Written by Robin Dunbar
This article was first published in ‘Briefings for Bexit’ and we re-publish with their kind permission. You can read Part 1 here.
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It is difficult to understand the claim that we need a second referendum – other than as a cynical attempt to overturn the will of the people (a tactic, by the way, resorted to occasionally by other European governments, few of whom have a tradition of democratic government older than a century, and most a great deal less).
We have effectively already had three votes on whether or not to leave the EU – the original 2016 referendum, the 2017 election (when the two main political parties both stood on explicit manifestos to implement the decision of the 2016 Referendum), and the 2019 EU parliamentary elections (which catapulted the Brexit Party, which hadn’t existed until a few weeks before the election, into pole position with by far the largest share of the vote).
Those who promote a second referendum invariably claim that many 2016 Leave voters have since changed their minds and there would now be a clear majority in favour of rescinding Article 50 and remaining in the EU. Given the results of previous elections, one wonders where they get their evidence. Even the opinion polls are resolutely stuck at being too close to call. I personally haven’t come across any 2016 Leave voters who regretted their decision, but I have come across Remainers who regret having voted Remain and wouldn’t do so again.
Yet this is a claim I have heard repeated by senior Parliamentarians, admittedly mostly of a Liberal persuasion, as well as humble members of the electorate. If this was advertising claim, it wouldn’t pass the Trade Descriptions Act and would probably deserve prosecution for false advertising.
It may well be true that many people did not appreciate how difficult it would be to leave the EU, but I suspect most of those were actually Remain voters. Most Leave voters simply wanted to leave, and be done with any negotiations, knowing that the EU would be intransigent and, unlike a single sovereign state, would be incapable of engaging in any meaningful form of negotiation.
We are in the mess that we are in precisely because the May government did its best to try and build a consensus that satisfied the Remainers by keeping us half in. I am not in the least surprised at how difficult this has proved to be. The EU is not an economically rational institution: it is an ideological institution, built on the very undemocratic model of the French political system, driven by religious zeal to adhere to the letter of its principles even in the face of its own citizens’ objections. It is the ultimate case of “we know better than you plebs what is good for you”.
It seems that Remainers had (and, in my experience, have) very little real idea of how the EU actually works, how its political structures are organised, who has the reins of power, or how they have behaved towards other member states (notably Greece). By the same token, they parrot economists’ models of the consequences of leaving the EU without any understanding of how these models are arrived at – a state of affairs for which economists at both the Treasury and the Bank of England probably deserve censure for failing to make this clear, for failing to admit that models are only models, for failing to admit that their models don’t have an especially impressive record for predicting the future behaviour of either markets or economies, and for failing to point out that an economy is not something that is fixed in the firmament forever but changes dynamically on a scale of decades.
What is good for the economy today will be irrelevant, or even bad, as little as a decade hence – whereas the political system will remain in place forever, short of an invasion or a revolution. Failure to recognise this is tantamount to insisting that we stay in the EU because it began life as a coal (and steel) trading block and our 19th century economy was built on coal. Um…but we don’t have a coal mining industry any more…. It’s the equivalent of locking oneself into a room and throwing away the key when the entire street outside has been demolished and its economy moved on.
The death of democracy? Democracy died as soon after the 2016 Referendum as it took the shocked occupants of the Palace of Westminster to start trying to find arcane and obscure parliamentary mechanisms that might allow them to obstruct, or even reverse, the results of the Referendum, notwithstanding the views of their constituents. Crying foul at the current government’s attempts to implement its policies is little short of culpable dishonesty.
Ironically, none of these ardent defenders of parliamentary democracy seem to be aware that they only have the vote now because Lord Grey’s Whig (Liberal) government resorted to the device of proroguing Parliament in order to allow the Great Reform Bill of 1832 that extended the vote and laid the foundations for our modern constituency system to be tabled for a third time: it had been voted down twice by vested interests in the House of Commons and the Lords, and convention prevented a bill being laid before Parliament more than twice (as Speaker Bercow so helpfully reminded Mrs May when generously allowing her a third attempt but refusing a fourth).
(Robin Dunbar is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford.)
The author wonders about the “evidence” that Leavers have changed their minds.
Shouty Remainers cite Opinion Polls – but the media never question the Pollsters’ methodology.
For example, Survation.excluded Brexit responses from anyone who said “Don’t Know” to a General Election question.
Surely that is likely to exclude a few % of Leavers ?
SkyData say that respondents must answer profiling questions – so they can claim “representative sample”.
But many people are fed up with questions about income, gender and ethnicity – finding them either intrusive or tools for cold-calling marketeers.
One suspects that Leavers are more likely to be refuseniks – hence a few % off the Leavers’ tally.
And there is a third group. Those who hear that Brexit is “divisive”, Leavers are thick or “racist” – and their managers make it clear that “Remain” is the moral choice.
Thus NHS staff – and commuters to Central London feel silenced.
Even Remain-leaning NewStatesman was willing to publish a study which said:
50 postcodes had over 90% Remain.
These were in the centres of London, Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge – and where media and academics (“experts”) live.
They never hear Leave arguments – and in their echo-chamber are allowed to mis-represent Leave arguments.
I am not at home and do not function well on the hoof. This article is an example of how the present political problems can be understood.
Having just spoken to a Remainer it was quite clear that there where honest emotional issues with leaving. Why can’t people work together? Why do leavers want to do things on their own? There is a perception that people in this country have become more racist.
My impression is that there is more than one problem and the symptoms of this mix are getting confused.
All I could say as a conclusion to our discussion was that a symptom has to be pulled out and analysed one at a time. Also that firm ground needs to be found on which to stand. The best foundation stones to start, imo, are freedom, self-determination and liberty. Then we need to understand the psychology and identify the misconceptions.
Bother that Kim. Robin Dunbar’s two articles are SPOT ON. As to emotional reactions of remainers what do you expect with MSM constantly espousing scare stories based on LYING statistics.
Has Hammond actually been kicked out of ‘his party’. I hope so. Is the Maybot sitting there waiting for elevation, or what.
“Dead in a ditch”, “do or die”. Stand back there is going to be a train crash. Yes!!!
Maybe, but no fault of Brexit. If the train crashes it will be because of everything including the kitchen sink that the losers of a democratic vote have constantly thrown on the track in their mania, spite and hysterics. And the station announcers (the Remainstream media) continually misleading people as to where the train is going, the state of the track and the new drivers’ competence.
There are 195 countries in the world. If we do not succeed in becoming an independent nation via Brexit, then Britain will be the Domino that knocks all the other Domino’s down. Brexit is our Freedom and the freedom of other countries affecting Billions of people. Here is the list:
https://www.worldometers.info/geography/how-many-countries-are-there-in-the-world/