{"id":252,"date":"2019-05-20T08:48:47","date_gmt":"2019-05-20T07:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cranleigh.org\/politics\/?p=252"},"modified":"2023-11-15T08:44:57","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T08:44:57","slug":"good-and-bad-referenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cranleigh.org\/politics\/2019\/05\/20\/good-and-bad-referenda\/","title":{"rendered":"Good and bad referenda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Students\nand teachers alike will be well aware that the politics A-Level course has been\nchanged, its content updated, increased and improved. Yet, presumably because\nthey were in a desperate scramble for first mover advantage in sales to schools\nand colleges, the textbook authors seem to have hurriedly copied and pasted into\ntheir new publications many of the same debates and issues that appeared in the\nold ones. Thus we are told to be deliberating on matters that are a nostalgic\nthrow back to a bygone era. Here is a good example: \u201cShould the UK have a codified constitution?\u201d<\/em> Who, on earth let\nalone in the UK, is even faintly considering that? That was the kind of abstract,\nparlour game question that was doing the rounds when I was at university. It is\nthe sort of question that was raised when the vapid centrism of the \u201cThird Way\u201d\nreigned supreme, and there were no real political questions to be asked. Or\nhow\u2019s about this one: \u201cIs the UK\nsuffering from a participation crisis?\u201d<\/em> Yes, it is clearly suffering from\nway too much<\/em> participation these days,\nthanks very much. Have you not heard of social media and the 2008 crash?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nthe most comically dated of all, the one that makes me feel like I am watching\nsomething starring David Jason on UK Gold, is this: \u201cShould the UK make more use of referendums?\u201d <\/em>What a cracker! If\nyou actually think it should, you must have spent the last five years on Mars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My\ndevoted online following will by now be aware that I am hostile to referenda.\nThis is partly because they have no historic place in the British constitution;\nand because I call them referenda rather than referendums, I clearly have the\ntendency to resist anything that goes against the grain of established practice\nand tradition. But my main concern is that referenda do far too much to empower\npopular sovereignty when (and no politician will dare say this) what political\nsystems need to provide is elite leadership, mandated by and accountable to the\npublic will, but autonomous in its judgement for the public good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet\nthere is an important qualification here. In the round, there are two types of\nreferendum: advisory referenda, and confirmatory referenda. The first type is\ndreadful, a wrecking ball to democracy and political stability. The second,\nhowever, can be a sound legitimating tool for necessary and even crucial\nchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe UK we are experiencing the fallout from a Brexit explosion that was detonated\nby advisory referendum. An open question rather than a closed deal was\npresented to the people – do you or don\u2019t you want to leave the European Union?\nThe people voted that they did indeed want to leave the EU. And then it began:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe margin was too narrow for the vote to be carried\nthrough without a confirmatory referendum! This kind of thing ought to require\na super-majority. That sum on the side of the bus was such a lie that the\nresult cannot stand! That was such a disgrace in a democracy where no political\nparties ever, ever circulate dodgy statistics at elections. In any case, loads\nof people who really wanted to stay in the EU thought it was a foregone\nconclusion that remain would win, so they didn\u2019t turn out. Not fair! Not\nreflective! They deserve another say. And people who voted out weren\u2019t in fact\nactually voting to leave the EU, it was just an atavistic urge by \u201cthe left\nbehind\u201d to put two fingers up at the powerful. In reality, nobody actually<\/em> wanted to leave the institutions<\/em> of the EU, like the customs\nunion or the single market. Obviously if they\u2019d been told we\u2019d be leaving those<\/em>, they\u2019d have voted the other way,\neven though they\u2019re thick. What they really wanted was a half-way house, so\nlet\u2019s give them that instead. They are racist because they don\u2019t like mass\nimmigration. Brexiteers are ignorant. They don\u2019t have degrees in post-modern\ngender studies, and they live in Northampton and Grimsby. Do you know, the\nbiggest Google search the day after the referendum result was \u2018what is the European\nUnion?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\nlast thing about Google was a commonly circulated myth with no basis in fact,\nand it speaks volumes about the Remoaners that they swallowed it. Yet had we\nvoted the other way, by an equally narrow margin, I am certain we would have heard\nan endless chorus of Faragiste whingeing about \u201cWestminster elites\u201d and the\nliberal media conspiracy and all those dodgy statistics bandied about by Mark\nCarney and Philip Hammond, on leaflets paid for by public funds, shock horror.\nIt was rigged, they would have (probably correctly) cried. We may deplore the\nway that election results are disputed in African republics, the way that one\nside does not recognise the other side\u2019s victory at the polls, and out come the\nmachetes. But look at us in the here and now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet\nhad remain won, nothing would have changed, so what we would no<\/em>t have had is the utter confusion\nabout how you perform the shape-shifting feat of leaving the European Union in\na way that parliament can approve, and that does not lead to queues at Dover,\nand expats being booted out of Spain, and terrorism in Northern Ireland, and\ncar industry redundancies, and so on and so forth. The question, in other\nwords, was not just a Pandora\u2019s box of identity politics, it was a gross\nover-simplification of an immensely complex legal and political matter. The\nanswer one way was simple; the answer the other way was always going to be a\nshambles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\nadvisory referenda are horribly divisive. They force people into polarised\npositions even if they are moderates by inclination. But their single biggest\nproblem is that they deliver a raft of unforeseen consequences. The 2014\nScottish referendum was a wholly unpleasant debate north of the border. But\nsuppose that the independence campaign had actually won. What then? Imagine the\ncourt cases over who owns what in the North Sea. Imagine the raging debate over\na practically essential joint defence arrangement with England. Imagine the row\nover currency. Imagine the unionist rear guard demanding another referendum\nagain and again, and the paralysis in Holyrood forever blocking Sturgeon and\ncompany from delivering their promised land. Picture the sectarian violence on\nthe streets of Glasgow. On and on it would go, the vote supposedly to answer\nthe question would only ask a thousand more, each one a more bitter row than\nthe last. Advisory referenda, particularly over issues of identity, should be\nconsigned to the dustbin of constitutional history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet\nconfirmatory referenda are a very different thing. Take the Good Friday\nAgreement. This was pre-negotiated. It was a clear deal reached with courage\nand compromise by both sides making genuinely painful concessions, perhaps\nparticularly the unionists. IRA villains were freed, tacitly and very\ncontroversially acknowledging their self-proclaimed POW status. The border was\ntaken down and people could choose which Ireland to be a citizen of, no matter\nwhere they were resident. A power sharing arrangement in Stormont was clearly\nmapped out and the voting system agreed. Dublin was to be given a say in Ulster\u2019s\nfuture on an ongoing basis, in return for dropping the cherished clause in the\nIrish Republic\u2019s constitution committing it to the goal of a united Ireland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nGood Friday Agreement was a deal on the table, done and dusted and printed, and\nthe 74% majority it commanded at the referendum in Northern Ireland in 1998 has\nunderpinned its legitimacy and secured a shaky peace to this day. As I write,\nthe fruits of this deal are turning somewhat sour. Yet nobody seriously\ncontests that it was reached by a just political process, and that it commands\nbroad and bipartisan public support. Tony Blair\u2019s other devolved assemblies in\nScotland and Wales were also were both delivered by the midwife of a referendum\nin which voters knew precisely what they were choosing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare numerous other examples of confirmatory referenda around the world\ndelivering peace or much needed constitutional change. My favourite, though, is\nthe 2016 deal that Nobel Peace Prize-winning Colombian President Juan Manuel\nSantos put to his people in order to close out the government\u2019s long-running\nwar against Marxist FARC guerrillas. The deal was negotiated with compromises\njust as painful to both sides as those made in Ireland two decades before. It\nwas a realistic and promising road map to lasting peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\na 0.2% margin, the Colombian people rejected it. So Santos changed a couple of\npunctuation marks and railroaded the \u201camendment\u201d through the legislature, which\nhe controlled along with his coalition partners. And he was absolutely right to\ndo so. Some referenda may be better than others, but some people have worse\njudgement than others too; and very often, \u201cthe people\u201d have, funnily enough,\nworse judgement than their representatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\ndon\u2019t like referenda, full stop. In answer to the question, the UK definitely\nshould not increase the use of referenda. But if we are going to use them in\nthe future because the self-righteous clamour of popular sovereignty demands it,\nwe should at least use them properly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Von Hayek<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students and teachers alike will be well aware that the politics A-Level course has been changed, its content updated, increased…
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