If you want a revolution, this is how to spark it
The people spoke on Brexit – but MPs stuck their fingers in their ears and ignored them. This could get nasty...
WHAT do they think they’re doing? Seriously, what will it take to make our politicians finally understand? Strikes? Civil disobedience? A very British coup? Four months ago the British people did precisely what they were asked to do. They listened to the competing Brexit voices. They weighed up the arguments. And then they went to the polls – 33million of them – and they delivered their verdict.
I personally didn’t like it. In fact, I argued passionately on these pages against it. But their verdict was clear. ‘We want to leave the European Union,’ they said.
This week their elected politicians delivered their considered response. ‘Not so fast,’ the people’s tribunes replied. ‘We think you’ve got it wrong. But don’t worry your little heads about it. We’ll take it from here.’
Of course, it wasn’t presented in those terms.
What MPs wanted was simply some scrutiny of the Brexit process, they said. And who could object to that? Parliamentary scrutiny. It’s what our democracy rests upon, isn’t it? No, it isn’t. This is what British democracy rests upon. The people express their wishes, and the politicians act upon them. It’s not perfect. Indeed, it has many flaws. But by and large it has served us well for about 300 years. And if the people who sit within the Palace of Westminster don’t come to their senses, that system will be consigned to the dustbin of history.
MPs have been forming an orderly queue to explain to the British people what they had actually voted for. They had not, they were told, voted to leave the European single market. Or end free movement. Or anything else that could be termed ‘Hard Brexit’. Instead, they had voted for something as yet undetermined. But that didn’t matter. The politicians would do the determining for them. Except there’s a snag. The people did vote for ‘Hard Brexit’. The ballot paper asked: ‘Should the UK remain a member of the EU or leave the EU?’ And they voted to leave the EU.
That means leaving the single market and the mechanisms that allow for free movement, and discarding the laws imposed by the European courts. There wasn’t a third option. No Brexit or Hard Brexit were the only choices on the ballot paper. So, again, what do our politicians think they’re doing?
When Ed Miliband – rejected by British voters in one of the most humiliating political rebukes of the modern era – stood up in the Commons and started lecturing the Government about having ‘no mandate’, what was he thinking? Has the man got no self-awareness or humility?
When Michael Gove wrote on Friday that ‘Brexiteers don’t want a brick wall at our border’, how has he got the nerve?
A week before polling day he told me how he could align his own version of Project Fear – including posters warning of Turkish refugees swarming across the channel – with ideals of modern, progressive conservatism. They were entirely compatible, he said. The key issues showed the Conservative Party understood the concerns of ordinary working Britons.
Now it seems ordinary working Britain can go hang. What we witnessed last week was one of the greatest exercises in denial ever undertaken by the British political class. The liberal Left – unable to comprehend their world view does not extend beyond the M25 – have convinced themselves that Keir Starmer, the Shadow Brexit Secretary, will come riding over the hill on his white charger, flourishing a list of 170 questions for Ministers in one hand, and a pot of Marmite in the other.
We have heard a lot of talk from MPs about their ‘bottom lines’. But the bottom lines for the British people could not be clearer. They want an end to mass migration. They do not want a conversation about mass migration, or how it will be tempered by restrictions on migrant benefits. They just want it stopped.
And Brexit – through the ending of free movement – is the means by which they have chosen to stop it.
That may be unpalatable to many. But those who ask themselves ‘what sort of country have we become?’ should ask themselves this: ‘What country will we become if our politicians try to mount a revolt against the will of the people?’
Because underpinning this is something else the British people want. On Thursday I was chatting to a senior Remain campaigner. He told me a story from one of their focus groups. ‘They’d been complaining about everything the politicians had taken from them. So I asked, “OK, if you could choose one thing, what would you want the politicians to give you?” There was a long pause, and then this guy – a fireman – put up his hand. “I want them to give me some respect,” he said.’
At the moment people are staring across the Atlantic aghast at the spectacle of Donald Trump laying waste to the US democratic process. ‘Where does someone like Trump come from?’ they ask. This. This is where a Donald Trump comes from. When the people speak and their politicians stick their fingers in their ears and say: ‘We can’t hear you.’
In 2009 a million people voted for the BNP. ‘Are you listening to us?’ they said. In 2015 four million voted for Ukip. ‘Are you listening to us now?’ they said. In June, 17million voted for Brexit. ‘OK, are you listening to us now?’ they asked.
Our MPs had better come to their senses. Because the British people will not ask again.