In the light of the LibDem policy on revoking article 50 (the abreaction to which I discuss here) YouGov asked people the following question:
“If a party stood on a manifesto of staying in the EU and won a majority in a general election, do you think it would or would not be legitimate for them to keep Britain in the EU?”
41% said that it would be legitimate.
38% said that it would not be legitimate.
This is remarkable.
Note – the question was not whether you support the policy, but whether it would be legitimate or not.
Legitimacy is a higher test than mere liking or disliking. You might dislike something, but to say it is illegitimate is a further step.
And yet 38% said it would be illegitimate.
Consider the same question with the specific content excised:
“If a party stood on a manifesto of X policy and won a majority in a general election, do you think it would or would not be legitimate for them to enact X policy?”
Out of context, most people would say it would always be legitimate, every single time.
What would the argument be that it was illegitimate in this case? Is it that only a referendum can overturn a previous referendum?
If so, are those Leave voters (see above) who responded 66% to 17% that it would be illegitimate now in favour of a confirmatory referendum?
If so, are they going to support one before a general election?
If not, then they can hardly blame the LibDems for using the next best thing to promote their position.
If they argue a general election must happen first, then what is the threshold of remain-supporting vote before a confirmatory referendum is required? And would it be by seat or by overall vote? So many questions.
The LibDems are smart. They’ve shifted the debate to where it should be: to the key questions of legitimacy of mandates, past and future, direct and indirect.
Under scrutiny, the existing mandate stinks. 2016 was not mandatory. It was not inclusive, fair, legal or compelling. It was as bent as a nine-ruble note.
It’s time to have that detailed conversation about mandates. Bring it on.
The LibDems, on a roll since the EU elections and with defecting MPs arriving almost weekly, have announced a new, eye-catching policy.
Their manifesto in the next election will include a promise to cancel Brexit. No ifs, no buts.
Arguably this is nothing new – what else could their EU campaign’s “Bollocks to Brexit” have meant?
But it has the merit of clarity. It says “We are the remain party.” Since as many as one in three voters recently thought the LibDems were still in favour of some sort of Brexit, this announcement surely obliterates that doubt.
So if it was both hardly new and somewhat necessary, why has it caused so much fuss?
Even Caroline Lucas has gone to press (or at least twitter) to complain that it is anti-democratic; that “you can’t turn the clock back” and “you can’t ignore the 17m who voted leave”. Lord Adonis has chimed in, “I strongly agree.”
You can’t ignore the 17m who voted leave. And we haven’t; the last three years have been all about leave, all day, every day.
THE POVERTY OF THE MANDATE
Nor, of course can you turn the clock back. But you can, and you should, ask whether the 2016 referendum was fair, legal, and compelling. It was none of those things. And even if it were, the concept of Brexit has changed; it now seems to mean only leaving without a deal, something derided three years ago as patently absurd. And so, too, has the world around us changed; the global picture of Trump, Putin and President Xi jockeying for position now makes the case for membership of a unified Europe so much stronger. The risks of Brexit in any form have been gradually, if only partially, revealed to us. The claims of its benefits have fallen away, such that now there is no longer any serious attempt to suggest economic positives, or even social ones; the offer now is just some nebulous sense of taking back control, even if that control paradoxically weakens us; even if we exert it, as one defiant Brexiter insisted, while we sit in the dark eating home-grown turnips.
BOXED-IN BORIS
Meanwhile, PM Johnson has boxed himself into a Do or Die (Br)exit strategy from which there is, ironically, no escape. He shows no signs of being able to do a deal; nor, at least until Parliament moved to block No Deal, has he shown signs of even wanting one. He promised to leave on 31 October (and owned that date as if he had set it himself) and all his credibility, such as it is, now depends on meeting that promise.
But how? The EU cannot move much without threatening its own existence; there is no time; the reasons for the backstop (now better understood by ordinary folk, especially those who grew up with the Troubles) have not fallen away. There are no “alternative arrangements” worth their salt, and if there were, there’d be no need for — and therefore no issue with — a backstop.
There is no way through this for Mr Johnson, just as there was no way through it for Mrs May. It can’t be done. It is an impossible goal, a circle which cannot be squared. It is a dead parrot. And yet it refuses to shuffle off its mortal coil. You’d feel sorry for Johnson, but he asked for the job, and reinforced the very walls which now close in on him. He shows no care or concern for the millions of lives thrown into chaos by his stance, nor for the constitutional mess he creates daily, nor the palpable threat to us all from the undermining of the rule of law. It’s his bed, but we all have to lie in it.
THE MOVING OF THE DIAL
In this context – the poverty of the Brexit mandate, and the impossibility of delivering it – it is past time for someone to stand up, clearly and unambiguously, for binning Brexit.
But the dial has been strikingly moved in recent months. It used to be a choice between Mrs May’s hard Brexit Withdrawal Agreement to possibly “no Brexit at all”. (And I have it on pretty good authority that, had she not been able to secure her first extension with the EU, she had decided to revoke.)
Now it has become a choice between an illusory harder Brexit deal (yet to be articulated, let alone struck) and “Brexit first, deal later” – which is what no deal really means. These repellent options have become the two ends of the possibility spectrum (the so-called “Overton Window”), and so blinkered has our politics become, that Jo Swinson and her excited supporters announcing a manifesto pledge to jettison Brexit entirely can be characterised as extremism, and undemocratic.
Our continued membership of the EU, which has brought peace and prosperity and freedoms for decades, is now an outlandish, harmful wish. Even offering it as a manifesto pledge, to be followed through only if a party wins a majority, is now judged anti-democratic. That is to say, an elected government, standing on a clear platform of continuity with the last four+ decades, delivering on its promises, could now be deemed anti-democratic. Not in the estimation of some swivel-eyed partisan, but in the estimation of sensible women like Caroline Lucas, and passionate remainers like Lord Adonis.
How we got here beggars belief. Politics has been amazing to watch. But in some ways this is the most shocking development. How easily our frame of reference has been shifted. How effectively the options have been narrowed by the repetition of specious arguments and demented catchphrases, a crude and self-interested press and a largely subservient broadcast media.
IF THIS IS THE POWER OF AN ADVISORY REFERENDUM…
Are the LibDems to be banned even from offering voters continuity with the last four decades, solely on the basis of the 2016 referendum?
If there were to be another referendum, for which Caroline Lucas has campaigned, would it be wrong to include a revoke option on the ballot? What would be the point of it, if it did not offer revoke?
Are we to say that only a referendum can counter a referendum? Not parliament, not MPs, not a new government elected with a majority of seats on a clear manifesto pledge? That would be an extraordinary adjudication. How long would such a situation obtain? If this is the power of an advisory referendum, thank heavens it wasn’t a legally binding one. It would have bound us, and our capacity for self-determination, in perpetuity.
Even if the 2016 referendum had been inclusive, fair, legal, and overwhelmingly decisive, future parliaments cannot surely be locked in by it. Future policy offerings cannot be vetoed by it. Our votes, in general elections as in referendums, still have to count for something; they cannot be invalidated by our previous votes, just because those previous votes were made in a referendum. (More on what might constitute legitimacy here.)
THE REAL SHOCK
You could argue that the LibDems tactic isn’t a good one; that it will lose them votes; that it will split the remain vote; or that it will cause them problems in the future. Fine. There is a valid debate about tactics to be had. You could just not like the policy, and refuse to support it. Fine.
But to contend that it is anti-democratic even to offer revoke to a future electorate is extraordinary. That statesmen and women of distinction and general clear-sightedness are holding such a view is a measure of how effectively our political horizons have been shaped and constrained by the Brexit ultras. This is the real shock. When good women and men turn against not just their own people, but against their own goals, the game is, in large and terrifying part, already lost.
My reaction to Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party Conference, 2015, for Independent Voices.
In case the link expires, text below.
David Cameron, in his first conference as leader of a majority Tory government, just gave a speech which could have been delivered by Tony Blair.
He launched “an all-out assault on poverty”. He bemoaned the impossibility of “true opportunity” without meaningful equality. He berated our woeful record on social mobility. The incapacity of our justice system to rehabilitate. And of course the inability of a whole generation to get on the property ladder.
The BBC’s Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, took to the airwaves excitedly to report that Cameron had driven the Tory tanks right across Labour’s lawn.
Twitter went all a-giddy with #HeirToBlair hashtags and reminders that Cameron’s exit song, Don’t Stop Thinking About The Future, was Clinton’s in ’92.
But there is no chance of Cameron delivering on his rhetoric. The imminent removal of tax credits (not remotely compensated for by a ‘living wage’ down the line) is an assault not on poverty, but on the working poor.
Judging from her chilling, old-school speech to Conference yesterday, Theresa May’s new Immigration Bill will not be a pretty sight. The chances of Blairite centrism there, if you’ll forgive the paraphrasing, are “at best, close to zero”.
Ian Duncan Smith “welcomes” food banks, which is just as well because his government has presided over a dramatic rise in their use. Nothing Blairite there, either. And as for the heartlessness of Atos and incapacity benefit, it would have been funny if it hadn’t so often been tragic. Atos staff had to be equipped with panic buttons, so dreadful was their work. Is the new Atos, American outfit Maximus, suddenly going to go all cuddly under a Tory majority government? Don’t hold your breath.
And the idea that this administration, with its out-of-the-ark ideas like Right To Buy 2.0, will succeed where every recent government has failed, and actually make headway on housebuilding, is, frankly, laughable.
No. These are politicians who may talk centre, or even centre-left, but who deliver right, or even far-right.
So what’s going on? When Cameron talks his One Nation talk, is he deluding himself, or is he dissembling?
His delivery is such that the former explanation is credible. To hear him is to believe him. He seems really to think he’s a One Nation “modern” Tory. The guy who, for example, pushed through gay marriage. It is tempting to think of Cameron as a decent chap struggling to wrangle – and front – an unruly and hard-hearted right. Heroically dragging them into the centre for their own and our country’s good. One Twitter commentator felt that Cameron’s speech was as much a sell to his own right wing as it was to centrist voters. On this reading, Cameron is not so much lying about moving his party into the “common” ground, as hoping.
Could be. But step away from the charming, plausible delivery – mute the speech and just think about the big picture, just see the man talking – and the well-meaning interpretation seems the less likely of the two.
Cameron is a smart man, a First-in-PPE man. He is a consummate politician. And just because his government no longer enjoys the fig-leaf of the LibDems, it doesn’t mean that he and Osborne have not learnt the political lessons forced on them by coalition.
What they did in the last Parliament was genius. Squeezing the pips out of the working poor? Confuse debate with a promise to raise the tax threshold to £10k “benefiting everyone” (but not, in fact, the poorest 10%). Whacking up tuition fees? Confuse debate with an improved deal for the very poorest students. In this Parliament, it continues. Hammering the tax credits of the working poor? Confuse debate with a living wage which in no way plugs the gap.
In this sense, the One Nation rhetoric serves a purpose once achieved by sops (apparent or real) to the Tories’ coalition partners. It diverts attention away from harsh truths. It dilutes headlines and ruins sound-bites. It drowns regressive policy in progressive noise. It is a magician’s hand, waving here, waving here – so that we don’t look there.
It doesn’t just impair clear-sightedness about the actual policies. The Blairite rhetoric hurts Labour by pushing it further to the left as it seeks to differentiate itself. We know that it has been a favourite ploy of Cameron and Osborne for a while now to try and force Labour to choose between endorsing Conservative policy, and opposing it and shifting further and further left; the Tories win in either event. (The recent failure of Labour under Harriet Harman to oppose welfare reforms being a classic example.) These modern Tories are nothing if not master tacticians.
Better still, the rhetoric of compassion gives the Tory heartland something to feel good about. If their fiscal and social instincts are hard-nosed, they are nevertheless people who want to feel their underlying motivations are just. Their medicine may be bitter, but it is because (sometimes at least) they genuinely think that a smaller state, and the individualism that goes alongside it, will produce a happier, wealthier society. A Prime Minister who can help them to feel good about their faith, who can help them to rebrand mean-spiritedness as greater-good generosity… that’s a Prime Minister who deserves a two-minute standing ovation.
As the curtain closes on #CPC15, delegates can go home safe in the knowledge that the policies which their leader’s rhetoric entails are never going to transpire. There is nothing but steel in the men and women standing behind Cameron. There will be no woolly-minded Blairism from May or Duncan Smith or Gove or Nicky Morgan – and certainly not from Osborne.
The true legislative agenda – and the in-government track record – is protected behind smoke and mirrors. Labour is pushed into a corner. And Conference’s conscience is absolved by the soft, centrist, hug-a-gay-British-muslim words of their front man.
The Prime Minister would have us believe the future is a great British take-off. Others may fear his rhetorical stroll in the centre ground is nothing but One Nation Misdirection.
Either way, the party faithful will sleep well in their beds tonight.
On 10 December, Ed Balls sent out a link on twitter to an article he’d written about the LibDems serving as a fig-leaf to a radical right-wing government. Quite right too.
I responded, “@edballsmp Good piece; now pls translate that into action. New PLP rule: don’t mention the LibDems?”
Nine days later:
Ed Miliband has banned the shadow cabinet from using the word “coalition” to describe the government because it sounds too moderate and reasonable, and fails to convey what he says is its true “ideological, rightwing agenda”.
In a memo to his front-bench team, obtained by the Observer, the Labour leader’s director of policy, Greg Beales, says that from now on they must use the term “Conservative-led government” to describe the alliance of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
(The Observer, 19 Dec 2010)
Thanks guys. I’m sure you had that idea independently, but I am happy anyway. I’ve been arguing for ages that the language of the er, Conservative-led government, has been brilliantly controlled and effective.
