Dear Gerald, How far are you prepared to go for your people’s revolution Brexit?
Dear Gerald,
It was terrific to see you in the pub the other day. You are right, of course, that “fever tree” tonic water is wildly overrated (too much sugar) and that the comeback of good old-fashioned Schweppes is an encouraging development. Of course, as you say, lemon should always be used in gin and tonic and never lime. I am more doubtful about your plan to prohibit by law all gin that is neither Gordons nor Tanqueray, but I may have misunderstood you on this point.
Anyway, thank you for your letter about Article 50, a letter that is the first in what we hope will become a series this summer discussing Brexit. I am particularly interested (horrified is a better word) by your wild plan for a people’s revolution in which MPs become direct delegates ordered to implement the results of a blizzard of referenda on all manner of themes.
From the start you have been consistent on the inadvisability of Britain using Article 50, the process designed by Lord Kerr to make it difficult to leave the EU. So far it is working as he intended, for the EU. We should, you say, have given notice to quit, got ready, and let the EU know our phone number if they seek trade.
On this you make a fair and good point. We moderate eurosceptics (me, not you) who were in favour of David Cameron’s renegotiation, in the hope that it would shock the EU into offering a looser association model, and then after the referendum were open to compromises to ensure minimum disruption, have repeatedly made the mistake of assuming that the EU will at some point see sense and become more flexible.
Will we never learn? It’s a religion with the Europhiles. Some arrogant twit in Brussels was quoted by the website Politico today saying that the EU will not divide the Single Market because it simply will not allow the founding principles of the project to be undermined. I’m old enough to remember that the Single Market only came into effect in the early 1990s. It is not a biblical tablet. The Single Market was conceived by Margaret Thatcher in the mid-1980s and in practice is only 25 years-old.
I get all that, but what worries me most about the alternative you propose – end the negotiations, leave immediately and play the epic film Battle of Britain in town squares on large screens to fire up the population – is that in revolutions people tend to get hurt.
Conservatives know this through study of the effects of revolution and their tendency to become violent and to have unintended consequences. It is why Conservatives defend institutions and prioritise order. Burke was good on this, as you explained to me 25 years ago. I’m sure you will explain that Brexit is a counter-revolution, and that the success of revolutions such as the American Revolution vindicate your approach.
Fine, or not, but your approach in the British context overlooks a central point about a parliamentary system. Just as our legal and judicial system exists in large part to settle disputes peacefully, rather than to pursue an abstract idea of perfectible justice, so a large part of parliament’s role involves the settlement of disputes peacefully, as an alternative to tyranny or civil strife.
On Brexit, the country is divided into far more groups than a clear 52-48. Continually, you say that it is known beyond doubt what each of the 17.4m voters demanded and continue to demand. You can’t possibly know this. We both voted to leave, yet I am (or was) open to a deal to get it done sensibly in the hope of bringing the country together. I know Brexiteers who now have doubts, and Remainers almost as Brexity as you in light of the manner in which the EU has behaved. Personally, I think a “no deal” scenario (hardline friends reject the term) is now the most likely outcome.
Obviously, it is highly disingenuous to lump all this together into a single supposed “Will of The People” that happens (what a coincidence!) to correspond with your own view of what Britain should do.
Ironically, many hardliners on Brexit now use the dreadful capital P word – “The People” – when discussing Brexit, which means they are reduced to relying on a Marxist term . It makes me shudder when Marxists use it, as a tool of division to “other” their opponents. And it makes me shudder when my fellow-Brexiteers use it too.
One incidental problem with your revolutionary remaking of parliament. You are a social conservative. You might be surprised by what exactly voters under 50, particularly women, compel their “Peoples MPs” to do under your new system.
But I’m sure you have thought that through. No?
Regards,
Iain.