Six reasons why a second referendum is a terrible idea

It would take at least a year, be unlikely to resolve matters and could lead to a Corbyn-led government

In recent days, significant voices in favour of a new referendum on leaving the EU have been raised within the Conservative Party. Alarmingly, for someone like me who thinks this is an extremely bad idea, they are voices of people I like and respect – Amber Rudd, Dominic Grieve and Sir John Major.

This follows clear movement at the Labour conference towards the same idea, with Jeremy Corbyn saying he would go along with a party decision. The longer the argument among Tories continues about the acceptability of Theresa May’s Brexit plans, the more the groundswell for another public vote gains ground.

With such senior Conservatives, a large part of the official opposition, and all Liberal Democrats and Scottish nationalists backing this idea, it is time it had more public scrutiny than it has yet received. So, if you hear anyone putting forward this proposition, either at the Conservative conference in Birmingham or just in your local pub, here are six questions you might like to ask.

The first question is – how long do you think a new referendum will take? Some people talk as if we could decide in January, hold a campaign in February, and act on the outcome before we are due to leave the EU on March 29. But in the UK we have no standing law to permit the holding of referendums. Each one requires a special Act of Parliament. It would take several months, at least, to pass such an Act. Since there is no chance of all-round agreement on it, the debates and votes would themselves be hotly contested.

Controversies over spending limits at the 2016 vote would inevitably mean much discussion over new rules and how to enforce them. Then there would have to be a campaign – which in all such cases so far has gone on for quite a few months – to allow preparation and full debate.

Essentially, the answer is that it might just be possible to hold this “people’s vote” about a year from now if you’re lucky.

By that time, the EU would have held elections to the European Parliament – in May 2019 – and presumably since we would not have left it, we would suddenly have to take part in those. There would be no surer way of reviving Ukip, which could run a powerful campaign against the betrayal of the original verdict. Businesses, who find uncertainty worse than any particular outcome, would face it for a great deal longer. And the UK would have to keep begging for all 27 EU states to extend the two years of Article 50, with a further loss of negotiating power.

The next question is, crucially, what do you think the question should be? Some advocates of a second referendum say it should be a vote on the deal reached with the EU, but others say it would only be held if there is no deal. Others want a rerun of the first vote, and still others propose a multiple choice between no deal, remain or the Chequers plan.

The truth is that there is no coherent answer to this currently available, which demonstrates that even settling this one issue would become a matter of intense argument and difficulty. It leads on naturally to our third question – are you confident it would resolve the matter?

On this, the honest answer has to be “no”. If the referendum was about approving a deal or not, and it was rejected, people would still have voted to leave the EU but not with that particular agreement. How then, would the country decide what would happen next? If it was a re-heated Remain or Leave vote, and the electorate voted once again to leave, the situation would be the same as now but a year of indecision would have passed pointlessly. So great would be the outcry if a second vote led to the abandonment of Brexit that the campaign for a third one would start immediately.

This risk of making a divided country even more embittered, and political campaigning even more hateful, brings us to the fourth question – what do you think would happen to the UK? At every level, we would become more estranged from each other. I suggest that re-fighting the last referendum would produce the hardest fought, most negative and most emotional political battle in the lifetimes of today’s voters. Families and communities would become more divided. And since it is more than just possible that Scotland, Northern Ireland and London would again vote differently from Wales and the rest of England, the rupture of our fragile union would become more likely.

Now that we’ve established that a second EU referendum would take a year, be based on an unknown question, not necessarily resolve matters and cause more bitter division, I hope everyone can see the value of asking these questions about it.

But for Conservatives there are two more such questions which require thinking about now.

One is – can you imagine a Conservative government surviving the process of legislating for this? Given the considerations I have listed so far, it must be likely that the arguments over this would become even worse than over Brexit itself.

Certainly it is hard to see the current Cabinet agreeing to such a proposal and forcing it through Parliament against adamant objections in their own party. It could be a quick way to bring about a Corbyn administration, which is why there are a lot of Momentum activists who love the idea. That would be more disastrous for this country than any possible outcome of the Brexit debate.

We should not therefore call for a policy the adoption of which makes an extremist, hard-left government more likely to come to power.

If you get the chance to ask a final question, it’s this – does it help Theresa May to get a good deal if we call for this now? “No”, is the correct answer – of course it doesn’t.

If Brussels thinks Britain is heading for another vote if there is no deal or a bad one, it has less incentive to reach an acceptable one.

There you are, six vital issues for anyone looking for another referendum to confront. If we’re not careful, a lot more people will turn to this idea, even without knowing the answers. It’s a good reason to support whatever deal Theresa May can negotiate, get Brexit over the line, and force the political world to move on.