A second round of voting on alternative Brexit proposals is due to take place today in the UK’s parliament. James L. Newell writes that many across Europe have been left wondering at how the UK’s political system could end up in such a confused state over Brexit.
The UK parliament has voted against Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement (three times); it has voted against leaving the EU without an agreement; and it has voted against all of the other alternatives on offer. Under the terms of the position outlined by the European Council on 22 March, the UK’s current options are either to leave the EU on 12 April without an agreement; revoke Article 50, or come up with an alternative that would imply asking for a long extension and participating in the European Parliament elections.
The situation has left many wondering why the UK’s political system has ended up in such a mess. The answer is five-fold. First, the Democratic Unionist Party, on which May relies for her parliamentary majority, has refused to support the agreement because it perceives the arrangements for avoiding the reimposition of a hard border with Ireland, which no one wants, as dividing Ulster from the rest of the UK. Hard right Brexiteers perceive the transition arrangements as not going far enough in actually delivering Brexit. Labour, like the Conservatives, have large numbers of passionate ‘Remain’ supporters so it too has refused support for the agreement (while not adopting an unambiguous Remain position).
Second, therefore, both main parties’ supporters are deeply split. The most recent polls suggest, now, a majority in favour of Remain – but less because 2016 Leave voters have changed their minds than because those who didn’t vote, or were too young to vote, are by two to one skewed towards Remain. Among 2016 Leave voters of both parties, the most favoured option is departing without an agreement; among Remain voters, another referendum in the hope of overturning the 2016 outcome (or simply revoking article 50). What unites Leavers and Remainers (80 and 85% respectively) is the belief that ministers are doing a bad job of tackling Brexit.
Third, then, the public is sharply polarised on Brexit, the centre ground sparsely populated. Thanks to the 2016 referendum itself and its aftermath, Britain’s relationship with the EU, in or out – an issue on which there was relative indifference – has become a massively salient identity issue: it is about what it means to be British.
Fourth, therefore, the situation reflects the failure of the main political parties over the years to perform their pedagogical function – of enabling their followers to see themselves as citizens of a UK-in-an-integrated-Europe – largely because of British elites’ historic ambiguity towards Europe, which has meant that whenever some further measure of EU integration has come up for discussion, the main political parties have been profoundly split.
Fifth, then, the situation reflects the classic inadequacy of majoritarian democracy of the Westminster kind when it comes to the governance of a society divided by a cross-cutting, existential cleavage as deep as the one surrounding Brexit.
Credit: David Phan (CC BY 2.0)
Given that none of the possible outcomes – leave without an agreement; remain, or any of the numerous ‘compromises’ – will heal the divide, Brexit looks likely to remain a salient and deeply divisive issue for a long time to come. Therefore, no answer to the question of what should happen now can be offered that enables the writer to be neutral in the debate.
This writer’s answer is built on four premises. First, Brexit is an act of collective insanity perpetrated by the losers of globalisation who have taken their revenge for having been abandoned by Labour following the emergence of Tony Blair in the early 1990s and his embrace of the neo-liberal agenda. Second, democracy is not just, or even mainly, about the aggregation of preferences but it is at least equally about deliberation and the protection of minority rights. Third, an overwhelming majority of parliamentarians campaigned for Remain in 2016. Fourth, politicians have a dual responsibility: not just to represent public opinion but also to guide it. They are elected to lead.
Therefore, that majority of MPs that would ideally want Britain to remain in the EU should find their backbones and act to keep the UK in the EU notwithstanding 2016. Referendum outcomes are not legally binding; only a little more than a third of the electorate voted Leave in 2016; 17.4 million people (the number voting Leave in 2016) can be wrong. Only the most biased observer would refuse to acknowledge that Leavers’ demand for respect for ‘the will of the British people’ as expressed almost three years ago is in most cases disingenuous and self-serving.
Much if not most of what happens now, depends on the Labour Party. On 27 March, a motion calling for a second referendum was defeated by 27 votes, the number of Labour MPs refusing to support it being – 27. The Brexit project has been spearheaded around nationalist, anti-immigrant themes, by a decisively acting hard right – in opposition to which Labour has in most cases betrayed all of the left’s usual lack of self confidence. If it cannot now find the courage to tell its Leave-supporting voters that they are mistaken about where the solution to their problems lie; if it cannot join its Scottish National Party, Liberal Democratic and Green party opposition colleagues (as well a minority of Conservatives) in campaigning openly to stop Brexit from happening, then it is likely that future historians’ judgements of it will be damning in the extreme.
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Note: The article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics.
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James L. Newell – University of Turin
James L. Newell is visiting scientist at the University of Turin. He is Treasurer of the PSA’s Italian Politics Specialist Group.
Why we are where we are?
– Party-Politically speaking: It was to be ‘Brexit’ long before it was ever ‘Leave’.
This determination may not have been fully formed by the time the UK inserted Article 50 into the TEU; but it was certainly partly-formed by that time.
It seems likely to me, that by the time the Referendum Enabling Bill was tabled; Brexit was the preferred ‘result’.
Much time could be wasted on the up-coming Tax reforms within the EU; it makes more sense though, to concentrate upon what UK Political Partys had to gain; either way.
Brexit, above all else, favours an Autocracy over the ‘previous’ lip-service-Democracy.
Brexit brings with it a two-Party arrangement: Something which delights both Left and Right.
Brexit also raises the UK Executive away from interference by ALL Courts. [That this leaves only Parliament to interfere is something of a damp-squib; as can be seen with current Political shenanigans.]
The best way forward would be a General Election; ONLY if there were to be a positive non-Brexit ‘Party’ to vote for and elect.
It’s flabbergasting that any educated man could call for parliament to ignore a democratic vote.
And that an educated man would use the childish claim that the vote wasn’t a majority.
If the same thing had happened in another country you would be calling for a march and demonstrating at the embassy of the offending country.
What you are proposing is a hard left version of fascism.
That’s great, but we’re so far past the point where spitting invective at everybody is going to solve the situation that I can’t see any point in your comment. Do you actually care about the solution or are you just interested in screaming at Remainers for the sake of it?
The UK needs constructive solutions. The situation isn’t simple. A narrow majority voted for Leave in 2016. Virtually all the recent polls suggest that majority doesn’t exist anymore. There’s no majority for a No Deal Brexit either among the public or in Parliament, so where the country goes from there isn’t clear. Calling everything you disagree with “fascism” might make you feel better for five seconds, but what the UK really needs is a compromise that both Leavers and Remainers can accept. Otherwise the country will simply remain in limbo indefinitely and the issue will never be resolved.
@Handle. There is indeed a compromise which both Leavers and Remainer-democrats could accept. That is not likely to be accepted by the HoC, however. The honourable and very constitutional thing to do is to shut down the HoC and tell the government to call a GE. The gaming and manoeuvring by May and the HoC is extraordinary by any standards of responsible government. They get away with it because the people are stumped. As long a the electorate, in this case the electorates, of England and Wales, have no answer to the UK government and the HoC making a meal of it trying to overturn the Brexit referendum result there is nothing to do but fume, fulminate and decry and lament this charade.
This is not how responsible democratic government should work. Of course, it is clear, this government is neither responsible nor democratic. That cannot be remedied unless the people are able to persuade the government and the HoC to call a general election with due haste. Neither the government nor the HoC would have the stomach for it any time soon, one would think.
Those remainers who would like to see Brexit overturned have not been clear about what future they would like to see for the UK, either within the EU or half in half out. An EU federal state is being implemented while the British electorate watches the HoC assisting May to turn what could have been a clean Leave in a so-called no deal Brexit into a mess which will have huge repercussions for British domestic politics no matter which way it goes. A clean Brexit without a WA in any way, shape or form would clear the deck for a sovereign UK to negotiate a dea, or any number of deals as time goes on, with the EU. The UK would also be free to negotiate with other sovereign entities around the world.
Alas, neither the EU, nor May,nor about 400 MPs in the HoC have any intention of breaking the deadlock this way. That much is obvious. May and a few close advisors, some possibly with a German passport, have engineered this situation with the help from the HoC. May will sort it, with assistance from the HoC, or May may not. Somehow, it will get sorted. How, time will tell.