Exchange of the week Shouldn’t Out mean Out?
To The Times
A referendum is an advisory vote. It is right that “the will of the people” should be respected and that Parliament should be asked to ratify the majority decision of a referendum. It is, however, equally the case that our citizens need to be presented with objective facts and figures to enable them to make a rational decision. In the recent referendum on Britain’s continuing membership of the EU, this has simply not been the case. The Leave campaign conducted the most dishonest political campaign this country has ever seen.
It is highly likely that a significant majority of all MPS will not want to vote in favour of Article 50 – which leaves only one satisfactory solution. That is to recognise that it is up to the members of both houses of Parliament to use their best judgement as to whether Britain should divorce itself from the European Union. If a majority of both houses are not in favour of ratifying then so be it. Tam Dalyell, MP for West Lothian 1962-2005; Sir Jack Stewart-clark, MEP for East Sussex 1979-1999
To The Times
I voted Remain, but clearly my standpoint has not found favour with the British people, 72% of whom turned out in the referendum, the highest turnout since the general election of 1992. Turnout seems to have been highest among Leave voters and lowest among Remain voters. Yet the former are now told by academics, lawyers and others that the outcome of the referendum should be ignored on the ground that, as the former Bishop of Durham suggests, they were not voting on the EU at all but on “long-standing social grievances”. Others also suggest that Leave voters did not know what they were doing, or were bigoted (though bigotry in the form of anti-semitism is more likely to be found among university students or on the Labour Left than in the pubs of Sunderland or Hartlepool). The arguments against accepting the legitimacy of the outcome of the vote are similar to those used in the 19th century against extending the franchise. Were they to succeed, the poorer members of the community might well begin to ask whether democracy has anything at all to offer them; and that would indeed be a very dangerous development. Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government, King’s College London