The Politics of the Terminally Deluded; a Brexit Deal Referendum!

It seems that desperate ‘Bremainers’, including the leadership of the Liberal Democrats and some Labour MP’s, have a stratagem to attempt to reverse the will of the people of the United Kingdom to leave the EU. What these Bremainers disingenuously want is for any trade deal, agreed with the EU and enacted by the UK on leaving the EU, to be put before the UK electorate in the form of another referendum. If the deal is rejected, then according to the Bremainers’ proposal – and as daft as it sounds – the UK should stay in the EU!

A referendum requires a simple proposition with a bimodal response; a straightforward choice of yes or no. However, to imagine that a business deal with the EU is indeed such a proposition, as described above, is pure sophistry. If referenda have a place within a representative democracy then they should be restricted to issues involving potential changes in sovereignty or the democratic process. In this case a referendum is being proposed by some Bremainers in order to sneak in a change of sovereignty by the backdoor, by remaining in the EU if the electorate don’t happen to like a particular business deal. We’re really talking about a veritable plethora of possibilities as to why the electorate wouldn’t warm to a particular trade agreement. It’s entirely possible that everyone would have a different view on what aspect might be improved before ever concluding that a satisfactory deal would be unachievable.  After all, as a backstop the World Trade Organisation provides very reasonable regulations to facilitate international trade.

Perhaps the most likely view of those who voted to leave the EU would be that any agreement could be improved but they still wouldn’t want to remain in the EU, a stance best described by a Venn diagram rather than a referendum. This is surely the heart of the matter. Such a referendum wouldn’t be addressing a single, bimodally-answered question, but crudely and disingenuously concatenates two questions; does the electorate like the deal with the EU being offered, and does the electorate want to remain in the EU. Two separate questions can’t be answered by a single referendum; and anyway, we’ve already answered the second one.

But under the leadership of Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats don’t need to resort to such tricks. Within our democratic system they can, for example, make open access to the UK for the world’s refugees, or indeed anyone, the main plank of their manifesto at the next general election. Or indeed anything else that they feel we’ve lost by leaving the EU. If the Liberal Democrats were then elected to govern, I for one would respect and abide by any of their manifesto promises should they become law.