Consider the following scenario. A general election is held in which Labour wins an overall majority. The margin of victory is a comfortable 4 per cent, with Labour gaining 17.4 million votes to the Conservatives’ 16.1 million. The Conservatives, in traditional style, concede defeat: the people have spoken, the election result must be respected.
So, they make way for a Labour government; however, in doing so, they impose some unusual conditions. Although it is nominally a Labour government, the prime minister, chancellor and a large majority of Cabinet members are drawn from the ranks of the Conservatives. While paying lip service to a Labour agenda, they pursue Tory policies.
They explain it is necessary to respect the wishes of the 48 per cent of defeated Tory voters despite the fact their preferences are directly opposed to those of the majority of the electorate that voted Labour. Some of them openly agitate for an early re-run of the general election, in the hope that the Conservatives might win.
Would such a charade, such a travesty of parliamentary democracy, be acceptable? Would it secure the acquiescence not only of the Labour Party, but of the public at large? Would it be remotely compatible with the British constitution or the most elementary notions of fair play? Yet substitute for “Labour” and “Conservative” the terms Leave and Remain, and that is precisely the negation of democracy we are currently experiencing at the hands of a shameless Remainer political establishment.
Because the referendum is a relatively new and infrequent (but not for much longer) device in British public life, parts of the political class have assumed they can take liberties with the outcome of a plebiscite that they would never dare attempt against a general election result. The very dangerous flaw in that assumption is that, unlike a general election where support for a particular political party may reflect widely different priorities among voters, a single-issue Yes/No referendum result is clear-cut, its outcome firmly impressed upon voters’ minds and immune from ambiguity.
That is why all the establishment’s attempts to obfuscate and dilute the clear message of 23 June 2016 – get us out of the European Union – have failed among the public. The dogs in the street know that nobody voted Leave while intending to remain within many EU institutions. The weasel terms “hard” and “soft” Brexit are creations of the elites’ desperate post-referendum damage limitation exercise. All the waffle and jargon that has been injected into the Brexit “narrative” are transparent devices to avoid implementing the democratically expressed wish of the British electorate.
The voters of Britain have given a clear instruction to their servants, the members of the House of Commons, and some of those insubordinate servants are refusing to obey. That is the reality behind all the flummery of motions and amendments and obscure procedural arcana. The narcissism of MPs, too long secure in their self-regarding bubble, is an affront to voters. “We need a deal that can command a majority in the House of Commons…” “There is no majority in this House…” The self-important drivel is a provocation to the public and to anyone who believes in liberty.
Who cares if there is a majority in the House of Commons? That house delegated its authority years ago in a referendum and it revealed a majority for Brexit. There is a majority in the country. That is all that matters. If MPs prolong the agony of the Brexit “negotiation” farce, or attempt to impose Theresa May’s Brexit In Name Only – an outcome so bad that even the Commons voted it down overwhelmingly as recently as last month – the consequences are incalculable.
Developments in the House of Commons, facilitated by the Speaker, have recently taken an extremely sinister turn. Passing unconstitutional motions to hobble the Executive in negotiating an international treaty, no matter how camouflaged by esoteric procedural dialectic, was a revolutionary act. The Commons is attempting to usurp power, not to guarantee the liberty of the subject and the sovereignty of the nation, but to frustrate those desirable objectives.
Now, hidden among the latest clutch of mischievous Brexit amendments, there is a new challenge to parliamentary democracy that appears to be slipping by unnoticed by the commentariat. This proposal comes from the Father of the House, no less, Ken Clarke. Instead of a series of indicative amendments which, though futile, would at least have the merit of transparency, Clarke, supported by Harriet Harman and others, proposes issuing MPs with ballot papers on which they would rank according to preference any Brexit proposals that had the support of at least 50 MPs.
This would be a secret ballot. Held in the House of Commons where a secret vote on public policy is in direct conflict with the principle of accountability. Traditionally, when MPs vote, instead of pressing automatic buttons as in continental parliaments, they troop through a division lobby, recording their votes for publication in Hansard and, on important issues, the wider media. They literally stand up to be counted. That makes them accountable for their votes to their constituents.
The Clarke proposal would be an anonymous lottery in which MPs could not be held accountable for whatever Brexit-obstructing proposals came out of the box. It is ironic – more accurately, significant – that this proposal is coming from the senior MP in the House: it graphically illustrates how bogus all the Sir Buftons’ huffing and puffing about “the conventions of this House” has been all along. When issues of power and public manipulation are involved, all that baroque flummery goes out of the window.
Anonymous voting, a crippled Executive – what further extravagances will our tribunes, intoxicated with entitlement, perpetrate in their attempts to defy the wishes of the British people? The traditional fabric of government, balance and separation of powers, the honouring of unwritten constitutional traditions, everything that has produced stability in Britain due to the willingness of defeated factions to surrender power with a good grace, all this is being trampled down by crazed Remainers.
They should beware. If a clean Brexit is either supplanted by the dog’s breakfast that is May’s deal or delayed by extension of Article 50, both government and parliament will have lost their legitimacy. The governmental compact will have been unilaterally broken. But there are two sides to every contract and those who have been betrayed will then be relieved of any obligation to fulfil their side of the constitutional bargain. MPs are playing for higher stakes than those somnambulists on the green benches probably realize.
