Singing Remain’s praises to get a People’s Vote will only divide our country further.
Though many attendees of Saturday’s ‘Put it to the People’ march claimed a second vote would bring unity to a divided country, the justifications for a People’s Vote written on their placards were not unified at all.
On the one hand, you had signs arguing for a second vote on democratic grounds: “Back to the people”, “The people cannot betray the people – we want a final say,” and “Could we just double check? (please)”.
And on the other hand, you had people arguing for a People’s Vote based on the absurdity of Brexit itself, and the need to find a route to remaining in the EU: “Please stop Brexit”, “Bollocks to Brexit,” and “52% pride and prejudice, 48% sense and sensibility”.
Despite a huge variety of arguments on show, these justifications could be loosely clumped together into two categories – democratic arguments for a People’s Vote and political arguments for a People’s Vote. That is, arguments focused on the process of going to back to the people, and those interested in the outcome of that process.
Of course, to complicate things, many people include both in their calls for a second referendum.
As well as the meshing of different placards at Saturday’s march, the soaring popularity of the Revoke Article 50 petition over the weekend has also made it seem as if those making democratic arguments for a People’s Vote and those plain and simply wanting to stop Brexit are part of the same political movement.
But we need to be very careful about blurring these lines. Only the democratic case for a People’s Vote carries credibility and has the potential to reunite our divided country. Trying to secure a second referendum on the basis that Remain is objectively the best option returns to the mistakes of the original 2016 vote, assuming there are rational right answers and that those in favour of Brexit need time to see the light.
This is a deeply harmful strategy. It assumes that those who voted to Leave were ignorant: not in possession of the knowledge that would inevitably lead them to conclude that exiting the EU would be a disaster.
This is a problem firstly because such arguments create the feeling that the educated and all-knowing are reasserting their superiority, telling the rest of the population to “think again, and get it right this time”. How are signs like “52% pride and prejudice, 48% sense and sensibility” going to unite the country around a People’s Vote when its arrogant tone is precisely what people voted against in 2016?
The second, broader problem with arguing that Remain is objectively the best option is that there are very rarely any objective truths in politics whatsoever – let alone in this one EU debate.
It might well be true that Remain is objectively the best outcome on an economic basis. But politics is not the same thing as economics. People voted to Leave in 2016 because they wanted national sovereignty and control of their borders, among other things. There is no scientific way to prove that economic success is more important than national sovereignty.
Democratic arguments for a People’s Vote avoid these problems. They are based on the idea that everybody who voted in that 2016 referendum, whether for Leave or Remain, could not possibly have been in full possession of the facts about what kind of Brexit we would be pursuing. Equality is at the heart of the argument: each and every individual should be free to re-examine the situation three years on, given that each and every one of them was equally in the dark in 2016.
All of this is not at all to say that the increasing economic evidence about the impact of leaving the EU is not important. It is vital in shining a brighter light on Brexit so people can make up their own minds in a second vote – with Remain on the table. The problem is when the economic figures are presented as expert knowledge that should settle rather than spark debate.
While it is inevitable that a march of many hundreds of thousands will include signs and slogans of a wide variety, we need to be much clearer about why we want a People’s Vote. Instead of returning to the division of 2016 by emphasising the merits of Remain, we need a democratic case for a second referendum that unites us and gives everyone the chance to have a final say on Brexit.
Sam Dalton is a progressive activist working in policy and public affairs. Follow him on Twitter.
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 117 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.
12 Responses to “The valid case for a People’s Vote is democratic not political”
nhsgp
Frankie, We were told 500,000 job loses on an no vote. That didn’t happen.
Now we are expected to hand over 100 bn to the EU for their pension mess. Or perhaps you believe May and the Tories over 39bn
Then 30 bn a year to subsidize low paid migrants from the EU.
Then 13.5 bn a year in fees.
Meanwhile,
“The latest school funding figures show a shortfall of £5.4 billion over the past three years.”
1.8 bn a year, and 40.5 bn a year to the Eurocrats.
Now do you understand one of the causes of austerity here?
Then there’s the 220 bn a year going on the debts, pensions and borrowing being the big two items.
So what’s another 40.5 bn handed over to Brussels with no controls, not going to be spent in the UK.
Time to take control of our money, and that means none of it going the way of the EU.
People who vote for remain or May’s deal are just voting for austerity.
Gary
VERY difficult to argue from a democratic viewpoint for a second referendum (on anything) when the result of the first referendum has yet to be enacted.
There COULD be a referendum giving a choice between, for example, May’s Deal and a ‘No Deal’ exit if parliament were deadlocked. That would simply be choosing a path to honour the outcome of the first referendum. But to put ‘REMAIN’ back on the ballot would require there to be something unforeseen, an event or outcome, that could not reasonably have been foreseen at the time of the first referendum. For example, if leaving the EU also meant us being put out of NATO or we suddenly discovered that the deal meant we HAD to join some other organisation before any other country would agree to trade with us.
But I’ve had to manufacture these examples. There wasn’t anything that has happened since the referendum that we weren’t warned about beforehand. Many seem willing to undergo hardship simply to leave.
In short, there is no way to retain the confidence of the electorate in general if we were to go ahead and hold a second referendum. Brexiteers often ask ‘what if the result was LEAVE, again?’ but the question SHOULD be, ‘what would happen if the second referendum was narrowly, VERY narrowly, for REMAIN?’ Just how aggrieved would those who voted LEAVE feel. Would THEY be justified in asking for a THIRD referendum or would we have gotten the ‘right’ result and therefore be able to stop voting.
How would all of this play with the electorates trust in politics in general?
I think we are now past the point where the result could possibly be overturned, disregarded or the opinion of the electorate be sought AGAIN on an issue where they have given their opinion already.
ONLY once this has been enacted could we legitimately ask the electorate to vote again.
This is NOT about how I feel about leaving the EU but it IS about how I feel governments should work. Undoubtedly May, personally, has made MANY errors in the process. She held a GE which has prevented her from getting her deal thru, she never sought the opinion of others to ensure the deal could get thru, she made a pact with terrorist sympathising DUP to retain power, and the way in which the deal has been negotiated has ensured that it will never get through in it’s current form. BUT, that said, Labour are determined to have a ‘hands off’ approach.
Currently, despite Corbyn allegedly being in talks with May, Labour want to ensure they don’t back whatever deal is eventually done. They want to be able to point to it later, the mess I mean, and remind the electorate that this was a ‘Tory’ Brexit, not theirs, before regaling us with what they would’ve done if they’d been in power. The problem with this is, they have the ability to get involved NOW and do SOMETHING to improve the current situation. But politicking this will ensure we get a deal that isn’t just bad for ERG and Remainers but is bad even for those who are moderate in their views on accepting Brexit and hoping for a good(ish) deal to limit the damage.
We need them to step up to the plate and do what they tell us politics is all about ‘The Art of The Possible’ and negotiate something, they won’t. We could default into a ‘No Deal’ because of them…