Right answers hard to find
All the many possible Brexit answers are wrong, because the 2016 referendum asked the wrong question, argues David Hall, of Auckland University of Technology.
The right answer to the wrong question is still the wrong answer. And for British Prime Minister Theresa May, the best Brexit deal she could negotiate is still the wrong Brexit, precisely because of the question the 2016 referendum on European Union membership asked.
May’s Brexit deal – the socalled Chequers deal – is dead, as it stands. It was widely expected to lose yesterday’s vote, but the margin was devastating. At 432 votes to 202, this was by far the largest Government defeat in the Commons over the past century.
May might seem vanquished, but this isn’t straightforwardly so. The Conservative Party is hopelessly split on Brexit, but united in keeping Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn out of office. Members are unlikely to support today’s no-confidence motion, which would otherwise trigger a general election.
So May will press on. Due to an amendment passed controversially last week, she must present a new plan to Parliament by Monday. This is a deliberately hard ask. The Chequers deal took almost two years to negotiate and reject. May has urged MPS to debate alternatives over coming days.
There is a chance that the EU will renegotiate. EU leaders have insisted they won’t revisit the withdrawal agreement, but this is politics after all. If there is an interest, there is a way.
Yet it is doubtful that EU concessions would appease the MPS rejecting May’s deal.
This is partly because the EU must play hardball. The woes of any single country are outweighed by the EU’S interests in preserving its union. Its severe treatment of Greece during the eurozone crisis is an illuminating precedent.
But it is also because opponents to May’s deal pull in two different directions. The Brexiteers on her Government’s backbenches want a harder Brexit, or to leave the EU with no deal at all. Meanwhile, Opposition MPS mostly prefer a softer Brexit, or no Brexit at all. What could the EU offer to satisfy these divergent constituencies?
What we’re seeing now is the unravelling of the Brexit question. Beneath the disarming simplicity of the 2016 referendum question – ‘‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’’ – there lurked a bewildering tangle of problems with serious implications for Britain’s constitution, economy, international relations and national identity.
This is why the Independent Commission on Referendums, in a July 2018 report, recommended: ‘‘Wherever possible, a referendum should come at the end, not the beginning, of the decision-making process.’’ Legislators should settle the trade-offs and complexities before seeking a public mandate, not undergoing the process of discovery in the race to the end.
So, if the 2016 referendum asked the wrong question, could it be asked again, better? A second referendum – which once seemed wishful thinking – is now an increasingly likely option. Not because there’s an invincible moral argument for the so-called ‘‘People’s Vote’’. Nor because the integrity of British democracy demands it. But because Parliament is stuck. A referendum might be necessary, simply to set Parliament a task that it is capable of delivering.
But a second referendum would almost certainly recreate the sins of the first. The side that wins will be doubly emboldened, the side that loses will be doubly disaffected. British society will suffer, once again, from being forced to pick sides.
Brexit has created a new axis of political disagreement, between Leavers and Remainers, which cuts across the old parliamentary divisions of Left and Right, Tory and Whig. This fragmented landscape is already spawning unlikely coalitions of MPS from opposing parties, which are likely to exert their power over coming days. The rigidity of the UK’S first-past-thepost system, which New Zealand abandoned by embracing MMP, exacerbates this volatility.
MPS have exerted their parliamentary influence, so May is deferring to them to hatch a plan. To reach a majority decision would be an extraordinary act of compromise.
Meanwhile, a ‘‘no deal’’ Brexit on March 29 is the default, where the UK leaves the EU with no prior agreements on trade, customs, rights of residents, and more. This is the only option that doesn’t require a political breakthrough, with either MPS or the EU.
Whoever said leaving isn’t easy? It’s finding agreement, in spite of our differences, that is hard.
David Hall is senior researcher at AUT’S Policy Observatory