I wrote this comment on the blog following an earlier posting by Perry de Havilland; I decided to recast it a bit for a comment I hope deserves another airing here.
With all the nonsense of the Remainers claiming that the dignity of Parliament must be preserved (a poor joke, considering how Parliament has seen its powers eroded by various forces, including the EU, in recent years), surely the point has to be made that this referendum was presented, by former Prime Minister David Cameron et al, as not merely a giant public opinion survey, but as a referendum the consequence of which would, if the vote was for leave, trigger an exit by the use of Article 50. The Cameron government had a majority of MPs in the House of Commons; they approved this referendum and its terms of reference. (If they had chosen to revolt, they plainly decided not to do so.) This was, therefore, a process that had support of the majority of parliament, and was not undermining parliament or pushing MPs aside. There can be no attempt at convenient amnesia on this point from those who are sore at being on the losing side.
The fine details of exactly how an exit will be achieved can be for the lawmakers in the Commons and Lords to decide, but the binding nature of the referendum result is not a matter of debate. By a clear majority, it was for Brexit, based on a 70 per cent turnout, the highest turnout in more than 20 years.
Had the referendum result been for Remain, you can bet that the Remainers would have said the outcome was a settled one, and that no further attempts to hold such a referendum should be held for many years. That is, after all, the position taken on the Scottish Referendum result by the victorious side. And they are right to do so.
What this whole saga shows is a high-handed disdain for voters (I have had my fill of being told how Brexit voters are all racists, fools or fantasists by people who conveniently forgot their support for the wretched euro and other hubristic projects.) The arrogance of it only serves to reinforce my belief that Brexit is not just the best course, albeit with certain risks, but desirable in that it is giving heartburn to the kind of creatures who deserve to suffer it.
And consider this – the outcome was a clear majority, of over a million people; that contrasts with how, under our first-past-the-post system, a government can wield power based on the votes of a minority percentage of the voting population. This point is one that needs to be made, given the clear imperfections of our FPTP system. After all, politicians such as Nick Clegg, the former leader of the (greatly diminished) Liberal Democrats, and an ardent supporter of proportional representation (as opposed to FPTP) might, you would suppose, see the force of using referenda to deal with cases where the current FPTP system yields unsatisfactory outcomes. But he doesn’t in this case, because majority voter opinion is against his desire for ever-closer moves towards a federal Europe.
Even so, I don’t think referenda should be used a great deal, and should be reserved for special occasions where there is an enormous, and insupportable gap, between public opinion on a matter of constitutional importance, and those of MPs. (Imagine if most MPs wanted to remove the monarchy, a view clearly at odds with that of the public.) We should hold referenda rarely. There is, after all, the practical problem of exhausting the patience of voters. Representative democracy, after all, involves a certain division of labour in the Adam Smith sense – we send people to Parliament to deal with specific issues and if we dislike their general approach over time, can remove them; we are not expected to follow the details of every policy and decide them en masse ourselves.
I agree, broadly, with the old Edmund Burke point that MPs are representatives, not just delegates and ciphers of the electorate;Â The point, however, like all such arguments, has its limits, particularly when the views of most MPs are clearly at odds with the majority of the adult voting population, as they have been on the European Union. That divide between MPs and the opinion of the country has become so wide that a referendum was needed to settle the matter. It has been.
Addendum: It is argued by Andrew Lilico that because the majority of MPs before 23 June were for Remain, they plainly lack a clear mandate, and authority, to take the UK out of the EU, and that to remove obstructionist MPs and gain a fresh mandate requires a general election. Of course, given the current state of the polls, such an election should lead to a larger Tory majority, composed, one assumes, of more pro-independence MPs.
Disagree. All law should be made by referenda’ with some mechanism for controlling the quality of law. Parliament would then act merely in a ratifying capacity. Objecting that this is too big a job for the populace rings false to a libertarian
PeterT, I did not say it is too big a job for a libertarian, but that given where we are now with such a lot of activity, there is a division of labour argument for having MPs, on our behalf, going through the details of certain policies, and if we dislike how that is done, remove them. To have referenda on countless laws and proposals – almost every day – is unworkable madness.
I disagree, at least on the face of it – let them put every law and proposal to a referendum, and let the voters ignore most of those, and only respond to the ones they deem important enough. And, let proposals that did not attract enough of a voter turnout die in their infancy. To me that actually sounds like a good way to greatly reduce that countless number, resulting in far less madness than we currently have.
The problem with legislating by referendum is that highly-motivated minorities can pass everything they desire.
Getting extra pay for fire department workers who have red hair attracts the vote of every red-haired fire department worker, but holds little interest for the rest of us. Thus, in a city of 1,000,000, if 30 red-haired FD employees vote yes, and only five other people are interested enough to vote no, the red-hairs win.
If a referendum requires a certain percentage of eligible voters to vote yes for it to prevail, you can bypass this problem. But then, you hardly ever get a referendum passed. (Which may well be a great outcome on its own merits, but sort of outside the scope here.)
Yes, that seems to be a key condition.
Alisa, the problem is that voters will, initially, discover that they haven’t time to scrutinise all the referenda ideas coming at them so will soon discover that a lot of proposals become law without really knowing about it (rather as happens now). This is why we have MPs – hence my division of labour point – to do the job of sifting through proposals, either from their own ranks, or from lobby groups, individuals, etc.
I do of course agree that proposed referenda would have to pass a minimum number rule. This happens in places such as Switzerland, where I think you can start a ref. by having 50,000 signatures from eligible voters.
By a glorious irony, of course, Switzerland isn’t in the EU, and has the impertinence to be far more prosperous than many of its neighbours who are.
But how will it happen? And it is not happening now, because currently laws are not passed by referendum anywhere in the West other than in Switzerland (and at the local level in the US), AFAIK. My point was not about a minimal no. of signatures to put a proposal up for a popular vote (although that is an additional good measure), but that there has to be a minimal number of ‘yes’ votes out of the total number of all eligible voters (as opposed to ‘no’ votes, plus those who simply didn’t bother to vote). Am I missing something?
Realize that professional politicians are warlocks. (The root meaning of warlock is Oathbreaker, Liar, Deceiver). And they’re simply practicing magick to achieve their own gains. (Magick is the art and science of manipulating symbols, words and images to achieve changes in beliefs, concepts and perceptions.)
By magick, I DO NOT mean wave a magic wand and make an apple float in the air. I mean magick as a means of moving the real world with ideas, manipulation and persuasions.
The ‘matrix’ world they create, with legacy media being their butt-monkey aids, is a world of artifice. It’s an artificial world of propaganda and manipulation. “The Matrix” is composed of words.
Fairness? Fairness doesn’t exist. Fairness is a desired condition of zero-sum games. However, justice, like rights, do exist. But The Manipulators, these warlocks, are not interested in justice.
We must train ourselves to see beyond the veil.
Running foreign policy by referenda is a non-starter. You lack consistency and timeliness.
Switzerland avoids this problem by effectively having no foreign policy. I quite like that, but I doubt many Britons would.
After helping Italy reunify, Napoleon III took Savoy in payment. Switzerland had threatened to invade Savoy to prevent that, but by the time each Canton had voted it was too late, and France was entrenched. Foreign policy by referenda is like that.
The Swiss also lack national policy on most things — education, health etc are all cantonal. It works if you have a decentred economy and people that don’t move. Again, I quite like that, but London and the big cities are too dominant in GB to make that workable.
And hang those MPs who proposed any law that failed to pass.
Fair points Chester.
And, I would certainly vote ‘yes’ if Tim’s proposal came up for a referendum 😈
Putting every single proposal to a popular vote would be raw, unfettered democracy. It is the worst possible system of government. Instead, there should simply be no statutes.
I agree with Laird. Unfettered democracy is something to be applied only in the most remarkable circumstances pertaining to Really Big Things… such as an IN/OUT referendum on the EU for example… or abolishing the Monarchy… that kind of thing. The last thing we need is mob rule.
I agree completely with Johnathan’s analysis.
For me, two things stand out from this Article 50 debacle. Firstly, it has revealed just how many of the ‘great and good’ utterly despise the opinions of the great mass of the electorate. They are in no way, shape or form actual democrats.
Secondly, although very connected – a few years ago, having amassed decades of reading history, it finally dawned on me just how precious and fragile democracy and the freedom of the commons really is. I started to look about me and wonder why so many other people seemed not to give a toss about politics and elections, and just took it for granted than universal suffrage was here for ever. I can remember thinking perhaps I was getting a bit paranoid when I worried if it would survive in the long term. But over the last few weeks, I’ve started to wonder if I shouldn’t have been worried even more.
Laird and Perry, if you set the required minimum high enough as discussed here, it will be anything but unfettered. But Chester does have a point with regard to foreign policy – although that can be governed by a separate system. What we have now is worse than mere mob rule – it is a combination of mob “represented” by self-appointed elites.
MPs would be better representatives of the electorate if they were not affiliated with an exclusive political party. A candidate could easily affiliate with a ideology, or a number of single-issue groups, but the fact is that we end up with a limited selection of pampered monkeys backed by powerful and rich institutions and driven by a predominately encouraged tribalism mentality, this is a travesty of the parliamentary system as it was first envisaged. Most MPs do not agree 100% with their own party line, in that sense they are conning the voters. Ironically many of them see their “rebellious” decision as a sign of independence. The reality is a deceitful and callous disregard for the electorate and the taxpayers.
Runcie Balspune, November 4, 2016 at 10:48 pm, you might want to compare the results of the two-party systems prevailing in English-speaking countries with that of the multi-party systems prevailing in Europe before deciding that the ultimate development of that – each MP their own party – would be best.
The more parties, the more excuses each gives the others for why what a party promised the voters before the election is so unlike what they actually did afterwards. The same applies to referenda. Either those actually pulling the levers of power want to implement a given referendum result or they do not. We see that judges may ignore the law if they don’t like what it is telling them to do. The same people would certainly ignore referenda they dislike – indeed, visibly try to do so now.
The party discipline of a party with a majority, and so without excuses, is a very imperfect system for getting the right thing done. Others are more imperfect still. To paraphrase Churchill, it’s the worst method in the world – except for all the others that have been tried. The two-party system discipline that is causing the Tory party to say it will do Brexit is currently outperforming the approach of giving judges laws, and centuries of precedents, and expecting them to judge as so instructed instead of as they’re inclined.
I don’t like political parties either (and unlike Niall, I don’t think that the European multi-party system is worse on balance than the UK or US two-party system – each system has its pluses and minuses, etc). However, I doubt that we can get rid of political parties without a serious infringement on the right to free association. In that respect it is in a way similar to the campaign-finance issue in the US (and other places?).
Agree with pretty much all Alisa is saying.
The mob rule question can be dealt with by a minimum number of votes being required, and also all laws should be subject to annulment by common law courts.
The problem we have is not just that bad laws are passed and politicians ‘aren’t doing their job’, but that they exist at all.
I love the annulment idea, Peter – in fact, it should go without saying that the implementation of any such system must be preceded by a broad-range annulment of the majority of the existing laws and regulations.
Any form of legislation is the work of a minority – there is nothing special about politicians or Civil Servants coming up with legislation. Legislation (as Bruno Leoni makes clear in his “Freedom And The Law”) is a bad idea – the law should be about actual victims of aggression for criminal law and actual torts for civil law, not arbitrary regulations (which is politics or “administration”).
As for Parliament voting on the specific matter before us – it already has voted, when it created the referendum. The record of the Parliamentary debates will show that it was know that the referendum was not advisory (it was understood that the it would be honoured – not dishonoured) – i.e. that the judges are lying.
Lying political judges have been a mark of the United States for many years. Now they seem to have become a feature of the United Kingdom also.
The “agenda” is fairly plain here – to have British independence that is not really independence.
E.U. regulations would still be forced on our internal affairs – in the name of teh “Single Market” (or whatever). A squalid trick by the establishment – indeed an attempted establishment coup
Opponents of the coup have been described as “like Robert Mugabe” by one Member of Parliament (Dominic Grieve) some sort of racialist rant. We (the British people) are unruly natives who are disputing the right of our betters to rule us.
No doubt Dominic Grieve believes we with have spears and bang tom-tom drums as we plot to kill our white masters (him and his pals).
I think it really would be best it Mr Grieve went on a long holiday (I am sure he has plenty of money to fund it) – perhaps a round the world cruse lasting the next few years (plenty of time to visit lots of countries).
Mr Grieve should take his establishment judges with him.
After all “the natives are getting restless”.
All this because we just want an end to these regulations (the SO CALLED “Single Market”). A simple statement, but the establishment do not seem to understand it.
Now where did I put my spear and tom-tom drums.
I doubt that we can get rid of political parties without a serious infringement on the right to free association
You can get rid of exclusive political parties by exercising the same right. The situation we have where the institutionalized political system can block a person from association from membership of another party is enough to disqualify that institution on the grounds of free association. This is where the tyranny of democracy starts, and it is the reason why we have political parties in the first place, without this monopoly on association they would be worthless. It’s a big sham, and it’s more the pity as without the carpetbaggers the whole thing would work just nicely.
Good point.
Leaping on an old hobby horse….you have to distinguish between different types of laws.
Type A laws need to be decided by not less than a majority of the people.
Type B laws can be left to representatives
Type A = laws which restrict liberties, levy taxes or otherwise confiscate property*
Type B – other stuff, including relaxing restrictions on liberty
* or which attempt to change the Type A / Type B distinction
Didn’t understand Runcie’s point.
About ‘mob rule’- I’d argue that there is no such thing. Mobs never rule, they are always used as proxy in the fight for the agenda of a few – using various tools, of which ‘divide and conquer’ (in its modern reincarnation of ‘class struggle’, and later still ‘identity politics’), is the most familiar one. Mobs are manipulated by politicians – the more political society is, the more power politicians have over various mobs, buying them off and pitting them against each other. The more direct democracy is – the less middle men (politicians, bureaucrats and small narrow-interest groups), the less politics for all of us. Less politics is better.
The tendency of regular folk to be busy making a living, and living one’s own life as best one can, is what is often being blamed for our current sorry state of affairs. I’d argue that we should take advantage of that natural human tendency (because it is a good one – isn’t that what libertarianism is all about, minding your own damned business?), instead of seeing it as an impediment.
The fall out after the EU referendum has brought home to me what a fragile thing democracy is. It was always easy to look down on the funny foreigners who would have an election and elect a government which would then be instantly overthrown by powerful interests who didn’t like the result. Their country would then continue to be a dysfunctional shithole as a result. We are so much more civilised than that, we understand that if the vote doesn’t go our way we still have to accept the result. Well I though that we were, now I’m not so sure. Maybe part of the problem is that, with general elections, if the other party gets in, you know that after they have made a total horlicks of running the country, you will get another chance in five years or so, and your side will probably win. With Brexit there is no going back. I presume that we could re-join, in the highly unlikely event that we would ever want to, but the terms and conditions would be far worse than the ones that we have now.
Trying to think out what the best system would be if we were starting from scratch is interesting, and perhaps what blogs like this are for. As it says on the left sidebar, “We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future.”
But sometimes one needs to deal with the creaking old meta-context of the present. Battered and malfunctioning though it is, it could easily be worse.
In that spirit, I think the UK has in recent years made rather good choices about what questions should be put to a referendum. Not questions about what the law should be, but questions about how we decide what the law should be, i.e. constitutional questions. They can and should be put to the people. Denying the people their say, or, worse yet, giving them their say but ignoring it is a dangerous path to go down.
Natalie, to me shaping the future is not the only purpose of such discussions – it is also about understanding the past and the present: what things used to be like and what they are like now when compared to what they could be like in the future. Of course the future is the ultimate purpose, but it has no existence without the past (and there really is no such thing as the present, if one wants to be strict about it).
Not that I’m disagreeing with anything you wrote, mind – I’m not.