Democracy

On The Article 50 Ruling

Samuel Hooper12 Comments

royal-courts-of-justice

–

Everybody calm down

So as was always a possibility, the High Court has ruled that the government does not have the authority to initiate Britain’s secession from the EU by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty without first winning a vote in Parliament.

From the Guardian:

Parliament alone has the power to trigger Brexit by notifying Brussels of the UK’s intention to leave the European Union, the high court has ruled.

The judgment (pdf), delivered by the lord chief justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, is likely to slow the pace of Britain’s departure from the EU and is a huge setback for Theresa May, who had insisted the government alone would decide when to trigger the process.

The lord chief justice said that “the most fundamental rule of the UK constitution is that parliament is sovereign”.

A government spokesman said ministers would appeal to the supreme court against the decision. The hearing will take place on 7-8 December.

The lord chief justice said: “The court does not accept the argument put forward by the government. There is nothing in the 1972 European Communities Act to support it. In the judgment of the court, the argument is contrary both to the language used by parliament in the 1972 act, and to the fundamental principles of the sovereignty of parliament and the absence of any entitlement on the part of the crown to change domestic law by the exercise of its prerogative powers.”

Unless overturned on appeal at the supreme court, the ruling threatens to plunge the government’s plans for Brexit into disarray as the process will have to be subject to full parliamentary control.

Starry-eyed, anti-democratic campaign group New Europeans are naturally delighted by this development, which they see as the first step toward overturning/ignoring the EU referendum result and ploughing on as though their hateful and spurned vision of a federal continental union had not just been summarily rejected at the ballot box.

Moments ago this cautiously triumphant missive from New Europeans pinged into my inbox:

This only adds to the political challenges for those of us who are determined to stop Brexit come what may.

If Theresa May decides to call an early election as a result of the legal challenges, we will find ourselves with a new parliament elected with a huge Conservative majority and a parliamentary mandate to deliver Brexit.

In this scenario, there will be no chance of a second referendum on the deal. Britain will be out of the EU in no time and there will be no way back. The best we could do would be to secure safeguards for EU citizens already here and Brits in Europe through our campaigning in Brussels.

On the other hand, if Theresa May is able to start the negotiations and bring the deal back to the current parliament, it is plausible that she will not be able to carry a majority for her Brexit deal, particularly if it is a hard Brexit deal (as seems likely), the cost of which will be truly “titanic”.

Failure to secure a parliamentary majority on a Brexit deal will mean a new election and provides the opportunity for a second referendum on whatever deal she negotiates. That would not be a referendum like the last one on the question “Do you like migrants?”. It will be a referendum on the cost of Brexit and I predict that the public will vote over-whelmingly to stay.

There is a huge job to do if we are serious about stopping Brexit. One of the key arguments in the legal challenge must continue to be the focus of our campaigning. It is not acceptable for the government to remove the individual rights of citizens by way of a referendum.

The rights that EU citizens – and all British citizens are currently EU citizens- will lose on Brexit mean that from a legal, moral and political point of view Brexit should not be allowed to go ahead.

From a moral point of view? When will these preening, sanctimonious euro-moralists get over themselves?

Meanwhile, Pete North takes the news in his stride:

The government will appeal. I’m pretty relaxed about it to be honest. The vast majority of Tories will fall in behind May and Article 50 will pass even if it scrapes a majority. There is no question of it not being invoked. The main sticking point will be a parliamentary demand that Mrs May pursue membership of the single market which she is in all likelihood planning on doing anyway. Why they are bothering I don’t know since Mrs May can make no guarantees. If they do manage to block it by some obscure means then they are basically signing their own death warrants and I think they know this. No MP would ever be safe in public again. From an anti-establishment perspective either suits me fine. If they want to spit on Brexit then they are basically declaring open war on the public. That’s a battle they lose every time.

I’m inclined to agree. Any Remainer celebrations are premature in the extreme. Even assuming the government loses its appeal to the Supreme Court (and unlike some angry Brexiteers I do not claim to be enough of a British legal scholar to know whether or not the case deserved to win on its merits), Parliament would almost certainly not stand in the way of the referendum result, no matter the posturing of some pro-EU MPs.

I don’t really remember the Poll Tax riots toward the tail end of Thatcher’s government. I mean, I remember seeing stories about it on the news, but since I was only eight years old the political ramifications of what I was seeing rather eluded me. But despite my hazy memory, I think it is safe to say were MPs (and it would have to include many Labour MPs representing constituencies which voted to leave the EU) to vote against giving the government authority to invoke Article 50, the resulting conflagration would make the Poll Tax riots look like a summer picnic on Hampstead Heath.

Never mind the constitutional ramifications, and the bizarre state of limbo into which Britain would fall, caught between an instruction from the people to secede from the EU and the petulant demand of MPs to remain. That is nothing compared to the wave of fire and fury and civil disorder that would (rightly) be unleashed upon Parliament, the political class and those MPs responsible.

Now, in our benighted age it is true that we suffer a number of MPs of less than exceptional intelligence and ability. But even the slowest of the crop are capable of grasping that when push comes to shove, they do not want their final act on Earth to be telling the British people, including many of their own constituents, to go to hell – that we should pipe down, forget about independence from the EU and meekly listen to the instruction of our superiors.

Let the legal process unfold as it may. If putting the ball back in Parliament’s court  gives Remainers who now suddenly fetishise British parliamentary sovereignty (after having been happy to watch it relentlessly undermined through our years of EU membership) a furtive thrill, or helps to shore up their denial, then so be it.

They will find the survival instinct of the British political system is much stronger than their ongoing child’s tantrum about being parted from their beloved European Union.

 

European Union - United Kingdom - Britain - Flags

–

Top Image: Steve F E Cameron / Wikimedia Commons

–

Support Semi-Partisan Politics with a one-time or recurring donation:

–

Agree with this article? Violently disagree? Scroll down to leave a comment.

Follow Semi-Partisan Politics on Twitter, Facebook and Medium.

Brexit Catastrophisation Watch, Part 2

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

–

Suffer and roar

The other day, while in an uncharacteristically high-minded mood, I wrote:

During the EU referendum, I genuinely wanted the Leave campaign to win more than I wanted to defeat the Remain campaign. Despite immense provocation from the political establishment and many on the Remain side, I was generally motivated more by a desire to secure a better and more democratic future for my country than to make Remainers sad or to wipe the smug smile off George Osborne’s face.

Well, today I take it all back.

Ordinarily I would feel bad about sharing what is basically an hour’s worthy of weepy young ignoramuses whose mourning for their lost “European identity” is matched only by their ignorance about what the European Union actually is and how it works – but many high-profile Remainers have been so insufferably tedious and ungracious in defeat that any reserves of goodwill I possessed on 24 June have long since been exhausted.

One can only take hearing one’s perfectly legitimate and non-extreme political views (i.e. believing that Britain should be like every country in the world outside the EU and not outsource swathes of our governance to an unaccountable supranational government) described as the first step toward the return of fascism before feeling tempted to hit back, hard.

So enjoy: sixty glorious minutes of morons who who think that painting the EU flag on their faces and singing hymns of praise to Brussels makes them Virtuous People and Enlightened Citizens, weeping bitter tears because the Evil Old People and their nasty racist views have set in motion our foolish secession from the greatest and most noble organisation in human history, the European Union.

Money quotes:

1.30 – pinch-faced, morally righteous young woman on the verge of tears

“I feel like we are watching the stirrings of fascism in Europe again, and I genuinely never thought it would by my country that did that”

Yep, vote for freedom from supranational political union one day and we’ll all be polishing our jackboots the next.

And:

2.17 – a hipster girl wearing an outfit seemingly made entirely of feathers:

“London is like a little bubble, and the outside world, especially like regional places, is quite right wing. And it’s really really scary for our generation?”

And yes, her statement does end with a question mark.

And:

2.26 – the pinch-faced, morally righteous young woman, again

“The majority of these people are over 75 – they don’t have a future in this country.”

Children, respect your elders.

And finally:

23.18 – MP / industrial vacuum cleaner salesman Keith Vaz, crying to the BBC

“This is a crushing, crushing decision. It’s a terrible day for Britain, and a terrible day for Europe with, you know, immense consequences [..] Frankly, in a thousand years I would never have believed that the British people would have voted in this way, and they have done so and I think they have voted emotionally rather than looking at the facts, and it’ll be catastrophic for our country, for the rest of Europe and indeed the world.”

Ah, the arrogant Remainer head vs heart explanation again. Sorry to let you down, Jim.

To be fair, though, I myself was a rabid euro-federalist from the beginning of my student days until my early twenties. Had the EU referendum happened back in the early 2000s, I could easily have been one of those people having a weepy nervous breakdown into any passing TV camera.

Hopefully, like me, some of these petulant voices will come to recant their pro-European views as they grow in age and wisdom – and as the realisation slowly dawns that Brexit, however badly managed by politicians, has not ushered in the apocalypse.

 

People hold banners during a demonstration against Britain's decision to leave the European Union, in central London

–

Bottom Image: Huffington Post, REUTERS/Neil Hall

–

Support Semi-Partisan Politics with a one-time or recurring donation:

–

Agree with this article? Violently disagree? Scroll down to leave a comment.

Follow Semi-Partisan Politics on Twitter, Facebook and Medium.

Even Remainers Who Accept The EU Referendum Result Are In Denial As To Why People Voted For Brexit

Samuel Hooper10 Comments

rachel-reeves-brexit-eu-referendum

–

The EU referendum was not a question of “head vs heart”. When Remainers pretend that they occupied the intellectual high ground, they only delay their necessary and inevitable reckoning with the will of the British people

Remainers simply cannot help themselves. They cannot stop being arrogant and condescending toward Brexit voters, even when making otherwise admirable attempts to extend the olive branch and accept the nation’s verdict on leaving the EU.

Here’s Rachel Reeves MP, writing in the New Statesman:

Two days before the referendum, I visited the largest private sector employer in my constituency. I had spoken to many of the workers during the general election campaign a year earlier.

Although the chief executive works with a community centre to recruit local young people, like many businesses they also hire many Eastern European workers. It was a tough audience, as many blamed the EU for the squeeze on living standards and most felt immigration was out of control.

The people I met believed leaving the EU would mean less pressure on services and more money for them, because the downward pressure on wages would ease with fewer EU migrants.

[..] I knew in my heart at lunchtime on the day of that visit that we’d lost the referendum. My head had told me – the economist – that we would win because the consequences of leaving were a risk voters wouldn’t take. But, by Friday morning, we knew the Leave campaign’s emotional message was stronger than the rational arguments of the Remain campaign.

My emphasis in bold.

And there it is again – the infuriating “head vs heart” conceit, beloved by Remainers, that they unquestionably held the intellectual high ground when it came to arguing for Britain’s continued membership of the EU, and that the only reason for their defeat was that the base emotions and fears of Brexiteers somehow clouded their rational judgment and (to quote Lincoln, since Reeves tries and fails to do the same) shut out the “better angels of our nature”.

According to this cognitive dissonance-soothing rationalisation of defeat, Remainers were unquestionably right to warn of economic armageddon, and the economy was the sole worthwhile measure on which an existential question about national identity and democracy should be determined.

If this is the fruit of the Left’s attempt to understand Brexiteers (and we know it is, because the bottom of the article states that “This blog is based on a chapter Rachel Reeves MP wrote for the Fabian Society edited collection Facing the Unknown: Building a progressive response to Brexit“) then they have done an unspeakably lousy job.

The immediate post-referendum polling clearly showed that the strongest driver of the Leave vote was widespread concern about sovereignty and democracy:

The biggest issue, according to Lord Ashcroft’s post-referendum poll, was the overwhelming desire to preserve what remained of British sovereignty.

In “How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday … and why,” a survey of 12,369 voters in the United Kingdom conducted the day of the referendum, Lord Ashcroft found the No. 1 issue propelling people to vote “leave” was their belief that the U.K. should remain a self-governing entity not responsible to some supranational body writing rules and regulations about the economy and other matters.

Not hankering for a return to the 1950s.

Not an acute discomfort with dark-skinned people or eastern Europeans.

Not “Daily Mail lies” about curved bananas.

The people of Britain voted to leave the European Union because a majority of us quite rightly refused to accept the false claim that close and fruitful trade and cooperation with our European neighbours is somehow only possible by subsuming ourselves into the relentlessly integrating EU superstate. They were smart enough to realise that an organisation with a parliament, flag, anthem and ambitions for a combined military force has its sights set on something much grander than “friendship and cooperation”, and quite rightly wanted no further part of this doomed experiment in euro-federalism.

What’s more, the Brexit-voting people of this country were enlightened and dedicated citizens enough to see through the hysterical scaremongering propaganda of the Leave campaign, and accept that even if there were some short-term economic costs associated with Brexit, the Remain campaign clearly value our country and democracy too cheaply if they would remain part of a European political union through fear of a potential recession.

Were there oddballs, cranks and racists among the Leave campaign? Yes, of course we had our fair share. But the Remain campaign had Eddie Izzard, so let’s not tar an entire side based on its worst cheerleaders.

Look, I get it – daring to consider that one might have campaigned hard on the wrong side of history must be immensely difficult. The emotional investment of Remainers in their worldview, rhetoric and “identity” as super-progressive, tolerant and all-round awesome people is very strong and hard to see past. But if anyone should have the capacity to move beyond their own intellectual comfort zones it should be our elected MPs, people like Rachel Reeves. Sadly, there is little evidence that many are doing so. Nor will there be, probably, until a couple of decades’ time at which point warnings of economic cataclysm will have been taken over by events.

It is good that Rachel Reeves and some others at various points on the left-wing spectrum, Jeremy Corbyn included, recognise that the EU referendum result must be honoured and are reconciling themselves to the will of the people. But it is one thing to accept the country’s verdict while still sanctimoniously proclaiming that the people were manipulated and hoodwinked, and quite another to reach deep inside for some humility and admit that the people may actually have been right all along.

Nobody expects the Labour Party and other Remainers to make the transition overnight. But well-meaning articles like this from Rachel Reeves suggest that the majority have not even begun the urgently-needed process of reconciliation to the national will. And that is a real concern, for their own tenuous future political careers if nothing else.

 

European Union - United Kingdom - Britain - Flags

–

Top Image: Express

–

Support Semi-Partisan Politics with a one-time or recurring donation:

–

Agree with this article? Violently disagree? Scroll down to leave a comment.

Follow Semi-Partisan Politics on Twitter, Facebook and Medium.

No Amount Of ‘Education’ Will Make Sceptical Europeans Love The EU

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

What to do when the continent’s biggest military power and second-largest economy decides to leave your crumbling, tarnished and perennially unwanted supranational political union? Finally consider meaningful reforms? Engage in a sincere listening exercise? Devolve power back to nation states and local communities? Do anything, anything at all, to signal that the European Union might be something that works for the people rather than something which is done to them?

Of course not. When faced with incontrovertible evidence that citizens are starting to rebel en masse against the idea of shared sovereignty, dissolving borders and supranational government, clearly the correct thing to do is to declare that European citizens simply don’t understand the wonderful gift bequeathed to them, and then pledge to funnel more money towards their re-education.

From the Guardian:

The European commission will spend tens of millions more euros promoting the ideal of the EU citizen, in defiance of British ministers, under plans drawn up by officials in Brussels in the wake of the Brexit vote.

Officials for the European parliament claim there is now a clear need for a significant increase in spending on the Europe for Citizens (EFC) programme, which aims to foster the notion of an EU citizenry. The programme had its budget cut from €215m (£185m) to €185.5m (£159m) after a request from Britain in 2013.

“Considering the current political climate, in which an increasing number of citizens question the foundations of the EU, decisive action is indispensable,” an assessment of the programme by officials in the European parliament reports.

“It is for this reason that the reduction in funding for the EFC programme is a serious handicap to successful implementation: to reiterate, the budget for the current EFC programme is €185.5m (down from €215m under the previous programme), which amounts to merely 0.0171% of the EU multiannual financial framework.”

The aim of EFC is said to be that of developing “a better understanding” of the EU across all its member states, to fund remembrance events for key moments in European history and combat scepticism about the EU project.

The assessment document says that funding “which promotes and enables citizens to engage in European matters is of vital importance, especially in times when Euroscepticism is on the rise”.

This only emphasises the degree to which the European Union is an answer to a question which was never even asked. If the various peoples of Europe had gradually come to realise over the course of the 20th century that they shared such a common heritage of laws, language, culture and strategic interests that they wanted to institute a shared common government then the EU or something like it would have developed organically.

But of course no such thing happened – the idea of supranational political union was artificially imposed on European people largely by stealth and in secret over the course of many decades. And while many members of the European political elite get misty-eyed over the EU, the majority of its citizens tolerate rather than welcome this extra layer of government. The flag and the anthem are utterly meaningless to most of the EU’s 510 million citizens – the spine does not stiffen nor the heart quicken at the sight of the twelve stars or the strains of “Ode to Joy”. And unlike the American founding fathers, the secretive “founders” of the EU are unknown, unloved and languish in richly-deserved obscurity.

The hard truth for the euro-federalists is that no amount of money spent on “education” will make people fall in love with the European Union. Love of family, community and country is something which must well up from within; it cannot be successfully imposed by external agents. And likewise, if people do not feel instinctively European over and above their distinct national identities, a true European demos cannot be created – despite the best efforts of the European Union’s architects to defy both human nature and democracy.

Double the peak budget and spend another €215m on idealising the European Union and creating uncritical, misleading propaganda and it will still make no difference, save lining the pockets of opportunistic “cultural” and “artistic” parasites who will happily take taxpayer money to plaster the EU logo over their concerts, plays and workshops.

In other words, it is the perfect EU project. Just don’t expect it to make the slightest bit of difference to anything at all.

 

eu-europe-for-citizens-programme

–

Support Semi-Partisan Politics with a one-time or recurring donation:

–

Agree with this article? Violently disagree? Scroll down to leave a comment.

Follow Semi-Partisan Politics on Twitter, Facebook and Medium.

Picking Through The Wreckage Of Defeat: The Electoral Reform Society’s Report On The EU Referendum

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

The Electoral Commission - EU Referendum Ballot Paper - Brexit - Biased Voting Guide

–

You don’t commission an urgent post-mortem report to look into something wonderful that has just happened. So the mere existence of the Electoral Reform Society’s tremulous report warning about the danger of future referendums tells us all we need to know about their attitude to Brexit and the people who voted for it

“The people have spoken. Or have they?”

So begins the Electoral Reform Society‘s autopsy report of the EU referendum and Britain’s shock decision to leave the European Union. The simpering “or have they?” tells you everything that you probably already suspect about this report – that despite whatever other good work the ERS might do, this is a metro leftist, superficially and uncritically EU-loving effort to come to grips with what they evidently view as a political disaster.

If something bad like a plane crash happens, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch will pick over the wreckage and file a report outlining the chain of events leading up to the tragedy. It is the kind of report which damns by its very existence – nobody commissions a sober post mortem report about something delightful that has just happened. The ERS’s perspective on Brexit is established in the first seven words, and even before then by its very existence.

That’s not to say that the report is worthless – despite its clear bias (I’ll eat my hat if author Will Brett or any of the other major contributors actually voted to leave the EU) there are some thoughtful deliberations on how to get citizens involved in any future referendum planning process so that the procedure feels less like something which was suddenly foisted on the people, the rules being made entirely by shadowy people in Parliament.

Nor can I argue with the report’s recommendation to extend citizenship lessons in primary and secondary school. This blog has long stood for mandatory civics classes thoughout the duration of secondary education, not only as a way of developing good future citizens in place of self-entitled little snowflakes, but also as a means of celebrating, transmitting and reinforcing core British values on classes which may be very ethnically and culturally mixed, thus helping to end self-enforced apartheid.

Read the whole thing here – it touches on more areas than this single blog post can feasibly analyse.

But soon the wheels start to come off the report. This first happens when the ERS make egregiously misleading use of the “factoid” that there was a large spike in Google searches of the phrase “What is the EU?” in the immediate aftermath of the result. This was immediately taken by the stunned Remainiac establishment to be proof that we bovine Brits had voted for something which we did not even understand.

But this scandalous interpretation is wrong, as the Telegraph patiently explained:

Google Trends data isn’t actually representative of the number of total searches for a term, but a proportion of all searches at a given time. The company highlights spikes in searches based on what else is being Googled at a given moment in a geographical area.

So in the early hours of Friday morning searches for “What is the EU” briefly spiked compared to what else was being asked. To put it in context, the search only outstripped that for “weather forecast” between 01:30 and 04:30 in the morning, but by 05:00 that had changed.

Data from AdWords, which offers more specific numbers for search terms, shows that the 250 per cent increase in searches actually correlated to about 1,000 people asking the question.

In other words, bitter Remainers called into question the intelligence of half the country based on the Google search activity of no more than a thousand late night stoners who didn’t know what the European Union is but who were also far too moronic to find their polling station, let alone put an X in a box. Yet the ERS still considered this deceptive factoid worthy of inclusion at the beginning of their report.

But here’s where it really goes wrong:

At the start of the regulated period the Electoral Commission, or a specially commissioned independent body, should publish a website with a ‘minimum data set’ containing the basic data relevant to the vote in one convenient place . A major source of complaint about the conduct of the referendum was the supposed lack of independent information available about the vote. While there are real difficulties in separating out fact from political argument in these cases, a minimum data set ought to be possible.

In other words, rather than assuming that the British people are mature and capable enough to frame the debate in the terms which matter most to them, the Electoral Reform Society would have some shadowy committee decide in advance the terms on which the referendum should be fought, and then produce a “minimum data set” of presumably quantitative data to guide decision-making.

This is a truly terrible idea. The EU referendum probably meant something slightly different to every single one of the millions of Britons who voted. Even assuming that an approximate minimum data set could be hammered out, what was included and what was left out would inevitably reflect the biases or interests of those involved. We have enough trouble trying to come up with a referendum question which both sides feel eliminates bias or inappropriate suggestion. What makes the ERS think that producing a commonly agreed “minimum data set” would be anything but fraught, contentious and ultimately impossible?

Besides which, the key issue of the EU referendum was intangible: do we think that British democracy is best preserved inside the EU or without? One can come up with endless (often contradictory) statistics debating the economic benefits, but what could one possibly collate to form the “minimum data set” to vote based on democracy?

As political blogger I have read scores of history and politics books including some of the definitive critiques and praises for the EU, and the more I learned the less I realised I knew. In fact, as referendum day inched closer and closer and I saw other, established journalists and politicians make continual fools of themselves with their superficial and misleading analyses, I found it harder, not easier, to write. There is so much that I don’t know about how the EU works in practice and how international trade functions that I’m loathe to write much at all, and I actually spend spare moments reading some of this stuff and trying to learn. So what would be the Electoral Reform Society’s ideal minimum reading list for the country?

But of course they are not suggesting a reading list at all. When the ERS propose a minimum standards set, what they really mean is a short list of bullet points emphasising all the ways that Brexit could harm the economy in the short term, assuming a worst case scenario. They want a beefed up version of the government’s already utterly immoral £9 million propaganda leaflet sent to voters before the EU referendum. Just to altruistically ensure that people are “better informed”, of course. Right-o.

Is the current system perfect? No. Many Britons did complain that they felt they lacked sufficient information, or that they could not trust the information they were given. One could scarcely escape these modern-day Hamlets bleating their confusion on BBC Question Time. But in fact, while the status quo may be far from perfect, the giant flaws in more activist approaches like that proposed by the ERS are far worse.

Will people sometimes make their referendum decision judgements based on poorly chosen criteria? Yes, of course they will. Would seeking to prevent this by artificially restricting the terms of the debate be any better? No, it would be a thousand times worse. Rather that power sits with sometimes-confused citizens than with politicians or civil servants with very fixed ambitions of their own.

Besides, the awkward fact remains that while many voters may have liked to complain about not having all of the required information handed to them on a silver platter, a proportion of them were simply covering for their own laziness. As an ardent Brexit supporter I know I’m supposed to be waxing lyrical about the deep wisdom of the British people right now, but the fact is that there are a lot of stupid people out there, on both sides of the debate – people whose bovine cries of “but nobody is giving information” belies the fact that they haven’t watched the news in years because the TV remote got buried under a pile of pizza delivery boxes.

But the worst recommendation from the ERS report is yet to come:

An official body – either the Electoral Commission or an appropriate alternative – should be empowered to intervene when overtly misleading information is disseminated by the official campaigns. Misleading claims by the official campaigns in the EU referendum were widely seen as disrupting people’s ability to make informed and deliberate choices. Other countries including New Zealand have successfully regulated campaign claims – the UK should follow suit.

Again, this reeks of mistrusting the electorate – of course, we already know that the ERS does so, it is the very reason for this report in the first place. But to see it spelled out quite so blatantly is remarkable indeed. For in the opinion of the ERS, citizens are not mentally equipped – even in the Age of Google, when everybody has a smartphone in their pocket capable of accessing the accumulated knowledge of mankind – to analyse political messages and determine truth or untruth, validity or invalidity. Rather, we are apparently in need of some external authority to pre-screen our reality for us.

How on earth this is supposed to work is beyond comprehension. Set 100 top-tier university students the essay question “The EU brought peace to Europe. Discuss” and you will get 100 different subjective arguments, each with a unique perspective and most drawing from at least some unique sources. Say the Leave campaign takes a dislike to such a claim by the pro-EU side: what threshold would they have to meet to bring a complaint, and who has the final say as to whether the statement is misleading or not? And if a statement is found to be misleading, what should be the remedy? Front-page advertisements by the Electoral Commission in every national newspaper? Another propaganda leaflet through everyone’s door? Interrupting Coronation Street with some breaking news?

As a policy prescription it is entirely unworkable, but as a middle class, metro-leftist sulk at the supposed lies and deceit of the Bad Man Nigel Farage and the Evil Tor-eees it makes perfect sense. And sadly, that is precisely why the idea of a Referendum Censor entered the Electoral Reform Society’s report.

And shockingly, this leads the Electoral Reform Society to conclude that given the nature and outcome of the EU referendum campaign, maybe we would all be better off eschewing future freewheeling referendums for the safety and security of “parliamentary democracy”, preferring this to even their recommendations for more pre-determined, moderated, government-mediated future referendum campaigns:

Given the frequency of party-political imperatives behind the calling of referendums, it is worth asking: what are the conditions where a referendum is really the best way of settling a political question? Perhaps parties and politicians should make a habit of reflecting on some of the difficulties around calling and then responding to referendums, and – where possible – seek to find a way through the thicket of representative democracy instead.

Douglas Carswell sees many of the same flaws in the ERS report that this blog also identifies:

How do you give people more control over government? I’ve always believed the answer is direct democracy: more decisions made by voters, fewer by politicians and officials. But the Electoral Reform Society seems to think the opposite. They want to give officialdom more control over direct democracy. Why?

The ERS’s latest recommendations come from its scathing report on the referendum campaign. I also thought some of the conduct in the campaign was disgraceful. But much of their critique is misplaced.

There is, for example, barely any criticism of the Remain propaganda issued by Downing Street at taxpayers’ expense. And no mention of the use of the civil service as an extension of the Remain campaign. Apparently, co-opting the organs of the State to gain an unfair edge is no big deal.

The report also says people felt ill-informed, and the campaigns provided disinformation. Yet there is no admission that many of the outlandish claims came from supposedly independent “experts” – many of whose warnings, especially on the economy, have already been proven wrong.

And concludes:

But the big problem with the idea of official arbiters for campaign information is not the practical execution, but the premise behind it. In a democracy, we already have an arbiter: it’s called the people. The whole point of democracy is that voters analyse what they are told by the opposing sides, and make their own decision.

Underlying the ERS’s report is the sense that people can’t really be trusted to know what they are voting on, so instead we should let unelected technocrats decide for them. That’s not the kind of electoral reform Britain needs.

And yet the report makes some worthwhile observations despite its inherent biases. The information made available to the general public through the media was indeed shockingly bad, as the ERS complain, with MPs and household name journalists alike vying with one another for the title of Most Ignorant on a daily basis. More galling for sites such as this, those of us who strove to deepen our knowledge were routinely shut out of the discussion.

I doubt there is a better-researched and thoroughly produced political blog in the whole country than eureferendum.com, and Dr. Richard North’s “Flexcit” Brexit plan, yet few have ever heard of it thanks partly to the establishment closing ranks against somebody they view as an outsider but also to the fact that the Westminster political/media establishment are lazy, and don’t like putting in the hours of work it takes to speak confidently and knowledgeably on the real intricacies of Brexit and international trade.

But whatever the individual merits of each point in the report, it still ultimately comes back to the question of why the report was produced in the first place. Had the EU referendum result been inverted and the Remain side triumphed in a 52-48 victory, would the Electoral Reform Society still have produced a report, albeit one streaked with fewer Remainer tear stains? I’ll be generous and say yes, they probably would.

But would the content of the report and the ensuing recommendations be identical to the current version, with its overt worries about misinformation and an ill-informed population? I very much doubt it.

And that tells you everything you need to know about the political bias of the Electoral Reform Society.

 

Electoral Reform Society - ERS - EU Referendum Report - Brexit

–

Support Semi-Partisan Politics with a one-time or recurring donation:

–

Agree with this article? Violently disagree? Scroll down to leave a comment.

Follow Semi-Partisan Politics on Twitter, Facebook and Medium.