“Ok, people, that was not a bad run-through for the first rehearsal. Let’s take it again from the top. This time, try to get it right.”
A West End theatre? No, the EU referendum.
Britain’s prime minister proposed a vote on whether to leave the European Union, a complaisant Commons went along, there was a falderal of a campaign, and Brexit got 51.9% of the vote. That has to be the be-all-and-end-all?
I beg to differ – even though you British may not like advice from your American cousins: look how much attention you paid to Barack Obama.
Since time began, your country has resisted referendums for sensible reasons. The unwritten British constitution, with all of its complexity and common sense, has never been about mob rule – Wat Tyler in charge or Falstaff as king; no lowest common denominator; no massive town meeting. It is a set of institutions, the Commons the most important, that evolved into settled practice for a purpose: to promote the people’s and the country’s best interests.
You people in the UK did such a good job that, despite another traumatic separation, the apostasy of the US in 1776, we adopted your way of doing business and still follow it, more often than not successfully. Three branches of government. Checks and balances. “The greatest amount of good for the greatest number.” If you make a mistake, you try to correct it. We call that democracy. And so do you.
So what happened? You departed from your traditional practice of small-c conservatism and made a pig’s breakfast of it. Not just for yourselves, but for other people across Europe and in much of the world. “Interdependence” is not just a slogan, it is a fact. You can help shape the terms, but you can’t “stop the world, I want to get off”.
So a couple of trillion dollars’ worth of wealth has been wiped off the books around the world. So the pound tanked. So political and economic turmoil stretches out as far as the eye can see. So Vladimir Putin is grinning. So the effort to move forward into broad, “sunlit uplands”, after a millennium of failed European politics, can go a-glimmering as far as Britain, its inventor, is concerned. So what, so that process, sham “democracy”. can reign triumphant?
Young Britons are condemned to live with a decision that will affect them forever because some old people (my generation) don’t like the way things are going for them. People who work hard for a living but got nothing from globalisation still won’t get a square deal. The same with the Scots. (Westminster could have helped, but didn’t.) Arrogant leaders in both key parties thought Bremain was a “slam dunk” and so did nothing for the left out. Even now they don’t understand why Brexit happened.
What is to be done? You could do it again, now that people see the consequences of deciding a nation’s future with 51.9% of the vote (37% of eligible voters). Or you could see the referendum as only advisory. Parliament is sovereign. It voted to hold the Brexit vote; it can vote to ignore its practical effects. Then it can finally get on with starting to cure what really ails the country.
A start requires new leadership. Not a Tory prime minister who wants to keep his Downing Street digs until October. Not a Labour leader fighting for himself rather than people who depend on his party to do things for the non-rich rather than the City boys.
If they won’t go willingly and right now, let the Queen rise up like her great-great-grandmother and dissolve parliament on her own. Or she could let Nick Clegg, the leader with the most common sense, kiss her hand, and form a government of national unity.
On 8 May, 1940, the Commons gave Neville Chamberlain a vote of confidence, 281-200. He should have won by 213. Two days later he was gone, no fiddle-faddle. Leo Amery invoked Cromwell: “In the name of God, go.” Good advice.
When Iceland beat England in Euro 2016, manager Roy Hodgson didn’t wait until October to get out of Dodge. That’s leadership.