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The Debate Over a Second Brexit Referendum the Case for a New Referendum

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The Debate Over a Second Brexit Referendum the Case for a New Referendum The Economicst The debate over a second Brexit referendum The case for a new referendum It is time to shed fantasies and consider realities, says Hugo Dixon, the deputy chairman of the People’s Vote THE BREXIT reality of 2019 bears no resemblance to the Brexit fantasy promised in the 2016 referendum. So we now need a People’s Vote to check whether the public still want to quit the European Union. But that is not the only reason for a new referendum. Parliament is deadlocked. Many MPs don’t want the government’s miserable deal and they do not want to crash out of the EU with no deal either. What is more, all other versions of Brexit can only be delivered by first signing up to the prime minister’s deal, otherwise they themselves are fantasies. With Parliament unable to decide what to do, the only sensible way forward is to ask the people what they want. These two reasons are connected. If Theresa May had been able to deliver a Brexit that met the promises of 2016, Parliament would not be deadlocked. MPs would be giving her deal the thumbs up. But the prime minister could not deliver the “cake-and-eat-it” fantasy of Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary, for the simple reason that it does not exist. In the real world, you cannot have your cake and eat it. You need to make trade-offs. Let us recall for a moment the Leave campaign’s main economic promises. Britain would keep access to the EU’s single market but without following its rules. And Britain would cut lots of other amazing trade deals around the world. Mrs May’s deal achieves none of this. We will lose partial access to the EU market, which is responsible for roughly half our trade, and that will make us poorer. We will follow lots of its rules but will no longer have a role in making them, becoming what Mr Johnson rightly calls a “vassal state”. We will not take back control, the Brexit slogan of 2016; we will lose control. Meanwhile, the prime minister has agreed an arrangement that could keep us indefinitely inside the EU’s customs union, making it virtually impossible to cut trade deals with other countries. Even worse, we will have to follow the bloc’s trade policies without a vote on them—again losing, rather than taking back, control. The one key promise that may be kept, although we will not know the details for years, is to end free movement of people into Britain from the EU. But this could be a two-edged sword. As fewers nurses, midwives and other key workers come here from Europe and more return home, according to a report in April from the Nursing and Midwifery Council, it is becoming even more apparent how valuable they are. Brexiters now say it would be undemocratic to hold a People’s Vote as that would overturn the “will” of the people. What nonsense. As David Davis, the government’s first Brexit secretary, used to say: “If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.” So much has changed in the past two and a half years that the people have every right to change their “will”. It is not just that the prime minister’s deal is so much worse than the fantasy of 2016. Donald Trump is now in the White House undermining the rules-based world order, and Vladimir Putin’s agents are accused of poisoning people in Salisbury. The geopolitical case for working together with our European friends to solve common problems and grasp common opportunities is even stronger than it was. Another argument against a People’s Vote is that it would further divide an already angry country. While we should not pretend that our country can miraculously come together, a new referendum could be part of the healing process. Part of the answer is to engage in an honest debate rather than to peddle fantasies. One of the dishonesties of the Leave campaign was the claim that the government would have tens of billions of pounds more to spend each year if we quit the EU. It is exactly the opposite, as an analysis of the government’s deal by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies shows. More and more politicians are calling for the “dividend” we would get from staying in the EU to be spent on tackling the underlying causes of Brexit. These include funds for parts of the country starved of investment and areas where there have been sudden or significant population changes. If this is done, a People’s Vote could help bring the country together. Yet another argument against a new referendum is that it would betray those who voted to leave the EU. But it is worth reflecting for a moment that it was the architects of the Leave campaign who betrayed these voters. Mr Johnson and Michael Gove, the other key leader of the official Leave campaign, made promises they could not deliver. We have wasted far too much time on fantasies. A mature democracy deals in realities. We must now check whether the people want the reality of this particular Brexit or the reality of staying in the EU. Hugo Dixon is the deputy chairman of the People’s Vote, and the editor-in-chief and chairman of InFacts, both advocacy groups supporting a new Brexit referendum. The debate over a second Brexit referendum Can a country ever recover from a rough referendum? Canada’s experience shows the difficulties, says Michael Ignatieff, a former politician and president of Central European University As Britain twists and turns in the agonies of Brexit politics, it may be salutary to look at other countries’ experience of similar torments. Canada had two referendums, in 1980 and 1995, on the future of the relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada. The one in 1980 ended in a clear victory for Canada, but the 1995 result was a near death experience. Quebeckers were asked whether Quebec should stay in Canada or become a sovereign state. The Canada side prevailed, but by a wafer-thin margin of 50.58%. So if a British person asks a Canadian (they rarely do) if referendums are a good thing, a Canadian is likely to shudder. Even Quebec sovereigntists, who almost won, have been heard to admit that the experience was terribly divisive. In a province where a bloke perhaps named Patrick O’Brien might actually be a unilingual Francophone, while un mec called Olivier Duchesneau might actually be an Anglophone, where origins and loyalties have been mixed up over centuries of living together, referendums split families and people right down the middle. “Never again” is the view shared by both sides now. We haven’t had a referendum since, and in a recent Quebec election, the national question was a non-issue. This may be of some reassurance to those in Britain who fear that a second referendum will lead to a third and a fourth, the neverendum nightmare. Canada suggests otherwise. It doesn’t mean our existential question is settled or will go away, any more than Brexit is likely go to away. It just means that no one wants to take a question like this to the people again. So the settled Canadian view is that referendums are truly terrible ways to decide existential questions. That’s what you have parliaments and politicians for. A lot of people on both sides of the Brexit debate in Britain might now be inclined to wearily agree. But that is no longer the issue. The question now is what to do when a Parliament is so divided that there is no longer a majority for any course of action. Referendums may be a near-death experience, but what’s the alternative when politicians can’t get a deal through the legislature? Do you then go back to the people one more time? Now that Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal has failed in Parliament, we enter, as she said before the vote, “uncharted territory’”. She has come out against a referendum herself, but she might find that the only way she can cling to office would be to gamble on one in which her deal was the first option on the ballot paper, exit without a deal the second, while the third would be remain. If her deal squeaked home, she could then take it back to the House of Commons and if approved, as would be likely, she could end her premiership by implementing it. If the people vote for the other alternatives, she is through. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn opposes a referendum. The party wants an election, because it thinks it can win despite two years of hedging on the fundamental question. Strategic ambiguity is sometimes the only game an opposition can play, but this isn’t one of those times. The election would be, in effect, a referendum on Brexit and on the botched process which politicians must take the blame for. If Mr Corbyn thinks he can win by waffling or changing the subject to social justice, he may be in for a shock. A referendum, in other words, won’t happen because millions of people are campaigning for it to happen. It will happen if Mrs May changes her mind and bets her premiership on winning one; and if Mr Corbyn concludes he can’t get an election but hopes a referendum defeat for Mrs May will hasten the day he becomes prime minister.
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