalisation looks exactly like the cross put there by a voter who resents the protectionist policies of the EU, which looks exactly like the cross put there because one has concerns regarding perceived growing federalisation of the European Union. It would not be surprising to find out that these voters envisioned a Brexit that imposed more protectionist policies to protect native industry, or a Brexit that de-regulated our markets and invited foreign markets to compete with our own respectively.

This of course isn't the fault of the voters either side of the poll. We could only answer the question as presented to us, and both camps exploited this vagueness; the remain campaign using it to shape the Brexit monster into whichever shape was most easy to attack, and the Leave campaign to promise whichever land of milk and honey best suited the day. But it is still the case that the supposed mandate for Brexit just doesn't exist.

What would be a far more appropriate question to pose to the public would be the choice between three clearly defined alternatives: accepting the deal negotiated by the Government and the EU; leaving the EU with no deal; and remaining within the EU. This should be done in the format proposed by Vernon Bogdanor: a two-stage referendum in which the electorate are asked if they still wish to leave the EU, and only if they vote that they do, whether they want to leave on the terms of the negotiated deal, or WTO arrangements. In this event, campaigning on both sides could be fairer, and more honest. The electorate could expect to be given genuine alternative options to weigh up, with genuine facts, rather than condescension, grand hopes disguised as truths, and plain falsehoods.

Why then the opposition from some quarters to a second referendum? Cries against the idea on the basis of "betraying democracy" ring hollow. To allow another, clearer vote; to invite the opinion of the electorate in on a matter of such constitutional significance now that the options have been made clear hardly seems to be an affront to democracy. But it also seems unlikely that it is the case, as many remainers posit, that die-hard leavers are a loud minority opposed to a vote because they're 'scared of losing.' After all, opinion on Brexit has barely shifted, with What UK Thnks: EURef2 indicating that the country has been stably near 50:50 on the question since the question was first put to and answered by the British public.

This is similar to the previous Europhile protestations, in the years before the first referendum, that Eurosceptics are a loud minority that should be ignore. It is as patronising now as it was then. Once politicians and those in political spheres start dismissing those who they serve or claim to be working for, once concerns are brushed off as not part of the mainstream conversation (despite their prominence in working class communities and those left behind despite the increased prosperity of the country), once the two leading parties of the country consider themselves above the vulgarity of the public, they can expect to find themselves rudely awakened.

It is likely that many who oppose the idea of a fresh referendum do so for reasons as myriad as the reasons people voted either way in the referendum, but there are two significant reasons in which the remain camp are complicit, and can address; the division - caused by deliberately or ignorantly reductive rhetoric - and the concern that recent efforts are a move to act like nothing happened, and to continue to ignore the legitimate concerns of a eurosceptic public.

The first has been indicated by the shadow chancellor, who noted that another referendum risked dividing the country once more. However this need not be the case. The first referendum drove a massive wedge in British politics, and society, but this was not inevitable.

While the UK has seen its prosperity grow as a result of freer trade with Europe, it should not be supposed that prosperity has increased equally across the country, or across society.

Yes, freer trade under strong EU regulation has produced greater competition, resulting in cheaper and better goods and services, to the benefit of British citizens. A more rapidly evolving economy is one that better allocates capital and improves production, making living cheaper and, in the context of a strong social market economy in which regulations and incentives direct the force of the free market towards the advancement of society, can be a strong force for positive change.

But it should not be forgotten that free trade is only possible through a process of constructive destruction; that the elimination of trade barriers for the benefit of consumers necessarily means that those who were employed by less efficient firms lose their jobs. That societies have seen the industries around which their communities are based move away, or disappear entirely. That these consequences land at the feet of people who did nothing but work hard, and cannot be said to carry any blame.

This is a necessary evil, one that creates more prosperous societies, and has the long term effect of improving standards of living across the board. More than that, a market of the size of the EU with the kind of commitment to social responsibility the EU has demonstrated has the potential to advance humanity and achieve our larger ambitions. The coal industry should give way to green technology, healthy food should be cheap and available for all, and we should welcome the systems that provide this. However it is not an evil that should go unaddressed. Governments that use the force of regulated free markets to achieve betterment for society - as they should - must also support those citizens that lose their jobs simply because of market forces. They must provide a social safety net that is not deliberately hostile to those who find themselves having to rely upon it, and they must fund retraining schemes so that people can find work in new sectors, since the average citizen in the UK is not content if they cannot contribute an honest day’s work. They must be willing to invest in these communities - a particular example being the North East - so that they are able to withstand and even grow from the shocks of globalisation, investing in infrastructure (transport infrastructure in particular), and regeneration projects so that these areas can attract new industries and new private investment, and so that these communities can also share in the wealth generated by the process of expanded free trade.

Our government hasn't done this. Our government has under-invested massively in the North, it has reduced the welfare net, and it has done nothing to aid workers who find themselves out of a job because of expanded markets. Our government has not sufficiently availed itself of the money available to it from the European Social Fund - an EU fund designed to be used to mitigate the impact of globalisation on ordinary people - to fund retraining schemes to help hard working people navigate a rapidly moving economy, and shape the British economy in a more uncertain global context.

People who have been facing these problems have watched prosperity grow in London, and they've watched the major political parties consistently ignore their misfortune as they describe a story of unquestionable success. They've seen their jobs and communities dwindle and for their troubles, they've been dismissed as racist, or against progress. They've been dismissed as a loud fringe-minority, not as enlightened as those in the middle class - a middle class which has enjoyed the cheaper products and increased business that the EU has provided.

The remain campaign of the last referendum exemplified this.

There exist moderates who question the EU. There exist people who are on the fence, having seen their towns and their cities and their friends and their families lose out but aware of the general growth they've seen across the country. People who don't know what the advantages and disadvantages of the European Union are, and would have welcomed a positive campaign. People who would have listened to an argument about the benefits of the EU, about how it protected rights and consumers and families from unsafe products, how it could be the social market project we need it to be; about how free trade prevents wars and provides cheaper food to feed their families, about the constitutional importance of the EU, without being mocked and laughed at for not being experts on international trade.

Instead, they got spoken down to. They got told they didn't understand the question being asked, they didn't understand the economics involved. They had sentiments distorted and twisted to convince them that they already knew they were wrong for doubting the edict of the political establishment. "The people are sick of experts" was never a statement that people think expertise is bad but rather a statement that people are sick of experts who feel that the concerns of the majority are beneath them, because the majority are beneath them. Worse than this, they got told their concerns were irrelevant, because the market wouldn't like Brexit; the pound would fall - and what good is your concern about your livelihoods, and your concerns about democratic accountability against the forex market?

For so long, the political narrative and dialogue has been focused on - and directed exclusively towards - a middle class that has benefit from the European project that it would be hard to notice that parts of the country, parts of our society, aren’t benefiting the same. This divergence of narrative between those who’ve benefit and those who haven’t has led to a genuine lack of understanding about alternative views of Europe, so much so that the most popular explanation for Euroscepticism among the liberal left is either racism or stupidity.

But if someone isn't certain about the benefits of the EU, if they don't take it as gospel that it's good, does it seem right that telling them that these reservations mark them as racist will bring them on-side?

This didn't stop after the referendum. The immediate aftermath saw all people who voted to leave told that they were in favour of hate crime. That they were anti-intellectual or really that they were just stupid. But the British public, by and large, are not racist, and the electorate are not dumb. We've seen the disgust expressed in response to the shocking treatment of the Windrush generation, and the support of the Dubs amendment by a public proud of its global heritage and global responsibility. The liberal left needs to learn that if the only explanation of why they lost that they can provide is that the majority of people are more deficient in character than they are, then they're probably the explanation.

Why would leavers want another referendum? Nothing about the previous referendum indicated that they could expect to be treated with anything other than contempt.

The second reason to oppose a fresh referendum is perhaps a sense that remainers are trying to take away a hard won victory by changing the rules.

Politics shouldn't be a case of decisive victory imposed over a minority. Yes, the Westminster system of government is designed to be two parties fiercely debating - in Parliament - opposing views so that through full-throated advocacy, the truth is found. It's not perfect, but it has survived the test of time, and produced one of the most resilient and effective states on the face of the planet.

These are battles designed so that the compromise that best benefits the British people is found. The battles aren't meant to be between the public, and the victories aren't meant to be imposed against a kicking and screaming people. If leave voters - incidentally, the majority - feel like it is, it's because the political establishment made it a fight to have their concerns heard. It’s because since they've been heard, they've been dismissed, and the discussion has focused on ways the mistake they made can be fixed. Of course it's a victory that needs to be protected, when viewed in this context.

Both sides of the debate have dropped the ball. Neither side of the political divide has worked to unify the country. The dialogue used by the left has still failed to grasp the legitimacy of people’s concerns, or indeed even accurately identify them, instead attaching to all leave voters the motives of a few radicals. This is unsurprising, when the narrative of political discourse has for so long not acknowledged them. But this chasm of misunderstanding needs to be bridged.

If each side could start talking about charting a path through that benefits the whole of the UK, that listens to the concerns of people regarding globalisation, and the democratic deficit of the EU, and the concerns regarding the impact on employment, and the feasibility of funding the activities of government; if we genuinely talk about how we view our country’s role in the world; if we drop for a moment our certainty that those we disagree with have nothing to say, then we can bridge that gap.

This can only happen when the rhetoric changes. When people really feel like the second referendum is taking place not because the political class determined that the majority are too dumb to not be asked again; when they feel like this is a genuine consultation. In this context, with a second referendum, we can have an honest to god debate. But we need leaders on both sides of the divide who are going to try to convince voters the merits of each alternative, and not just harden the base of their support. We can discuss the implications of limited access to the single market and the possibility of de-regulation and greater free trade around the world, and we can discuss all of this with a view to change minds, rather than create factions. This should be in both camps' best interests; the margin in the referendum was so narrow that genuine attempts to convince people - without trying to argue that the people who disagree with them are just plain smarter than they are - could sway the result. And the right debate, framed in the right way, where the outcome isn't a victory but a direction that the country understands and understands why, could - after two fraught years of bitterness and division and misunderstanding - unify us.