Tuesday 8 December 2020

To vote or not to vote . . .

 The final gallop towards a Brexit deal is following the pattern many of us have been predicting for a couple of years or more.  Those charged with the negotiations are at loggerheads.  We are told that the fault lies with the EU who are intransigent and, indeed introduce last minute additional demands to  frustrate the doughty British. 

Bold Johnson charges in at the eleventh hour to fix a deal.  

 We can expect this to be announced within the next couple of weeks.  Whatever it is will be hailed as a triumph.  The Tory press will laud it to the skies, overlooking the fact that the UK will have diluted if not ignored most of its so-called red lines.

The deal will be lean because it is impossible to achieve what was promised: "All the benefits of membership without being members."  

The question then arises: how should the opposition parties vote on the deal?

Labour, poor things, are already locked in an unproductive squabble.  Sir Keir Starmer seems anxious  to support the deal.  He presumably has his eye on the former "red wall" areas  which are assumed  to have deserted Labour because they, the "Northern left behind," were predominantly pro-Brexit and regraded Labour, quite accurately, as  being less than enthusiastic about staying in the EU - instead  sitting on the fence. Starmer thinks that supporting the deal will re-assert Labour's dedication to the so-called "will of the people."  

Pro EU Labour MPs, by far the majority, feel they could not possibly support a deal which will be so damaging to the British people, though some take the pragmatic view that any deal, however lean, will be less damaging than no deal. Their spokesperson Rachel Reeves plays for time, saying that the party should not decide until the contents of the deal are known.  Their former leader Neil Kinnock calls on the party to abstain.

A similar dilemma faces the tiny band of Liberal Democrats in the Commons.  As a party we  could vote for the deal on the grounds that it is better than no-deal.  We could vote against it on the grounds that it is nowhere near as advantageous to the UK as the deal we had when we were in the EU. On the other hand, voting against the deal, if sufficient others support this line, leads to no-deal which is even worse.

Better to abstain.

 In truth, however the opposite parties vote  will have few practical consequences, since the decision is unlikely to be uppermost in voters' minds when the next election comes in 2024.  Things will have moved on.

Nevertheless I believe it is important for all the opposition  parties, including the national parties and Greens, to abstain.  Indeed, if Labour could be persuaded, it would be better for all the opposition parties not even turn  up for the debate.  Let the Tories fight it out among themselves.

It is important to nail this debacle entirely on the Conservatives.  It is their shambles.  They must be seen to own it.  Starmer's ploy of voting in favour means that Labour can be forced to share the responsibility.

It was never in the national interest to hold a referendum on EU membership.  There was, until the late noughties, no popular call for it.  In spite of the efforts of the Euro-sceptics and their supportive press, opinion surveys showed that EU membership came about 16th in the order of voters' concerns, way behind the top concerns of employment, education and the health and care  services.

The Conservative party itself  did, however, have a problem, in that their votes were haemorrhaging to the maverick UKIP party led by the populist Nigel Farage.  So Prime Minister Cameron made a promise that he did not expect to keep: that if the Conservatives won the 2015 election there would be a referendum.  He did not expect to keep the promise becasue he did not expect an over-all majority, so would have to continue to rely on the Liberal Democrats, who would veto the idea.

Alas that didn't happen and so Cameron was forced to keep his promise.  The result was that in a referendum without the usual safeguards for a critical decision,an underwhelming 37% of a highly restricted electorate, fed on lies  and distortions amplified by illegal expenditure voted to leave, whilst 34% voted to remain and 27% didn't bother to vote at all.

This 37% was then magnified as "the will of the people," efforts to minimise the damage by remaining in the customs union and single market, options  which were put forward by the Leave campaign itself, were abandoned, Prime Minister Theresa May chose to demonstrate her macho decisiveness by triggering  Article 50  before her government had any idea of what they actually wished to achieve, the die-hard Europe Research Group  with their poster-boy Jacob Rees Mogg made the running from there on, and so we approach the pending national self harm.

The Tories should be made to own it and seen to own it.

4 comments:

  1. Is there any vote since he became leader on which Starmer hasn't abstained? He's in danger of becoming the Great Invisible Leader of the Opposition: his name is on the door, but he's never been seen in the lobbies.

    was never in the national interest to hold a referendum on EU membership. There was, until the late noughties, no popular call for it.

    Seeing as the EU didn't exist until 1992, from 'the late noughties' means there has been a call for a referendum for most of the EU's existence.

    As I have often said, what should have happened was a referedum on the Maastricht Treaty. If that had been put to a referendum, and passed, EU-skepticism in the UK would have been strangled at birth; we might even, on the back of the legitimacy boost provided by such a public endorsement of the UK's entry into the EU, have joined the Euro. Contrariwise, without that, the UK's entry into the EU always had a legitimacy problem because it conspicuously wasn't endorsed by the public.

    Surely you must agree — we should have had a referendum in 1992?

    What really made the 2016 referendum inevitable, though, was Labour promising a referendum on the EU Constitution, and then going back on that promise in 2009. Once people have been promised a referendum and then had it pulled away from them like an apple from Tantalus, they won't quiet down until they have a chance to have their say.

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    Replies
    1. I think most people will take the view that what we are leaving is what we joined in the 1970s

      The 21st Century has a noughties as well as the 20th, (and 19th, 18th etc).
      As you know, since we have discussed it at length already, I am not in favour of any referendums. I believe we are a representative democracy and leave these complex decisions to the collective wisdom of our elected representatives

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    2. I think most people will take the view that what we are leaving is what we joined in the 1970s

      Have you asked them? Do you even know anyone who voted Leave? 'I was fine with an economic free trade area and a single market, it was when they started adding on social chapters and EU citizenship and stuff' is quite a common sentiment.

      As you know, since we have discussed it at length already, I am not in favour of any referendums. I believe we are a representative democracy and leave these complex decisions to the collective wisdom of our elected representatives

      But without referendums, how do we stop our elected representatives imposing on us things we don't want, like proportional representation? The referendum is the People's Veto. An extra hurdle for those who want to change and reform essential elements of the constitution to pass, and an extra chance for the people to reject changes they don't want.

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