Everyone who took part in Brexit vote has a democratic duty to stand by result
Often it is not easy to distinguish courage from recklessness. Some will think that writer Andrew O’hagan was courageous when he nailed his colours to the independence mast just as the ship has started to sink, with former Captain Salmond now swimming for the shore (17 August). Others will think he is reckless, not just with his own income as he alienates Unionist readers, but with the people of Scotland as he applies a plaster of rhetoric to a situation of deep economic and political difficulty. Fine words do not butter parsnips and they do not ensure that once we are cut off from the UK we would still have a working economy delivering the public services that we enjoy at present. O’hagan does not bother to talk about mundane things like electricity supply, the Barnett formula, EU admission criteria, the euro, fiscal deficit and so on. But they are the key issues.
I am surprised by his poor grasp of the concept of democracy. He talks of “leaving Europe without our consent”. The House of Commons massively approved of the proposal to have an EU referendum. The vote in the third reading of the EU Referendum Bill was 544 for and 53 against. Parliament voted overwhelmingly to have an EU referendum and therefore it must now implement the outcome, which was the decision to leave the EU.
Inademocracy,decisionsare taken democratically. Every time you vote, you accept the possibility that the outcome will not be what you wanted. Voting carries that implication. The people of Scotland did not boycott the EU referendum. Everyone who took part must stand by the democratic outcome, which is to leave the EU, whether they voted for it or not. To take part and then obstruct the implementation of the result is pure hypocrisy.
The independence project will always have its zealots who will support it regardless of the consequences. But most people are not zealots and need to be persuaded of the merits of the case. They are not persuaded when campaigners like O’hagan fail to address the practicalities of cutting ourselves off from the UK. And they are turned off when they see the rulebook of democracy being chucked overboard as a preliminary to independence.
LES REID Morton Street, Joppa