Attenborough: We shouldn’t have had vote on EU – voters aren’t wise enough
DAVID Attenborough risked enraging millions by claiming the public is not ‘wise’ enough to have been given a say on Brexit.
The TV naturalist said the vote from 17.4million British citizens to leave the EU had created a ‘mess’ and argued that the decision should have been left to MPs ‘to vote on our behalf’.
Critics accused the 90-year-old of being ‘elitist’ and failing to recognise ‘what the people want’.
Referring to Donald Trump’s rise in the US, Sir David said: ‘There’s confusion, isn’t there, between populism and parliamentary democracy. I mean, that’s why we’re in the mess we are with Brexit, is it not? Do we really want to live by this kind of referendum?’
He added: ‘What we mean by parliamentary democracy is surely that we find someone we respect who we think is probably wiser than we are, who is prepared to take the responsibility of pondering difficult things and then trust him or her to vote on our behalf.’
Speaking to BBC presenter Emily Maitlis in the Radio Times, the broadcaster cited Ken Clarke’s book in which the Tory MP states that if people were asked to pick a national gallery or funfair the latter would win. Quoting Michael Gove, Sir David said: ‘That’s why politicians getting up and saying, “We’ve had enough of experts” is so catastrophic.’
He added: ‘I can see the arguments … I’ve said for years I don’t think any human society is prepared to make decisions which they may not like if they’re made by people who don’t speak the same language.
‘It’s very easy, as we all know, to be very tolerant of minorities until they become majorities … you find they’re actually telling you what to do and they’ve actually taken over the town council and what you thought was your home isn’t. I’m not supporting it, I’m saying it’s what it is.’
But Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘I don’t think MPs are wiser than the public. A decision of this magnitude should be taken to the public and the result was clear. There’s a failure to recognise what the people want from certain quarters … I don’t believe in elites, I believe in the people.’
Andrew Bridgen, another Tory MP, added: ‘What [Sir David’s] saying is that some people’s votes are more important than others.’