MPs think Brexit is tyrannical? Oh, the irony

One has to marvel at the magnificent display our Parliamentarians are currently putting on, coming up with ingenious ways of bungling Brexit. If only they’d put a quarter of that energy into finding a way of delivering the result of the 2016 Referendum, the original People’s Vote©, if you like. The tragedy is, the voters can do little but helplessly watch.

On a rather heated BBC Two Politics Live panel last week, Lisa Nandy, the Remain-supporting Labour MP for Wigan, accused Suella Braverman (a Conservative MP who resigned as a Brexit minister in protest at Mrs May’s deal last month) and her ERG colleagues of imposing “the tyranny of the majority” on her Remainer constituents. This – she said without a hint of irony – was undemocratic.

There have been countless examples of MPs proffering all kinds of reasons to block or water down Brexit, but this particular one seems extraordinary in its absurdity. Here we have a representative of a parliamentary democracy, elected by the principle of simple majority, claiming that the implementation of the democratic mandate of a referendum, respecting the result of which was a manifesto pledge of her own party in the 2017 general election, is “the tyranny of the majority”.

Ms Nandy, two-thirds of whose constituency voted to leave by her own admission, posed the question: who would represent her Remainer constituents? A noble sentiment, one might argue. I have lived in three different countries in my life – a minority in each of those countries – and I can very well appreciate the dangers of a society which does not provide protection against a tyrannical majority. But then I ask Ms Nandy this: given that a greater percentage of people in Wigan voted to leave the EU than they did to elect her in 2017, and that too on a greater turnout, when she votes in Parliament, does she take into account the voting preferences of her Conservative, UKIP, Lib Dem and Green Partysupporting constituents? If not, then who represents them? Who is protecting Wigan constituents against the “tyranny of the majority” of Labour voters? Ms Nandy knows full well that these questions are just as absurd as the one she put to Mrs Braverman during their televised exchange.

I understand the need to find a way to bring a divided country together. But surely that cannot mean imposing the will of the side that lost the referendum on the rest of the country. What compromise would the Remain side have offered Leave voters had a greater number of people voted to stay in the EU?

The answer is there could be no compromise. What could we have done? Send just half the amount owed to Brussels? You are either in the EU or you are not, and those who agreed to hold the referendum must have known those were the only two options.

A democracy only works if – having asked the people to vote on a matter – both sides agree to respect and implement the result. MPs who fail to see the grave danger in refusing to accept a democratic mandate simply because they don’t agree with the result are engaged in a dangerous game. They risk setting a precedent for the authority of their own elected office being challenged by disgruntled losers.