Do hard Remainers not see what ‘Stop Brexit’ will do to our politics?
We are skirting the edge of a post-democratic abyss in which there are no principles, only tribes
There are two kinds of political struggle. The conventional variety sees two sides taking it in turns to implement their ideas according to the swings of the ideological pendulum. Victories and defeats are accepted in good faith, and Tories and Labour, Republicans and Democrats, Right or Left alternate in the seats of power.
Modern culture wars, the 21st-century Western equivalent to religious strife, are a very different kind of political contest. They may still include the trappings of democracy – elections or referendums – but they are absolutist struggles, with many of the participants convinced that they are in a war between good and evil. They are open-ended, rather than confined to election day. Their psychology verges on the totalitarian; they seek to annihilate the heretics, rather than merely debate how best to minimise unemployment or reduce crime or deliver the will of the people. Winners seek to crush their opponents, defeating them so badly that they can never recover. Losers no longer feel duty-bound to accept the result.
Thus we risk losing one of the most precious attributes that set us apart from the likes of China or Russia or even Dubai and Singapore: our democratic ethos, our sense of political fair play, our pragmatic ability to compromise, if only because we believe that we will have a fair crack at having our own way next. America, as is so often the case, was the first to slide into this increasingly hysterical, winner-takes-all mindset. Because of the rise of judicial activism, and the fact that presidents appoint Supreme Court justices for life, elections in the US started to take on an entirely new dimension from the late Eighties.
Britain, the country that used to boast that it was so democratic that no Parliament could possibly bind its successors, is going down the same disastrous road. In 1997, when Tony Blair crushed the hapless Sir John Major, the 30.7 per cent who voted Tory immediately accepted the result, just as Labour voters accepted Neil Kinnock’s failure in 1992. In the 1975 referendum, eurosceptics accepted their defeat with good grace. Yet today, more than 18 months after the 2016 vote, the political discourse is dominated by hard-core Remainers who have refused to accept the outcome and are determined to thwart it at any cost. Partly as a result of the Government’s staggering incompetence, and the absence of any large-scale, independent pro-brexit campaign, they are now starting to look as if they may succeed.
Our slow descent into postdemocratic hell is being fuelled by a new kind of tribal politics. It is replacing both the old class-based model that dominated for so long and the more temporary “classless” voting that propelled the likes of Mr Blair to power. I simplify a little, but, once upon a time, you were born into your political tribe and stuck with it. Then for a brief period, voters looked at what was on offer, listened to the arguments, examined the personalities and chose who to vote for. Today, you start off by selecting your tribe, often on grounds of moral positioning or to send a particular message to the world, then you become an advocate for whatever your gang’s policies happen to be at any particular moment.
Politics has thus become postrational and ever more emotional. Remainers cite Goldman Sachs, a bank most of them used to hate; Jeremy Corbyn quotes the CBI, a body he still loathes; and Tory middle-class Remainers, with high incomes and expensive houses, see Mr Corbyn as their new saviour thanks to his half-hearted endorsement of a customs union. All arguments, all excuses and all sources of support are marshalled, however contradictory.
The Brexiteers have, in the main, failed to see this coming; many have performed pathetically. They naively thought they had won, that this was an ordinary, old-fashioned democratic joust, and entrusted the establishment with pursuing a radically antiestablishment policy. They advocated various forms of compromise – not least handing over billions – and assumed that a trade deal between the UK and the EU was obviously in both sides’ self-interest. With the right, visionary leadership, a version of this strategy that leveraged the UK’S many strengths, unveiled a pro-growth economic strategy, prepared for a no-deal outcome and negotiated much more harshly could have delivered an acceptable compromise.
But the Government’s electoral implosion, its abject lack of direction and self-confidence, its inability even to try to unite the country around a clear, upbeat vision for Brexit have all but squandered a historic opportunity. If MPS decide to back a customs union that prevents us from pursuing our own trade policy in goods, services and agriculture, a central point of leaving the EU, then it’s game over. Everything else will unravel.
Yet even if the establishment is able to block Brexit – there now is perhaps a 50 per cent chance of this – it cannot undo history. It cannot simply pretend the referendum did not happen. It cannot reverse the years of rising Euroscepticism in the UK. It cannot do away with the growing fury among the public at the loss of democratic control, and the transfer of so many powers to unelected technocrats.
The continuity Remain agenda is thus mind-bogglingly utopian. Its advocates claim that the Leavers have not grasped the complex legal consequences of their position, the impact on various rules and treaties; but, in fact, the ultra-remainers have spent even less time pondering the catastrophic consequence of their proposed constitutional coup.
Stopping Brexit will traumatise our already rattled country. It will enrage millions. It will destroy all of the existing parties and create continental-style far-left and farright movements. It will confirm to the majority of the population – not just Brexiteers – that the system is rigged in favour of elites, turning them further against liberalism and capitalism. It could allow Mr Corbyn into Downing Street – and, if not him, pave the way for other truly dangerous cranks and demagogues. It will turn us into a nastier, meaner and poorer nation. Remainers may think that it’s too dangerous to leave the EU, but it would be far riskier for us to ignore democracy and stay in.