Why the Lib Dems’ Article 50 revocation policy is more dangerous than Boris’ prorogation
Lots to unpack from the Lib Dems’ decision to move one step beyond being a Remain party to becoming a Revocation one. However, I feel a key element to consider is how dangerously undermining it is to the fragile democratic compact that exists between the public and our elected representatives.
1) Most people don’t follow politics that closely, even in these times when political discussions are breaking out in all areas of society. This situation doesn’t lend itself to the public appreciating nuanced policy positions; therefore straightforward policies from which simple slogans can be derived are powerful vote winners. This factor feeds in significantly to why Cons have picked up in polls since Johnson became leader as they are now a clear Brexit party willing to jump the UK off a cliff with No Deal if needs be. Now the Lib Dems have joined them in that decision, but from the polar opposite end, as a clear Remain / Revoke party. This has also seen their polling jump over the one main political party which has a nuanced/nebulous position: Labour. (Also nod to SNP who are also strongly Remain/Remain).
2) I abhor the idea of aiming for No Deal as a policy given all the dangerous ramifications, BUT it has one trump card to it: it falls clearly on the side of what the majority of people in 2016 voted for. OK, one can argue back and forth until we’re old and grey that people who wanted to Leave didn’t want to leave on No Deal, but that is for another time. However, even though a large minority voted to Remain and would probably back revoking Article 50, that still ISN’T a majority and hence it does not have the democratic legitimacy of a Leave policy come what may. Now, one could say that in a general election a Lib Dem policy of Revoke means that IF they won a majority that would be the democratic legitimacy needed to unilaterally revoke. But the difference is, a party can win an outright majority due to our First Past the Post system with fewer votes than either Leave or Remain garnered in 2016…therefore, in my mind, this feels like a general election victory would have a less legitimacy than the 2016 result.
3) There is an unspoken, tacit contract as a member of society to let others govern for us. I could bang on about Rousseau’s Social Contract and Hobbes/Locke treatises on government or Burke’s famous (and now much tested) view on representative vs delegate democracy and if anyone wants to learn more I would be happy to elucidate. However, I’ll short-cut that and get straight to it: In democracies such as ours, we give the right via the ballot box to people to make decisions on our behalf (government) and others to hold those who make those decisions to account for them (MPs not in government AKA the Opposition and backbench MPs). In usual run of political life this works well, the public gets on with its business, politicians do theirs and then every four or five years we get to vote on whether we think they’re doing a good job. Yet now we have this huge dividing issue of Brexit which has effectively turned our politics into a giant snow-globe and shaken everything up.
4) What does this mean? In the normal course of things; elections happen every number of years and people accept the result even if they don’t like it. However, now the usual business of elections / democratic legitimacy has been overlaid by a direct democratic action of the referendum which strips out the (I would say) undemocratic elements of First Past the Post / safe seats etc where if you live in a safe seat for a party, but don’t like that party then your vote is effectively meaningless. Now we have this significant problem of a Direct Democratic Action VS Representative Democratic Action. The democratic (seen as will of the people) balance clearly falls on the side of the former, but the tradition in our country is that we don’t really do the former and are used to the latter. So now we have this will of the people expressed through a referendum against will of our political representatives and it is shaking this old democracy of ours to its core. Leave-minded people are rightly furious at what they see is their opinion undermined by people in parliament who have less democratic legitimacy on this topic than the result of 2016 referendum.
5) This puts the UK in extremely dangerous territory. In any younger a democracy than ours or with less of a restrained approach to public dissent, we would be well on the way to witnessing angry views normally just expressed down the pub to public disorder and dissent whether physical violence in protests or more middle class ‘violence’ by withholding taxes etc. And just because the UK public isn’t minded to take these actions on a regular basis (although recent London riots, poll tax riots and way back to Peterloo Massacre shows we do from time to time), doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
6) Which means I can now pivot right back to where I started; a mainstream political party taking a clear, staunch policy which is effectively against the largest democratic vote in the history of the UK is dangerous. We’ve seen a lot of dire warnings of late about what government is doing from prorogation to re-introduction of Clause 4 to Labour manifesto, but this one — admittedly by a smaller party, but one which could well prop up a future Labour government — is in my opinion the most dangerous as it directly puts two fingers up to a majority in the country saying your views are not worth our time. It acts to deepen the terrible rift which has grown in society between Leave and Remain-minded folks and does nothing to look beyond Brexit and how we can bring those two camps closer together to work on how the UK defines itself in the 21st century as a country in an increasingly dangerous world.
