Brexit Revisited
At the risk of revisiting territory already covered in the past, provoked by issues I am still discussing with friends and acquaintances, I want to provide a definitive statement of my attitude to Brexit.
Referenda are a legitimate democratic mechanism, used by many countries as a part of their democratic constitution, with a specific purpose and rules to achieve that purpose. The purpose is to get a direct reading of opinion/desires from the electorate unfiltered by intermediaries such as elected representatives. To this end two of the rules are that the electorate must be properly informed and the result must be decisive: the government is looking for a directive. Thus any misinformation in referenda campaigns must be heavily penalised and may invalidate the result and a threshold is imposed on the winning result margin, often 60% but which may be less. A result of 2-3% either way is interpreted as the electorate being more or less evenly split, unable to make up its mind and therefore offering no clear direction to the government. The referendum result is thus null. Other normal electoral regulations apply.
None of this applied to the UK EU referendum; all the normal referenda and electoral rules were broken and what ensued was akin to a rugby scrum without even rugby rules. Any country that uses referenda responsibly would have declared the result invalid. I therefore regard the UK EU referendum as having no legitimacy at all and very far from having any kind of binding commitment on the government.
So what was it all about? Here I think we have to separate the promoters and the voters. What the promoters had in common was that they were all rich and powerful or represented those who were. And they were faced with a stated EU intention to bring in legislation to crack down on tax avoidance. For the promoters there was the incentive to avoid this legislation and also to repeal many EU laws, such as on food, environmental standards and worker rights, that inhibited profits. Easy money and low tax were the goals, I think. What do current events suggest?
However, those goals were hardly likely to appeal to the electorate at large What was needed for an effective referendum campaign were populist slogans, appeals to nationalism and a false idea of sovereignty. This was exactly the problem faced by Goebbels in Germany prior to 1933 and may explain why analogies to him and Nazi measures are sometimes applied to the current UK government. The Leave campaign adopted very similar arguments to those of Goebbels, slogans and superficially attractive sound bites, denial of reality and appeals to wish fulfilment, albeit without the overt racism. The jews as a target were simply replaced by the EU.
Finally there was the UK’ endemic xenophobia. Foreigners and what is foreign are widely regarded with suspicion and distaste and the Leave campaign ramped up the xenophobia., particularly over the issue of immigration: immigration=foreigners=bad. In fact the UK needs immigrants because of its ageing population, in common with most developed western countries, and is in reality in competition with those other countries for the most needed immigrant skills. So ùmaking immigrants unwelcome is a clear own goal.
Economically Brexit makes no sense since it reversed the economic reasons for the original decision to join the EU when the same economic consitions applied as in 1972. The decision to join was because the economy was in poor shape and the UK was doing much more business with the EU with tariff barriers against it than it was with the Commonwealth countries with no such barriers. Joining the EU removed those barriers and boosted trade. Trade requires a correspondence of interests and the UK thaan had more with the EU than with the Commonwealth, as it still does today The UK joined the EU for economic reasons, not political ones, and has left for political reasons,no wonder trade is now suffering.
So how did it work? From subsequent anecdotal evidence the appeal to a distorted understanding of sovereignty worked best, the idea that the UK alone could not just control but impose its destiny on the world: take back cpntrol was the slogan. There was also the appeal to funds for the NHS which many people apparently believed; from an overtly rich, right-wing group traditionally opposed to spending on public services? And appeal to many in small but significant professions who felt undervalued by their allotment in the EU, such as fishermen and farmers. EU allotments in other areas, such as economically deprived areas, were simply countered by empty promises, empty as has proved to be the case.
So the campaign worked. Should I therefore regard it bas binding? I can’t for the life of me regard it as in any way legitimate, as anything other than a travesty of democracy and a farce. It would seem to have resulted in a mountain of problems, of chaos; and that is what, if we had given it real informed thought, we should reasonably have expected.
Reason, however, is not the order of the day, emotions that have been evoked are still alive and it seems that the major political parties in the Uk are wary of them. By far the largest and most influential part of the media in the UK is determined to keep the Brexit fantasy alive; even that national institution, globally respected hitherto as independent, the BBC, is apparently willing to compromise, to compromise not only its independence but also its global reputation.
So what of the future? Reality has already bitten, and bitten bitterly for many. Will Britain, and its political parties, face up to reality or continue to pander to fantasy?
