About that plebiscite thing

Brexit was not an issue to be decided by a single vote, by a simple majority, in a single mass constituency.

That was an exceptionally stupid thing for a Tory leader to set up.

George Will on the point.

Be warned.

Will's nostalgia for the "Europe of the nations" so beloved of Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump is as absurd and phoney as theirs.

None of the three wants a strong and united Europe emerging as an increasingly independent and significant player on the world stage.

Even though at least the latter two want America to abandon it.

European unification was conceived in fear — Europeans’ fear of themselves, a residue of wars produced by various atavisms, including unhinged nationalism. 

. . . .

The embryo of the EU was a free-trade zone — a single market. 

But as the unification project became more ambitious, it required the derogation of national parliaments and hence of nations’ sovereignties. 

So, in 1988 Margaret Thatcher voiced what became Conservative Euroskeptics’ cri de coeur: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”

This is another objection to the EU Will has in common with Pat Buchanan and most of the Euroskeptical right wing politicians in Britain or elsewhere in Europe.

Liberal policies pursued by the EU are out of reach of local and national conservative politicians, and trump local and national authority.

It is as though conservative politicians in Georgia or Wyoming sought to secede from the United States because the federal government is too liberal for them.

Hoping to cauterize the Conservative party’s long-festering wound, in 2016 then–prime minister David Cameron succumbed to the plebiscitary temptation, scheduling the referendum that he thought Remain would win. 

It lost, he resigned, and Theresa May, who had voted Remain, became prime minister. 

She called an election expecting to increase her parliamentary majority and thus her leverage for negotiating terms of divorce from the EU. 

Instead, she lost her majority and was forced into an alliance with a Northern Ireland party.

. . . .

But why, with its primacy at stake, did Parliament punt one of the most momentous decisions in British history to a referendum? 

Precisely because the decision was as momentous as the adoption of a constitutional amendment, or even an entire constitution, there needed to be some sort of consultation of the voters.

Not being a federal republic, there could be no process of ratification involving consultation of or in the federated states, as there would be in American or Australia.

And the rather bizarre and hyper-democratic process for adoption of an entire new constitution, nowadays, seems to be a single plebiscite decided at one stroke by a simple majority voting to accept or reject a single proposed constitution.

Take it or leave it.

But David Cameron should really have thought of something better, requiring perhaps a series of plebiscites and the suffrage of a supermajority in each for so vast and momentous a change as leaving the EU.

Only idiots think constitutions should be amended by a single vote, by simple majority, by the electorate at large.

And, yes, I am aware that several US states absurdly allow their constitutions to be so modified.

The bedrock principle of representative government is that “the people” do not decide issues, they decide who shall decide. 

And once a legislature sloughs off responsibility and resorts to a referendum on the dubious premise that the simple way to find out what people want is to ask them, it is difficult to avoid recurring episodes of plebiscitary democracy.

. . . .

In 2016, a majority of voters over age 43 favored leaving, a majority of those younger favored remaining. 

Since then, mortality has taken many Leavers, and many young people have joined the electorate. 

So, demography, combined with a new understanding of Brexit’s certain costs and myriad uncertainties, could cause 2016’s big bang that began Brexit to end with a 2019 whimper of a referendum saying, “Oh, never mind.”

Has Brexit become unpopular?

This Guardian writer said so before Christmas, but others disagree.

Those calling for a second referendum are calling for another simple majority vote to, this time, once and for all, make the call.

Anne Applebaum says why a second vote is unlikely.

The People’s Vote campaign is calling for the deadlock to be resolved by a new referendum. 

One of its leaders told me recently that the campaign is now hoping to be “the last option standing”: After everything else is voted down, there may be no other choice. 

May continues to push back against a second referendum for a simple reason: Polling is showing increasing numbers of people opposed to Brexit. 

Indeed, when Britons are offered the choice between remaining in the E.U. and any other concrete option — May’s deal, or no deal — a clear majority favors Remain. 

But because that outcome would split the Conservative Party, and because the Conservative Party is May’s whole life, she wants to avoid that at any cost. 

And so here we are.