The battle for democracy starts here

[Blackleaf]

‘We can stop this madness through a vote in parliament’, tweeted Labour MP David Lammy. ‘I wouldn’t rule anything out’, former PM Tony Blair told the BBC. ‘We want a second referendum’, said 41,118 people from Vatican City, population 800, in a petition that is now being investigated for fraud… It’s only been a few days since the British public voted to Leave the EU, and this great, democratic gain, this rejection of the Europe-wide political establishment, is already under attack...

The battle for democracy starts here

Tom Slater
deputy editor

We must defend democracy against an elite furious with the referendum result.

27 June 2016
Spiked

‘We can stop this madness through a vote in parliament’, tweeted Labour MP David Lammy. ‘I wouldn’t rule anything out’, former PM Tony Blair told the BBC. ‘We want a second referendum’, said 41,118 people from Vatican City, population 800, in a petition that is now being investigated for fraud… It’s only been a few days since the British public voted to Leave the EU, and this great, democratic gain, this rejection of the Europe-wide political establishment, is already under attack.

If there was ever any doubt that the pro-Remain sentiment was driven not by a devotion to the European project, but a revulsion at the British public, then the fallout from last Thursday’s vote should have put it to bed. Lammy, calling for MPs to block Brexit or else call a second referendum, said ‘we cannot usher in rule by plebiscite which unleashes the “wisdom” of resentment and prejudice’. He should at least get credit for his candour; he’s saying what everyone else in Whitehall is thinking.

Over the weekend, there has been a fevered search for loopholes, get-out clauses and Plan Bs. Tory Europhile Lord Heseltine has called for a cross-party group of MPs to ‘articulate the case for Britain rethinking the result of the referendum’. The Liberal Democrats – that’s Liberal Democrats – are saying they’ll fight a General Election on reversing the decision of the referendum. And Doughty Street QC Geoffrey Robertson has outlined how MPs might block any Brexit legislation. ‘Democracy in Britain doesn’t mean… the tyranny of the mob’, he said.

‘We can stop this madness through a vote in parliament’, tweeted Labour MP David Lammy

So what are their reasons for overruling the will of the people? What intellectual contortions are they performing, seeing as they still can’t quite summon the courage to say ‘stupid plebs’? They say we were misled, we were hoodwinked. Now that prominent Vote Leavers have backtracked on pledges to cut immigration and shower the NHS in EU-earmarked money, the argument is, as Lammy has put it, that the result no longer counts: ‘Let us not destroy our economy on the basis of lies and the hubris of Boris Johnson.’

This is risible, and it completely misunderstands the referendum result. Those who voted to Leave didn’t elect Vote Leave. A Lord Ashcroft poll has found that people’s main motivation for voting Leave was ‘the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK’ – immigration came second and NHS funding didn’t even make the top three. Aside from the handful of regretful Leavers, who have been ferried from media appearance to media appearance over the past 48 hours, the majority voted Leave in the name of popular sovereignty – precisely the principle that so turns the stomachs of the elite.

The idea that the public are liable to be misled or exploited by colourful demagogues is the oldest anti-democratic argument in the book. When the Chartists, those great, radical democrats, were agitating for the working-class to receive the vote in the 19th century, the response from the elite was almost identical. ‘[The] working classes do not speak with their own voice’, read an editorial in the Morning Chronicle in March 1839. The Chartists, it said, were merely exploiting gruff folk’s ‘astonishing ignorance and credulity’. How little seems to have changed.

Those who say a second referendum would be no big deal – a democratic way to confirm, or deny, the result – are either lying, historically illiterate, or both. The history of EU referenda is a grubby one. When, in 2005, France and the Netherlands rejected the new EU constitution at the ballot box, they were ignored. When, in 2008, the Irish voted against the Lisbon Treaty, they were made to vote again, and were put under extreme moral and economic pressure to change their minds. There is nothing democratic about a do-over; it’s an opportunity to exploit a moment of political exhaustion and to blackmail the public into making the ‘right’ decision.

The Brexit backlash has revealed just how fragile democracy is today. That even the overwhelming will of the people – expressed at the ballot box – can be downplayed, undermined and avoided, shows how much is left to fight for. But the elite has done us a favour. It has made brutally clear that the enemies of democracy are not only to be found in Brussels meeting rooms, but in every corridor of power. It has confirmed that Brussels was primarily a manifestation of a problem here at home: the new aloofness of the elites and their fear and contempt for the demos. Yet while the referendum has clarified the crisis of democracy, it hasn’t solved it.

The official Leave campaign’s dithering over initiating Article 50 will only allow elite schemers more opportunities to scupper the public will. We must remain vigilant. The referendum was a historic democratic moment, a revolt of the ignored and the left behind. We must push that spirit further, insist that the Leave vote is acted upon and then set about challenging every anti-democratic argument, individual and institution that seeks to temper the masses’ unleashed political passions.

This is what spiked intends to do in the coming weeks. To deepen the case for a better, more engaged, democratic politics. The battle for democracy starts here.

Tom Slater is deputy editor at spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_

At 7pm on Wednesday 29 June, spiked and the Institute of Ideas are holding a public meeting at the Royal National Hotel in central London entitled ‘Brexit: the battle for democracy starts here’. Frank Furedi will give a lecture, Claire Fox will respond and Tom Slater will introduce and chair. Get your tickets here.


The battle for democracy starts here | Europe | For Europe, Against the EU | spiked

 

[Danbones]

Now if every one of you should have a gun...
Oddly enough Trump has exposed the same elitist attitudes in the American establishment...
and there most of this elitism in America resides in distant cousins of the Queen.

but using democracy to stop democracy
what a novel idea
*sigh*
two wolves and A sheep voting on what to have for dinner

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Perhaps you forget that in the British parliamentary system, and those derived from it like Canada's, Parliament is supreme, it cannot be bound by a referendum. The government can be if it makes such a commitment, and it did, so Cameron now has to fall on his sword, but Parliament has not consented to this referendum result. It would view it as only an advisory opinion and it's free to reject that advice. Reports I've seen indicate that it would, by about 2 to 1. I'd be interested to see a non-confidence motion in the government put forward in the House over this, If the government fell, Cameron would have no credibility going to the European Council to activate Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, and neither would anyone else. Parliament may yet be able to save you from your Great Leap Backwards.

 

[tay]

In the end, what was meant to be a referendum about the economic benefits of remaining in the European Union, was about everything but. There will be countless analyses of the results and of the reasons that motivated the British people to vote to leave the European Union. But in the end, I fear that very few of these analyses will even come close to addressing the true underlying forces at work.

As an economist, I see in Brexit the revolt of the working class, lashing out at the institutions that have imposed unfair economic policies. In the end, this was a referendum on a failed economic regime that has been unable and unwilling to provide for all its citizens as opposed to the very few. Voting to remain in the EU was seen as a tacit approval of the institutional status quo. This was captured perfectly by one voter who said: “if you’ve got money, you vote in. If you haven’t got money, you vote out.”

Indeed, in the last 3 decades, economic policies have been largely designed to benefit the economic and financial elites. In this age of financialization and of neoliberal economics, the rich has become richer and more powerful, thereby extracting a greater share of the proverbial economic pie. They have influenced policies in ways that have become all too familiar.

Since the early 1980s, the focus of policy has been privatization, deregulation and liberalization. As a result, profits have soared, but wages have remained stagnant, at best. Income inequality has increased to levels not seen since the 1920s.

In Europe, institutions like the European Union were carefully designed to encourage and protect the mantra of free market economics.

The overwhelming preoccupation of the EU has been to protect the interests of finance. This was on full display during its negotiations with Greece. In this instance, Greece was brought down to its knees for daring to talk back to the Great and Powerful Oz.

During all this, workers have remained largely silent. Following the crisis of 2007-8, they have tried to express their frustration through such movements as Occupy Wall Street, only to be silenced. Those in power have refused to listen to the complaints of the working class, and continued to impose austerity in the name of sound finance.

Then came Brexit.

I must confess, the result was predictable. Yes, there was some xenophobia involved, but this too was the result of failed economic models. There is increasing research on the relationship between income inequality and poverty, and the rise of far right political parties. As inequality rises (along with poverty), voters are more willing to listen to rhetoric that lays blame on ‘others’. Populist movements all over Europe are reaping the benefits of such anger.

The same phenomenon is playing out in the US with Donald Trump, as well as in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, and Germany. In many of these European countries, there are now cries for their own referenda.

Europe will not be the same. And we must lay blame where blame is deserved. In essence, the lesson of neoliberalism is simple: when you kick around the working class for 3 decades, the working class eventually kicks back. And now, the revenge of the working class has begun.

Yet, the political left must bear some responsibility as well, for its failure to clearly articulate a legitimate and credible alternative to the dominant view. Instead, it has largely accepted to play within the rules of the game written by the right: it continued austerity policies, furthered the deregulation and financial liberalization agenda, paid lip service to income inequality, to name but a few policies (we have fared a bit better in Canada under this new government … so far).

In the end, I predict that most forthcoming analysis will miss the mark completely. It will seek to blame xenophobes (see Doug Saunder’s simplistic analysis in the Globe), and will not come close to questioning the very economic policies that have marginalized and alienated voters.

In the end, the rise of the far-right is the working classes’ way of telling us they are not happy with the economic status quo. The real questions have also been ignored, because to ask the right answers will required some tough self-examination, and once you pull on that thread, who knows what will come loose.

Who will be brave enough to pull on that thread?

The Progressive Economics Forum » Brexit and Neoliberalism