19. ON THE NEED FOR A SECOND REFERENDUM - Why I Joined The People’s March

I am sitting on a train to London right now, on my way to join the People’s March for a “People’s Vote” on Brexit. It’s a big day for those of us who have felt that the first Brexit referendum was a disaster, as our march for a voice in the future of our country coincides with a parliamentary vote on Boris Johnson’s new Brexit deal. A deal many analysts are saying is worse than Theresa May’s deal that was already rejected by parliament three times. Worse in terms of what it allows, but also worse because it opens a door to the dreaded “no deal” Brexit which MPs have also repeatedly voted down. Worse also because the vote on it will be rushed, with many of the politicians today giving it assent or rejecting it not actually having had sufficient time to read and process it. However, despite all this, it is seeming right now, the morning before the vote, that it may we’ll get passed by MPs more concerned with protecting their future political careers than the future of the country. The march today marks potentially the last ditch efforts of us remainers to try and bring about a second referendum and allow the British public to have the final say in any deal that is put forward. By tonight, our fate may already be sealed.

But this is a philosophy blog, not a politics blog, and my personal views about Brexit are not particularly philosophical. In fact they are potentially philosophically confusing as I’m an anarchist who seemingly believes being part of a massive trade partnership between illegitimate nation-states to be a preferable thing to the alleged autonomy and sovereignty offered by our liberation from the EU? But maybe that is for another time. Today I want to analyse the idea that is the real point of clash between people like me, calling for a people’s vote, and Brexiteers who argue that we have already had a people’s vote in 2016 with the original Brexit referendum.  

The argument goes something like this:

1.     In 2016 the British people were asked if they wanted to leave or remain in the EU. 

2.     52% of those who voted said Leave, giving the Leave vote the majority.

3.     Therefore to honour the democratic will of the British people, we must leave the EU.

4.     To ask the question again now, three years later, is to undermine that democratic vote and is simply the losing 48% refusing to admit that they lost.

There are many problems with the argument. Philosopher, A.C. Grayling, has been very vocal about some of them since the first result, but he is not the only philosopher to pick apart the apparent logic of the “One Referendum Only” argument. Broadly the objections go like this: 

1.     The 52% is not a sufficient majority to enact such a monumental national decision. Instead a “super majority” of at least 60% or more should have been asked for.

2.     The 52% is not actually 52% of the population, but only of the percentage of the population who voted. For instance, it excluded everyone under 18 who will be deeply affected by the impact of Brexit. Thereby it is not a real or representative majority.

3.     The referendum was never meant to be legally binding, merely advisory. It should be used to inform government policy but not dictate it. And what the advice seems to be is that on the issue of the EU the British public of voting age is largely split, with a very small margin of error between the two views. There is no super-majority leaning one way or the other.

4.     The vote itself was based on massively misleading information and outright lies and disinformation. Not least of which includes the current Prime Minister’s lie about £350 million a week for the NHS. Therefore the data from the referendum is meaningless: the voters were not informed voters and were not basing their decision on actual facts.

5.     There was a massive propaganda impact from the continual use of the word “Brexit” in the press. The entire debate was framed, from day one, as a story about Britain’s exit from the EU, not about it deciding on the kind of future they wanted out, or in, Europe.

6.     The wording of the question – Leave or Remain – was too simplistic and did not actually allow the electorate to articulate what kind of Brexit they might actually want.

Those are just a few of the objections but, to me, they certainly point to some clear conclusions: 

1.     The first referendum did not provide sufficient information about the will of the British population regarding what, if any, relationship they actually want with the EU.

2.     The first referendum was not a properly informed vote.

3.     There are many legitimate reasons why a government does not need to act decisively on the results of such a flawed advisory referendum.

All of which lead ineluctably to the ultimate conclusion:

4.      To truly determine the will of the British population on their future relationship with Europe, a further vote or votes are needed.

To me, it has always seemed a completely non-controversial idea, given the initial Referendum result, to say that the public have seemingly asked to leave the EU, and so, once a potential deal is drawn up and that vague original wish is actually put into real concrete terms about what it will look like, the British public get to vote on the reality of that deal. i.e. do you still want Brexit if Brexit looks like this, or would you rather remain in the current arrangements until something better comes along?

I said earlier in this piece that I am an anarchist. I am, and if I were given the choice of utopia it would be an anarchy in which I would be living. If there were a referendum today asking me if I’d rather live with government or without, I would vote “without”. However, if 52% of us voted “without” and then arrangements were immediately drawn up for the removal of government in our current social state, with no real preparation for life in an anarchy, no changes to our damaging economic system and basic infrastructure, and no change in the social habits inculcated in us from generations of statist manipulation, I would see that my great dream of anarchist utopia probably wouldn’t be as I imagined it to be if it were to be dumped on us today. (My belief is that the sort of change I seek would take generations to happen. A goal well worth striving for, but not one I will ever see fulfilled in my lifetime. The sudden removal of a corrupt system of illegitimate government from a people themselves corrupted by life lived under the corrupt regime for so long needs time to evolve if it is to work. The sudden removal of government would be something we are not yet properly prepared for.) I would probably therefore vote in that second referendum, properly informed about what such removal of government would look like today, in practice, to keep the current flawed democracy we have rather than descend into the post-apocalyptic chaos of a Hobbesian free-for-all end times that television and film have been selling us for decades. 

There is a difference between being asked what the ideal situation would be and to choose an actual outcome of what is currently possible.  So it seems entirely fair to ask the public again, once the reality of our choices in practice are laid out before us, to have another vote to check that this is what we really want.

Furthermore, it is the usual practice when making a decision on something big and life changing to check in several times. If I told my doctor I was going to refuse potentially life-saving medicine they would not only ask me once. When I get married, the vows are essentially repeated check-ins to make sure we really really mean it (and the audience even gets a say, being asked if anyone there has any objections too). Big purchases and contracts have “cooling off” periods where we can recognise our mistake and return our items for a full refund. To check that you really, really want the thing you think you do is standard, and that is only for decisions that affect one or two people. When they affect a whole population the need to double, or even triple, check becomes imperative. This is why democracies are judged on the frequency of their elections. The reason we see lifetime terms as undemocratic is because it is built into the fabric of a democracy that one vote is not enough. The mood of the nation is checked every four or five years for them to reconfirm their last electoral decision, or change their minds about the direction they want their country to go in. There seems no good reason to me why that same principle does not apply for something as significant as Brexit. In fact, what I have been proposing since the results of the first referendum is what I call a rolling referendum: a Brexit referendum every two or three years. If a super-majority of 60% or more says we should leave for two referendums in a row then and only then can we say there is a genuine will to leave (because any misinformation on which the previous poll was skewed can be rectified for in the next) and then and only then can we enact a Brexit plan which itself must then be voted on by the people and secure a super-majority. The rolling referendum would then continue every two or three years after, in perpetuity, to check in on whether we are happy with our decision: do we want to stay out of the EU or return? Has the Brexit we have chosen (if we choose it at all) actually lived up to our expectations?

Now, a government truly as worried about enacting the “will of the people” as our current one professes to be (and as Theresa May’s government did before them), would have no problem doing any of this, as it is the only truly effective way of finding out what they actually think whilst giving them sufficient time and information to make a truly informed choice and mitigate against all of the many objections hanging over the first, flawed referendum. Yet both the May and Johnson governments (and Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition from Labour) have continually shied away from any attempt at ensuring a People’s Vote takes place. To me, this suggests a clear agenda for Brexit from each party, independent of any concern about “the will of the people”.

If the politicians truly believed Brexit, in its current form, to be the will of the people they would have no fear at all about putting that plan up for public vote. It is precisely because they do not believe it to really be our will, and they do want Brexit, that they don’t put it to the people to decide the final outcome.

I may have voted Remain, and would vote against the current deal if there was a second referendum today, but if a truly informed population voted fairly and freely for that deal then, as a member of our shared democracy, I would suck it up and accept it (as I have done every free and fair election which doesn’t go my way). But until the government of the United Kingdom actually put this thing to the people and confirm that it really is our will, I will continue to protest and shout for a people’s vote because, unlike the current government, I actually care about discovering what the will of the people really is. And philosophically, I believe that without doing so, we cannot really call any decision on Brexit truly democratic. 

Author: D. McKee