Forget the tangle, let the people decide on the final Brexit deal
Chief reporter Martin Shipton argues for a ‘People’s Vote’ on whatever deal emerges – or doesn’t – from the Brexit negotiations
AS THE resignation antics we have witnessed this week make crystal clear, the whole inescapable Brexit saga has fundamentally been about an eccentric divergence of views within the Conservative Party.
The national interest – especially in the sense of the nation’s economic wellbeing – has been no more than incidental in the thinking of those desperate to sever us from the world’s most important trading bloc.
Instead they obsess about getting the UK out of the clutches of the European Court of Justice and reclaiming our own “sovereignty” – as if Britain was still a 19th-century maritime power able to hold sway on the international stage with the help of a fleet of gunboats.
Of course, such arcane concerns didn’t play much of a role in the Leave campaign – or rather campaigns. Instead they focused on fantasy statistics about the funding of the NHS post-Brexit. They also played the race card.
More than two years on from the referendum and the ideological split within the Conservative Party is still dominating events. In the main it’s now about various permutations of Brexit rather than the binary Leave v Remain.
Last Friday’s Cabinet meeting at Chequers was meant to unite the various factions. Instead it has created a further rupture, with most of the coverage centred on personalities rather than the substance of the very serious crisis that could wreck our economy if the likes of Boris Johnson and David Davis get their way.
They are calculating that pressure will be brought on Tory MPs by their constituency parties to oust Theresa May, who has been cast as the unlikely exponent of a treacherously soft(ish) Brexit.
Meanwhile, to stir the pot, the EU’s shrewd chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, is claiming that 80% of a potential Brexit deal has already been agreed. There’s only 20% to go, he says – knowing full well that any further movement by the UK in the direction of the EU will enrage the ultra-Brexiteers, who view what has been offered by Mrs May already as a sell-out.
With more resignations in the Conservative Party, it’s difficult to predict how events will pan out. The long-term economic future of both Wales and the UK is at the mercy of Tory MPs who don’t even command a majority in the House of Commons. In years to come, people will look back at the Brexit saga with incredulity at the combination of ineptitude and wilful self-harm that is its hallmark.
Yet there are many people who argue – politicians most notably – that whatever the consequences, we must go along with the democratic will as expressed on June 23, 2016. To do otherwise, they imply, would be to undermine the foundations of our constitution and put us on the slippery slope to tyranny.
Such an argument, to my mind, is utter nonsense.
Together with security, the most important role of any government is to safeguard the economic wellbeing of its citizens. Sometimes, of course, there are bitter arguments about what this entails, with those on the right having different views from those on the left about how such wellbeing can be achieved.
In the case of Brexit, however, the overwhelming evidence is that leaving the EU will cause economic harm. An increasing number of significant employers are threatening to disinvest and take their business elsewhere.
A government that had the interests of its citizens at heart would do its best to ensure that employment prospects were not fatally damaged.
It would have the honesty to tell people that leaving the single market and the customs union would cause severe harm to the economy.
The fact that Mrs May – who before the referendum was recorded covertly telling employees of Goldman Sachs that leaving the EU would be damaging – won’t do so is evidence that her priority is not the national interest but prolonging her period in office.
We now know that according to the Electoral Commission, the official Vote Leave campaign committed four breaches of electoral law. There are also serious financial concerns about the Leave.EU campaign funded by Arron Banks.
In these circumstances, the only reasonable way forward is to hold a People’s Vote on the final deal negotiated (or not) with the EU.
People should have the right to make a judgement based on a full knowledge of what awaits them.