Brexit, Britain, referendums*, and democracy
I don’t even pretend to understand the maneuverings going on in Britain right now over Brexit. And the more articles I read, the more convinced I am that no one else really does, either.
Although I hope Boris Johnson understands them.
But right now I’m interested in discussing a larger issue: democracy vs. representative republican (small “r”) government.
Recall that Brexit (which I happen to favor, although I don’t get a vote) was voted on and approved by the British people in a referendum. Britain has a representative parliamentary system in which the people elect members of Parliament who are the ones who make the laws, and the head of the party having a parliamentary majority (or the main party in a coalition government that adds up to a majority) becomes the Prime Minister, the chief of the executive branch.
I hope that’s correct. As I said, the British system is somewhat opaque to me, but those are at least the broad outlines as I understand them. (I’m sure someone in the comments will ever-so-helpfully correct me if I’m wrong).
So why was a referendum held to decide an issue such as whether to leave the EU? In the US, we don’t hold national referendums on issues such as this. We conduct public opinion polls, but they decide nothing, although we elect a president by a nationwide vote—plus the Electoral College, which makes even that process a less-than-purely-Democratic one. Members of Congress are decided by state totals and/or district totals in regular nationwide elections (or special election under certain circumstances). But once those people are in office, they are free to do whatever they want that is not prohibited by the Constitution or the courts. That’s a representative republican system.
Even in Britain, which allows them, UK-wide referendums are highly unusual. Interestingly enough, almost all of them have had to do with membership in the European community organizations:
Referendums in the United Kingdom are occasionally held at a national, regional or local level. National referendums can be permitted by an Act of Parliament and regulated through the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, but they are by tradition extremely rare due to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty meaning that they cannot be constitutionally binding on either the Government or Parliament, although they usually have a persuasive political effect.
Until the latter half of the twentieth century the concept of a referendum was widely seen in British politics as “unconstitutional” and an “alien device”. As of 2018, only three national referendums have ever been held across the whole of the United Kingdom: in 1975, 2011 and most recently in 2016.
Two of these referendums were held on the issue of the United Kingdom’s relationship with Europe with the first held on the issue of continued membership of what was known at the time as the European Communities (EC), which was the collective term for the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC), and was also referred to by many at that time as the “Common Market”. This was the 1975 European Communities membership referendum which was held two and a half years after the United Kingdom became a member on 1 January 1973 and was the first national referendum ever to be held within the United Kingdom. The second took place forty-one years later by which time the various European organisations (with the exception of EAEC) had been integrated by subsequent treaty ratifications into the European Union (EU) when the electorate was asked to vote again on the issue of continued membership in the 2016 European Union membership referendum.
The 2011 AV referendum on the proposal to use the alternative vote system in parliamentary elections is the only UK-wide referendum that has been held on a domestic issue.
So although British referendums are extremely rare, there is somewhat of a tradition for them to be held in connection with EU-type issues. As far as the 2016 vote that resulted in Brexit being approved, here’s how it went down:
The referendum was legislated for under the provisions of the European Union Referendum Act 2015, which legally required HM Government to hold the referendum no later than 31 December 2017 and also the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000…
The “Leave” option was voted by 52% of voters, as opposed to 48% of voters who wished to “Remain”. Of the 382 voting areas, 263 returned majority votes in favour of “Leave” whereas 119 returned majority votes in favour of “Remain” which included every Scottish council area and all but five of the London boroughs. The vote revealed divisions among the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, with England and Wales voting to leave, but Scotland and Northern Ireland voting to remain. The national turnout was 72% which was eight percentage points higher than the turnout back in 1975, although the majority was 12 percentage points lower. It was the first time a UK-wide referendum result had gone against the preferred choice of HM Government who had officially recommended a “Remain” vote and it led to a period of political turmoil.
So you see two things operating here. The first is that the politicians who called for the vote were surprised by the results. I doubt they would have asked for a referendum if they had thought the people would approve of Brexit.
That’s probably why they’re been fighting it ever since. Referendum remorse.
The other thing operating is that, similar to divisions in the US, in the UK there is a significant split between the big urban center of London and the rest of England, and another split between England/Wales on one side and Scotland/Northern Ireland on the other, with England and Wales wanting Brexit and Scotland and northern Ireland wanting to remain part of the EU. I don’t know, but I imagine that these same divisions persist to the present.
This was also important:
After the vote there was frequent public discussion whether the result of the referendum was advisory or mandatory, but the High Court stated on 3 November 2016 that, in the absence of specific provision in the enabling legislation (such as in this case there was not), ‘a referendum on any topic can only be advisory for the lawmakers in Parliament”
So there’s a paradox here. The leftist forces that usually champion “democracy, democracy!” lost the referendum, whereas the forces more on the right won. What’s more, after they lost the referendum, those leftist forces have been going against the democracy represented by the results of that referendum and insisting that they are representatives in Parliament and can vote against the will of the people. What’s more, Boris Johnson would apparently like still another vote to occur—not another referendum, but another election—because he thinks the pro-Brexit forces would win it.
So there’s been a back-and-forth, back-and-forth, tactical pendulum swing on who’s the democrat (small “d”) and who’s the republican (small “f”).
[* NOTE: I checked to see what the plural of “referendum” would be, and it seems that just adding an “s” is the right way to go.]
I don’t even pretend to understand the maneuverings going on in Britain right now over Brexit. And the more articles I read, the more convinced I am that no one else really does, either.
Like I said last night:
I had a Brit friend who would laugh at me when I tried to follow Brit political maneuvering. I’m still laughable.
There’s the small point that there is no UK Constitution codified in a single document. Which isn’t to say it’s Calvinball, but it seems you practically have to grow up there to know what the rules are and where they come from. I certainly had never heard of “prorogation” until the past week, much less understand how it works or when it’s applicable.
I’ve been reading articles on Johnson’s prorogation. For some writers it’s a masterstroke; for others it’s a disaster. For some writers, it’s a perfectly legal move; for others it’s an outrageous betrayal of democratic principles.
I’ll just have to see how it works out over the next couple months.
neo: I appreciate your honesty.
I am confused by cricket, although I’ve read the rules twice. I just fail to grok cricket and wonder why they don’t decide to adopt baseball as a national sport.
First, even before reading the OED opinion at your link I thought you had made the right choice. Once a word has come into English, it should follow our rules, like any other immigrant. Using the method of creating a plural in Latin would have been favored in the 17th-19th C’s when educated people mindlessly worshipped and slavishly obeyed Latin, but we’ve gotten over that now. It was fun to read that it wouldn’t be good Latin anyway.
As to Brexit, the Remainers seem to be saying “We want you to do as we tell you, but we want to call it Democracy.” As I mentioned before, I don’t actually know what’s best for the UK, but I do have a sense of who is fighting fair and making good arguments.
Seemingly in play during the upcoming week are these provisions (I quote the wiki on the “Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011”):
The elite of England did not like the referendum result.
They have now taken a lesson from Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who famously said:
“Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.”
They do not like the current stop, so they wish to back up the streetcar.
The referendum has no legal force; however, the government which called it (Cameron’s Tory government) promised it would abide by the results, and then refused to do so. Johnson says, “Enough,” and he’s betting the electorate will say so, too, by sending a pro-Brexit Parliament, but first he’s got to get a general election, which Labour and Liberal Democrats are now resisting.
They’ve got a first-class mess.
“The first is that the politicians who called for the vote were surprised by the results. I doubt they would have asked for a referendum if they had thought the people would approve of Brexit.”
This I believe sums it up. Many Tory leaders did not want Brexit but did not see it going away as an issue for their voters so they made the mistake of believing the polls and bringing it up for a vote so that when it failed they could pooh-pooh the very idea in the future.
I would say it might be about ‘democracy’ or ‘anti-democracy’ but perhaps because the government has swung back toward the left a little bit and they are the ones who have to enact the move. So two things:
1) Confusion about how exactly to leave the EU.
2) Parliament unable to get the votes to get the plan definitively started in part because the composition of Parliament changed since 2016. Since then ‘Conservatives’ lost 41 seats, ‘Liberals’ gained 18 and ‘Independent’ gained 31 seats. [Liberal Democrats also gained 7 seats].
We have ballot measures in California that voters often pass that do not get enacted. One, for instance, was last November voters approved by 60% to 40% to stay on Daylight Savings all year. But in order for this to be enacted the legislature has to agree by 2/3 of a vote and then the Federal government has to come on board. Neither will probably happen. I use that as an example specifically because it is less dramatic than Brexit yet it’s still not easy to implement. When it comes to Brexit it’s a big move that will affect economy, commerce, education, etc. So while the voters said yes to the referendum in 2016 the politicians get the final say and with the change in the composition of Parliament in 2017 away from Conservative it’s a bit more difficult.
That’s my reading of the issue.
My limited understanding of the EU mess (including some stuff that’s likely wrong): Nobel prize winning economists like Robert Mundell thought that a common EU currency was hot stuff because of the resulting efficiency and lack of “economic friction.” It’s not just the currency exchanging, but also the hedging against possible deleterious relative currency fluctuations in the future, that harms business activity.
They didn’t know or care that some of these economies are persistently high performing and others persistently low performing, and local currency revaluations are the usual way imbalances are remedied.
The Maastricht Treaty was the entry to the common “Euro dollar” community, and the U.K. did not sign on. Couldn’t let go the pound sterling and the ha’pence etc. I suppose. I didn’t know about the Nice and Amsterdam treaties until I looked up the Maastricht and have no idea what those are about.
Then the U.K. did sign on to the Lisbon Treaty. So they got all the onerous regs. and destruction of their sovereignty without the benefit of a common currency? I had read at some point that people complained about the lack of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. According to Neo’s article, the U.K. citizenry don’t normally get involved in treaty authorization any more than we do in the U.S. Hey U.K.! Get a real constitution and you could add that in there.
Once they found out what the EU is really all about, the citizens of the U.K. wanted out. It’s completely understandable that Ireland want’s to stay in because their economy is based on being a low tax haven for those who have been grossly overtaxed. Don’t know what Scotland’s excuse is.
And the EU bosses are playing “Hotel California” with membership. You can never leave, or if you do we will inflict enormous pain. This is the primary impediment for the U.K. at this point. PM May would have gotten it done, if the EU hadn’t demanded 20 pounds of flesh. Brussels is sending a message. If we treat the U.K. this way, imagine what we will do to Portugal if they want to leave.
neo states,
“after they lost the referendum, those leftist forces have been going against the democracy represented by the results of that referendum and insisting that they are representatives in Parliament and can [legally] vote against the will of the people.” my emphasis
above, neo quoted;
“National referendums can be permitted by an Act of Parliament and regulated through the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, but they are by tradition extremely rare due to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty meaning that they cannot be constitutionally binding on either the Government or Parliament”
If the quoted passage is accurate, it would appear that the referendum on Brexit is indeed not legally binding upon the Government or Parliament.
But the UK is turning into a Police State, so in the larger context… Brexit really doesn’t matter.
parker,
American baseball is far too unpredictable, it lacks cricket’s stodgy formality, which fits the English ‘upper crust’ rather well…
After the 2016 Referendum, the Tories are internally split. Many elite Tories want to Remain, but their voters want to Leave. So Remainer David Cameron, the Tory PM who promised to call a referendum and kept his promise, resigned in 2016 after the referendum came up against the advice of his gov’t.
However, the Tories still controlled Parliament (some 340+ seats), so they chose Teresa May as the new leader, who became the new Prime Minister. She was a Remainer, who promised to Leave. After 12 months, she called a new election in 2017, in which the Tories promised to Leave, and won fewer of the total 650 seats (326 is a majority), so only in coalition with Democratic Unionist Party could they form a majority gov’t (of 328):
Conservatives: 318 Labor: 268 Scottish National Party: 35
Lib Dems: 12 DUP (N. Ire): 10 Sinn Fein (N. Ire): 7 Others: 4, 1, 1
https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2017/results
(coalition forming problems are why I no longer prefer Parliamentary systems)
A weakened May “gave away” everything to the EU in Brussels, so there was no gov’t agreement on her 578 (?) page agreement offered this year. Many Tories claim to want to leave, but only with a “good” agreement. And May’s agreement was lousy. There are many (elite) Tories who want to Remain. Some 38 ministers from May’s gov’t resigned in her 3 years, mostly over Brexit.
But Labour, too, is split with many Remainers (siding with Tories???) as well as many Leavers. Plus they are now led by a raving Socialist, Jeremy Corbyn, who is a known “Euroskeptic”, yet is unhappy with a “no deal” Britain leaving.
The UK was supposed to be gone from the EU before the 2019 EU elections, but they were still there, so there was a vote. Surprise, a new Brexit Party formed, and did well in the EU vote, getting 29 of the 73 Members.
https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/crjeqkdevwvt/the-uks-european-elections-2019
Voters are getting fed up and even angry about these elite politicians who refuse to Leave.
But just as there were many factions in Iran who opposed the Shah of Iran (78ish), the open society democrats, communists & socialists, and Islamists – it’s far easier to get agreement against something unliked. Getting agreement on a replacement is so much more difficult.
So many differences with the US; yet so many populist normal folk vs elite similarities.
I have no problems with the plural “referendums” – yes, it was an interesting point about the hybridization, or mongrelization, of the Latin word – but you might want to edit this line.
who’s the democrat (small “d”) and who’s the republican (small “f”).
Well, if you ask me, thank God we say “data” and not “datums.” Likewise, “agenda” and not “agendums.”
Although I’m equally thankful it’s OK to use “data” in the singular. As far as I’m concerned anyone who says, “The data are …” has a corncob problem below the equator.
Then there’s the whole Nic-a-ra-wa and Pock-ee-stan issue.
neo: You write a long, hard-fought piece on Brexit and here we are fixated on the asterisk concern.
We are not worthy!
Scotland has a referendum on independence recently too.
It’s completely understandable that Ireland want’s to stay in because their economy is based on being a low tax haven for those who have been grossly overtaxed.
That’s the Republic of Ireland, not the UK province of Northern Ireland (a/k/a Ulster).
Speaking of the Irelands, as I understand it one of the main sticking points is the “backstop”, somehow concerning the border between the two. But I don’t understand what exactly the problem is other than they don’t want a “hard” border (and it’s implied that there’ll be new violence if that happens, because: Irish).
As a matter of political philosophy, it is not good to have a simple Democracy. Neither is it good to have a simple Republic. Even a Democratic Republic isn’t quite enough.
One needs a Natural Law/Natural Rights, Subsidiarist/Federalist, Constitutionally-Limited, Separated-Powers Democratic Republic. No government is perfect, but in a fallen world like this one, that kind is the least bad.
The United States was fortunate enough to have a government constructed largely from scratch according to these principles; however, the philosophical and ethical grounding in Natural Law and Natural Rights was lost by the end of the 19th century through academic culture-change, and Subsidiarism/Federalism was both never perfectly implemented and largely destroyed by the direct election of Senators and the practice of choosing the electors in the Electoral College by vote. Judicial review has increasingly been a problem as well; practically speaking it often leads to the rule of five-out-of-nine philosopher kings.
But the U.K. didn’t have the benefit of starting from scratch. (And when you have existing structures, it’s very bad for a crowd of intellectuals from a single generation to rip them up in favor of a perfect new scheme, even if the scheme happens to be a fairly wise one. For the act of ripping up the intermediary institutions in society in anything less than 100 years’ time produces chaos and violence; e.g., the French Revolution.)
So honestly, I think the Brits should be pretty proud of what they have. (Or, had, prior to EU membership.) It’s not structurally elegant, it has largely-unused legacy code all over the place (pardon the programming analogy), but it maintains a pretty decent culture and society pretty well above the level of savagery.
The problem is that the EU can and does override all of that, whenever they wish. As a practical reality, Britain is ruled by unelected bureaucrats that intervene in every level of local minutiae with impunity, and the EU courts have “judicial review” which can and do override any traditional rights of local rule and culture assumed by all prior generations of British political culture back to Magna Carta. It’s the EU judicial veto over behaviors of local communities, more even than the direct regulations of the bureaucrats, that is homogenizing Britain into an English-speaking Holland.
In that sense, Brexit is not merely about “taxation without representation” but EU regulatory and judicial dominance over town councils, mayors, members of both houses, and Her Majesty’s government generally…without representation or recourse other than exiting. Elections continue in the UK, but unless Brexit succeeds, they’re functionally sham elections. Various elected officials in various offices can write whatever laws they like; but the EU will overturn, without discussion or appeal, whichever ones they dislike.
More than anything, that’s what crushes Subsidiarity/Federalism, and prevents any community from being its own self, maintaining uniqueness within a larger society or culture. It’s why I’d be happier if our U.S. Senators were appointed by governors with the advice and consent of their legislatures, or some such scheme. It is vital to retain active, meaningful power at multiple levels of sovereignty. It’s the only thing that prevents the highest-level of aggregation from squelching all variety and uniqueness out of the lower levels.
Montage,
Why does California need federal government involvement to change time? Several sections of several states ignore daylight savings time. Arizona (except for the Navajo nation) and Hawaii do not and I believe parts of Indiana and Delaware also do not follow it, and U.S. territory Puerto Rico.
R.C. makes a trenchant observation about Britain’s subjection to the EU as what has been described by Sir Ivan Rogers as a “regulatory superpower.” It is hard not to hear ominous overtones in the phrase.
Britain is facing a constitutional crisis, and not for the first time. I recommend Christopher Caldwell’s essay on how it got there (https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/why-hasnt-brexit-happened-yet/). Caldwell makes the point that Britain has become used to using “someone else’s constitution.” Two recent innovations, the emergence of judicial review and the Fixed-term Parliament Act 2011, have undermined the old constitutional balance. Under the old regime, it would be unthinkable for a government that had lost its majority to stay in office, and there would have been the expectation of an immediate General Election to return a government with some sort of mandate. That is the only way to keep alignment between the electorate, Parliament, and the government, which is the basic assumption of the constitution.
By contrast, rule from Brussels is rule by committees of lawyers and bankers. I can see why the City interests (banks, insurers, consultancies, lawyers, and other professional service firms) think it is necessary, and one should expect that they will bear the brunt of any E.U. retaliation in the event of Brexit. Hence their hysteria and determination.
Daniel Hannan remains sanguine and expects Brexit to occur sooner rather than later. If we consider Brexit an English independence movement with at least 50 pct support in England, it is clear that there is not popular support to sustain continued membership in the EU. The popular mandate has been withdrawn, and legal frustration is not likely to restore it.
It was very seductive. We had all these countries running around half crazy after the two wars. They had lost half their men. It was like a hellish cauldron for the first few years afterwards in the late forties….a wasteland of starvation and crime. Everyone outside this now-cooling furnace had to lend money to the losers and winners. All these nations felt guilty, not only for all the deaths but for the sins…the Jews, the gypsies, the disabled, the prisoners who were shot or starved to death by both sides. No one gained anything. Well, we forget freedom was rescued.
Nothing was so uplifting as to think that a brand new Europe could come to life and that European man could finally forget and be reborn. All it needed at first was a way to ease all financial transactions and people movement. A common market. No tariffs. No passports. No restrictions of capital or labor.
All good and healthy ideas. Make production easy. And consumption easy. We will blossom as a new European flower.
The question was: is it possible to have a free market without bringing in lots of politics. After all, sooner or later bad loans and bonds will occur, rates of exchange will confound, legal action will be needed. Strikes will occur. Some states will pay their labor much less. People will be envious. All kinds of commercial litigation will happen. Can the market remain alone and happy and virginal and not be spoiled by politics? Can you have a market and not bring politics in? Stay tuned. The answer is arriving soon.
There is no f in “republican”. Republican is not an f-letter word.