As the day where Britain is due to leave the EU draws ever closer, the debate about how we got here intensifies. Breaking away from the EU is certainly a monumental event which is set to impact Britain in a way which maybe no other single democratic decision ever has, and it has raised a debate about democracy itself which is equally unprecedented. So, what should we make of it all? Was the decision to leave the EU made in a fair and reasonable manner?
The issue is, democracy has many flaws. Most obviously, a true individualistic ideology is not compatible with political majority rule, because certain inalienable rights exist which no group, no matter how numerous, should have the power to strip off a minority, no matter how small. And in a large country where a referendum is decided by almost 35 million votes, as was the EU referendum, it is of course a statistical fact that any individual vote is almost totally irrelevant. Individuals have the illusion of power in a large democracy, rather than actual power. Like a swarm of mosquitos, strength is only in numbers.
But the inadequacies of democracy go further than that, and the EU referendum exposed those flaws to an extend that is still being discussed. So, let’s have a closer look.
The question should never have been asked in the first place is one angle of attack. According to this line of thought, the decision to leave the EU is simply too complicated a question to ask of voters – not an unreasonable point of view. In fact, it’s pretty clear that not even the politicians who fought on each side of the referendum campaign had the faintest idea what the process of leaving and the end result would look like. Likewise, they can’t have known much about how Britain would fare in the long run, had we stayed. How could they expect voters to? But more about that later.
Remainers (or Remoaners, as they have come to be known) bemoan the fact that the negotiations are difficult and threaten to end in a “no-deal” scenario, so they think the country should take advantage of the benefit of hindsight and reverse a decision which by now surely everyone can see was wrong. But does that argument hold water? Apart from the fact that a reversal would be a historic betrayal of democratic principles, the inherent fact is that democratic decisions are specific to a particular moment in time, and its not clear what a new referendum would do to change that? Would a re-run of the re-run be next?
Some cry foul because part of the leave campaign supposedly broke the spending rules which govern referendums in the UK. It should invalidate the result, they say. It’s a technicality, of course: remain still outspent leave by about 1.5:1. But more fundamentally, should the future of our country depend on a technical spending limit? Surely not. Then again, there has to be limits, no?
This then leads us to the lies. Politicians are quick to make laws which prevent private companies from making “misleading” statements, in fact, the British are so obsessed about such “consumer protection” that they recently banned an add for suggesting sausages could be preferential to avocados, because that claim is not scientifically verifiable. But politicians are not binding themselves with similar restrictions. So, both sides lied, exaggerated, guessed and embellished their way through the referendum, showcasing everything from claims that leaving the EU would cause economic doom to busses adorned with stickers making outlandish claims of monetary windfall to the NHS if we left. Did untruths sway the result? What way? And if it did, what should be done about it?
The supposed Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election is another example of alleged foul play in the democratic process, but is the way in which we make our minds up of any relevance? After all, once we have a particular opinion and express that at the ballot box at a set time, is how we got there not already old news and whether we regret our vote of no consequence?
What about voters’ age then? Someone who died on 24 June 2016 – the day after the EU referendum – had as much power though his vote as someone who turned 18 on the 23rd and will have to live with the consequences for decades. Those who turned 18 on the 24th couldn’t vote at all. In a referendum with significant differences in how various age groups voted, the day was won by the old. Fair or not?
We can now return to the Remainers who claim that the Brexit question should never have been posed to the electorate in a referendum. They have a good point: how could anyone expect laymen to make educated decisions about a matter on which the “experts” were so divided and – as history has shown – unable to predict the consequences of? The scary fact is that most voters – and not just in EU referendums – haven’t got anything which even resembles sound knowledge about the matters on which they are given the power to decide. And when swathes of them are persuaded by cheap rhetoric to cast their votes in a particular direction then the fools are in charge. This could cost Britain dear in the next general election, which may give Jeremy Corbyn and his loony lefties power courtesy of a mob of economically illiterate and uninformed voters. The winners of elections are often losers as well, they just don’t know it because the magnitude of the decision they helped make is beyond them. Sadly, in a democracy they take innocents with them in their fall.
So, can we now answer our question? Is Brexit “fair”? In the end, it doesn’t matter. A referendum (and it goes for any election) is simply a way of making a decision, given the general framework of “the people” holding power through a democratic process. The European question had dominated British politics – and almost paralysed the Conservative party – for decades. It needed to be settled. A referendum was a way to move forward. It’s hard to say that a democratic referendum result such as Brexit is more, or less, fair than if it was the other way around, or indeed if it had been made by Parliament without consulting voters, given that our parliamentarians are also elected through a democratic process. It’s just a result, that’s it. We move on.
When we therefore can’t answer our question – because the question itself in nonsensical – the only lesson to be taken away is this: those who lament the consequences of a democratic vote should dig deeper and understand that the system they have been taught to support is laced with desperate unfairness to those who are on the losing side.