A second referendum is a ruse best boycotted

Idon’t think I need today to labour the point about why a second EU referendum would be wrong. It would be by far the biggest attempt to overthrow a democratic mandate ever attempted in this country.

Let us look at a different aspect of the question. Suppose that there were such a referendum, and suppose – which is unlikely – that it framed the question in a way that seemed fair. Would Leave supporters be right to vote in such a referendum?

My guess is that, given that improbable condition of a fair question, Leave would win again. In which case, why not fight the campaign as hard as possible, and triumph? This might turn out to be the right course, but there is a problem.

Any second referendum would be a ruse by Remainers to thwart what voters have already decided. It would therefore be illegitimate from the start. Why should voters (including Remain voters who respect democracy) agree to play a game invented by Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, and Chuka Umunna? How would they know, if the result went their way, that the same characters would not claim once again that the campaign had been unfair and invent a third referendum – and so on until the crack of doom? It might therefore be better to organise a boycott. “You do what you like,” we could say. “But the people have decided already: we’ll sit this one out.” If this campaign were successful, the turnout at the referendum could be halved on 2016, bringing it down to well below 40 per cent of the total eligible. It might go even lower, as floating voters came to see the pointlessness of the exercise. Then Parliament could not pretend it had a mandate to act on the result. The 2016 result would stand.

I am not sure what is best, but it is worth raising the question now. Besides, if we do have a second referendum, the same people who got it through Parliament would cook the question(s). Then a boycott would almost certainly be the best policy.

Two lost tapes of The Morecambe and Wise Show from 1968 turned up last month in a cinema in Sierra Leone, in perfect condition. They will be shown on the BBC over Christmas, although there is some delicacy about a sketch on the tapes called “Old Donegal”, since being funny about the Irish is nowadays against the law. (Instead we have a thing called the Irish “backstop”, which we are not supposed to laugh at at all, at all.) This is not the first such discovery in a former colony. A few years ago, nine lost Doctor Who tapes – one featuring the terrifying robot yeti – were discovered in the storeroom of a television relay station in the Nigerian city of Jos.

Philip Morris, the archivist who found the Sierra Leone tapes, says, “These things are national heritage”. Quite right, but they are global too. The fact that they were wiped in their country of origin, but survived in other lands, which showed them greater reverence, is proof of the point that “restitution” of works of art is not necessarily a good idea. When one civilisation enters the dark ages, another can rescue its treasures.

Thus Eric and Ernie in Sierra Leone are like the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum or the Benin bronzes in Paris which President Macron is trying to hand back. It is nice of Sierra Leone (and in Doctor Who’s case, Nigeria) to let the British see the precious tapes, but I hope they won’t be bullied into handing them back to us permanently. We do not deserve them: we cannot be trusted to look after them. West African ethnographers should hold on to them in order to foster a better understanding of British tribal cultures.

Not for the first time, radical feminists are getting worried about the radio playing Baby, It’s Cold Outside at Christmas. The song depicts a flirtation: a woman accepts a drink from a man who is trying to discourage her from leaving his flat and going home. The song also involves her having a cigarette. The whole thing is little better than rape, apparently.

I wonder how many feminists know about the first person to take against this famous song. It was December 1950, and a middle-aged Egyptian called Sayyid Qutb was on a student exchange programme in Greeley, Colorado. At a church dance there, the pastor put on Baby, It’s Cold Outside, and Qutb watched: “The dance hall... was full of bounding feet and seductive legs. Arms circled waists, lips met lips, chests met chests, and the atmosphere was full of passion.”

Qutb was horrified at the “animallike” mixing of the sexes and the way “the American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity”. He returned to Egypt full of religious ardour. Even there he could not find a girl sufficiently pure for him to marry. Instead he devoted his energies to working for the Muslim Brotherhood and advocating violent jihad. He was jailed for opposing the Nasser regime, and eventually hanged. Needless to say, he was an anti-semite – publishing a book called Our Struggle Against the Jews – and a hater of democracy.

Sayyid Qutb’s most famous work is called Milestones and he was a major inspiration for Osama bin Laden and al-qaeda. Interesting that his ideas make common cause with the #Metoo movement.

‘Why should voters play a game invented by Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, and Chuka Umunna?’