Many party members will be very happy to see Ed Davey say out loud that Brexit is not working in a piece for the Guardian.
Our leader said:
Brexit isn’t working, and the British people know it. Poll after poll, including that unveiled this weekend by More In Common for the Sunday Times, shows that people are feeling the terrible damage caused by the deal forced upon us by Boris Johnson, Kemi Badenoch and the rest of the Conservative party, and want something different. The latest shows less than a third of Britons would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were repeated. There’s no doubt that fundamental change is needed. There’s no doubt the public will is there to make it happen. The question is: will Keir Starmer seize the moment and deliver it?
He urges Starmer to stop tinkering:
Of course, we know why Starmer has been reluctant to go further. He’s spooked by the combined threat of the Conservatives and Reform, both of whom are itching for the chance to plunge Britain back into the nasty Brexit wars of the past decade. Well, I say let them try. With so many serious problems in need of urgent solutions, the British people have absolutely no appetite for all that division and distraction, and they will have no truck with politicians who do.
The way to see off the populist right isn’t to cower in its shadow; it’s to step up and offer a compelling, positive alternative. So what does that look like? The first thing the prime minister should do is raise his sights when it comes to negotiating with the EU. This can’t be about the odd limited improvement for this sector here or that sector there. The government has to be far more ambitious than just trying to polish up the rough edges of Johnson’s bad deal.
He wants Starmer to commit to rejoining the Customs Union before 2030:
It’s the single biggest thing the government could do to turbocharge our economy in the medium and long term. It would set us firmly on the path back to the single market, with all the benefits that would bring. It would be a game-changer – not just for our economy, but for the future of British politics.
You can read the whole article here.
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31 Comments
Britain has been on a steady decline for years.
Infrastructure, roads , industrial complex, post industrial towns and high streets.
EU membership didn’t save one job or one factory from closing. That decline continued unabated throughout our membership.
If Ed thinks this is a game changer for the UK – then he’s been very poorly advised. It’s not as if the EU has flourished since we’ve left – Germany’s economic stats are pretty poor.
The voting public will rightly think that this is a divisive and unnecessary route to go down.
Significant political opposition to this will make any attempt for SM membership pointless.
I voted Remain, but respect democracy and accept that the referendum result should only be reversed by a fresh referendum. Whether that is rejoining the Customs Union, the Single Market, EFTA or the EU itself, our position – as democrats – should be ‘no change without the explicit consent of the people as expressed in a referendum’.
I know that all referenda are advisory, but let’s not pretend that it would be anything other than a democratic outrage to seek to undo part or all of the referendum result without such explicit consent.
Very well said Ed.
@GregHyde. If what yo say is true why has the UKs economic performance and trading position worsened significantly since we left the EU?
@BrendaWill. The UK has an unwritten constitution, but it is agreed that no Parliament can bind its successor. Referenda are not binding at all unless the Act of Parliament specifies it and even then only in that Parliament. A good example of that is the Fixed Term Parliament Act that was unceremoniously scrapped by Boris Johnson’s government.
I would argue that a government elected on a manifesto commitment to join the Single Market, the customs union of even the EU would not need a referendum if it won a majority in the election, especially if it had explicitly said that was what it would do during the campaign.
No referendum result can be in perpetuity. If that was the case then the referendum result in 1975 would not have been able to be challenged in 2016.
We have a parliamentary system, where decisions are made by parliament, not by referendums. It’s high time we started making that clear.
Mick Taylor’s argument is perfectly sound. There are those who think that a referendum is the purest form of democracy. It is worth remembering that dictators have often used a binary referendum as a device to silence their enemies and remove ongoing debate and accountability.
Brenda, I too respect democracy, but know that modern referenda are proposed by governments to deal with either very complex or politically very dangerous issues, but are largely won on simplistic slogans.
Even worse though is that Referenda, by asking a yes or no question, are inherently divisive and that division remains and often grows whichever side wins.
Therefore, my view is that all that Referenda do is turn a difficult problem into a bigger more intractable problem. We should never, ever, go down that route again.
All the main political parties dabbled in an in out referendum at some point – the caveat was any future powers handed to Brussels etc etc ..
Those parties have only themselves to blame – the only time the British fully engaged with Europe was when given a chance to leave.
The public by that time had lost a significant amount of trust in politicians and the European union . The farcical votes in Ireland and Denmark were examples of that. For many EU membership was irrelevant, this was reflected in such poor election turnouts.
I confess I am surprised by the reactions to my post. I thought that Liberal Democrats, by definition, would accept that the precedent has now been established that major constitutional questions should be decided by the people in a referendum. It appears I am wrong – some Liberal Democrats wish to reverse Brexit so badly that they are not willing to risk another referendum on the question in case the people vote the wrong way again! If we ever dared to place in a future manifesto that we would rejoin the EU without a further referendum, we would deserve the storm we would provoke…winning a majority of MPs on the basis of a third of the vote should not be regarded as a mandate to overrule the wishes of a majority of voters in a referendum by anyone who also argues for electoral reform. Quite incredible, really.
@ David Evans
“We should never, ever, go down that route again.”
Would you be saying this had the result gone your way?
While reversing the referendum result without another referendum would undermine democratic principles, the 2016 vote had crucial limitations. Voters were asked a binary question about EU membership but received no clarity on what Brexit would actually entail. We weren’t asked about the single market or customs union in 2016, and polling afterwards showed at least 40% of Leave voters wanted to remain in the single market.
The Brexiteers deliberately avoided defining Brexit before the vote because they knew if they did they would lose. Their strategy was to oppose mutually exclusive fantasy Brexits to a pragmatic but unloved reality. They have delivered the exact opposite of what they promised.
Brexit is supported by only 30% of the population. That is enough to elect a Reform/Tory government and blocks any prospect of rejoining the EU. We are not going to see another referendum for a long time, if ever.
But since the single market and customs union exit derived their legitimacy from Tory general election victories in 2017/2019 rather than the referendum, reversing these decisions through a future parliament would be entirely democratic.
@Andrew: Yes, Brexit wasn’t defined well at the time of the referendum but that was because it was impossible to know how it would look until the negotiations with the EU were underway: That’s not the fault of Brexiter opaqueness. With hindsight, it would have been better to have a two-stage referendum, with a first vote on the principle of Brexit, and a second vote on whether to accept the actual Brexit terms, but the decision to do it the (way it was done was apparently made by David Cameron’s circle – a group of Remainers – so that also can’t be blamed on Brexiters.
I wouldn’t attach much credence to polls about remaining in the single market because unless you’re a political nerd, you’re unlikely to know much about the single market (I’d bet only a minority of people answering that poll are aware that joining the single market would mean a return to freedom of movement). If we ever had a referendum on the single market, causing people to learn about those details, the proportions in support/against would likely change dramatically.
But anyway, I think Brenda is correct. Whatever the faults of the first referendum. Now that people had clearly voted for Brexit, it would be seen by most voters (including many Remainers) as a democratic outrage if we tried to significantly reverse any part of Brexit without another referendum, and we need to accept that.
– Simon R
The official Leave campaign was deliberately opaque because when Dominic Cummings tested specific Brexit models with focus groups, it became clear the Brexiteers wouldn’t win. Cummings has admitted this himself so there is no need to speculate about the campaign’s vagueness. This strategic ambiguity caused significant rancour among more ideological eurosceptics who favoured ‘Flexcit’—the detailed Brexit model adopted by Leave.EU—but almost certainly explains why Brexit briefly enjoyed majority support in 2016.
Claiming 40% of leave voters didn’t know what they were voting for is a peculiar position from which to argue that no significant change can be made to Brexit.
The decisions to leave the single market and the customs union were never put to the British people in a referendum and have never enjoyed majority support. I have less faith than you do in your ability to divine what ‘most voters’ would think in a hypothetical scenario. But even if you were right it is irrelevant to my argument.
“The British public would be voting if we leave would be to leave the EU and leave the single market. We’d then have to negotiate a trade deal from outside with the European Union”
David Cameron 2016
I’m surprised to see some LibDems seem to wish to defend Brexit. Yes, of course the UK and the EU have both had economic setbacks since the UK left the European Union; but so has every other nation and trading block around the world – we are living in a period of global recession (which is incidentally why we witness the rise of autocratic governments around the world). But surely we should recognise that the essence of freedom is choice – and not just a one-off choice back a decade ago, but a continuing access to choice. After all, we have had at least three general elections since then, and the last resulted in enough people voting out the incumbent government to allow a new one to take power – and it looks quite likely that that will happen again at the next general election (whether for good or worse is obviously a moot question – and will doubtless remain so for the next four years). Voters change their mind – and this can apply to elections as well as to referenda – that’s the nature of democracy. Indications over a number of years are that the British voters want to change their mind over the relations with the EU, and they should be given that opportunity.
To Brenda’s comment I would say – the referendum asked whether we wanted to leave the EU or remain in it. It DIDN’T ask whether we wanted to leave or remain in the customs Union, which we could be a member of without being in the EU – so democracy respected. Indeed you may all remember the debate at the time about ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ Brexit – many including Farage said ‘we could be like Norway or Switzerland’. Both are in not only the customs union but the single market too.
– Greg Hyde
Your choice to quote a Remain supporter rather than any Leave campaign leaders when seeking a clear statement on Brexit’s implications rather gives the game away. After all, Brexiteers routinely dismissed Cameron’s warnings at the time as “Project Fear.”
Brenda,
Thanks for responding. However, I am a bit disappointed that you have concluded that “some Liberal Democrats wish to reverse Brexit so badly that they are not willing to risk another referendum on the question in case the people vote the wrong way again!”
None of us who have posted opposing referenda – myself, Mick or Geoff – have said that or anything like it. However, we have all pointed out the substantial problems with referenda with clear reasoning to justify our positions.
Geoff because of the abuse of referenda by populist dictators. Mick because our real precedent in the vast majority of cases is Parliamentary Democracy. Myself because of the appalling divisive legacy many referenda have left behind and the ease with which any sense of a deliberative process of legislation, debate and decision is ultimately reduced to a few slogans.
I would ask you to consider your post and if you wish to, instead engage with our arguments on the failings of referenda on their merits and not just on the straw person you have created. If you do, I am sure we would all consider your points and respond constructively.
In the meantime,
All the best to you in all you do,
David
I think Brenda is absolutely correct when she says ” If we ever dared to place in a future manifesto that we would rejoin the EU without a further referendum, we would deserve the storm we would provoke.” This was exactly what was proposed when Jo Swinson was leader and that didn’t go down well at all. Accepting the result of the referendum on the EU was something I was happy to do, but many in the party were not and demanded a second referendum. At the same time the party accepted the result of the Scottish Independence referendum saying that the decision was democratic and final. At that time I voted for Independence, one reason being the fear that Scotland could be taken out of the EU by votes elsewhere in the UK. Facing both ways, depending whether we agree with the referendum result, is not going to convince the wider electorate our stance on the issue is anything other than opportunistic.
@David Evans
My apologies that, with hindsight, my comment was perhaps too generalising and unfair.
I agree that dictators sometimes use referenda but that is a case of guilt by association. Hitler was elected to power in Germany so elections are a bad way of choosing leaders would be a similar argument. As for the sovereignty of parliament idea, I have to say that I personally believe in the concept of the sovereignty of the people and on the really major constitutional questions like should Scotland leave the UK and become independent or should the UK leave the EU, it was perfectly appropriate that the people should have been explicitly and directly asked to indicate their preference. My hope is that future (or the same) constitutional questions will be decided in the same way – explicitly and directly by the people. As for the view that referendums are divisive – yes, questions that can only be decided in one of two ways (such as ‘in or out’) are bound to be divisive whether decided by a referendum or by a vote in parliament…though I would say that the sight of an unrepresentative parliament taking a major constitutional decision that is opposed by the majority of the public, would be the most divisive -and undemocratic- thing I can imagine.
Why don’t we go further and campaign for another referendum? The British people are the ones to decide to return us to the EU. In increasing numbers they are turning their backs on Brexit.
Rather than saying that voters have turned their backs on Brexit, I think it’s more correct to say that voters simply don’t care any more: You YouGov tracker on what issues voters think are most important (https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/trackers/the-most-important-issues-facing-the-country) shows just 11% citing Brexit as an important issue. On the other hand, 56% cite Immigration and Asylum (and I’d be almost no-one in that 56% has chosen that issue because they want more immigration!). At best, calling for another referendum would be seen by most voters as peddling an irrelevancy that they don’t care about in lieu of trying to fix problems they do care about.
In hindsight, I think those of us who campaigned for a second referendum before Brexit was implmented failed to explain the case properly, We were right to point out that the Brexiteers had lied to the voters. We were right to point out that it was all going very badly. However, we should have accepted that these points in themselves were not sufficient to justify an urgent second referendum, a quick “second throw of the dice”.
In addition, we should have said that a second referendum would only be justified if there was clear evidence that the voters had changed their minds. Something like a 60/40 vote to Remain in the monthly Yougov polls that were being published. Given the chaos of the Brexit negotiations, it wasn’t unreasonable for us to expect Remain to tick up to 60%. But it didn’t happen. Remain was stuck in the low-fifties percent range, and a narrow reversal of the vote in a second referendum would only have caused more angst and uncertainty. Sadly, the People’s Vote campaign deserved to be unsuccessful in those circumstances.
But now that Remain leads in the polls by well over 60/40, is a referendum now a good call?
I’d say no. Partly for Simon R’s reasons. Partly because the EU, fed up with being messed about by the Brits, won’t be generous. Partly because Ed Davey’s approach – Start with Customs Union – looks like the best pragmatic way forward.
“Partly because the EU, fed up with being messed about by the Brits, won’t be generous.”
I wouldn’t say we’ve ever messed the EU around before we left. We, and this includes most Remainers, have never wanted the kind of EU that has developed. There been very little enthusiasm for the Euro, the European Parliament, a European President or the idea of ever closer Union. We wanted to be part of a free trade zone not part of an embryonic Federal State.
We had a referendum and voted Leave. Asking to rejoin now would be messing the EU about. Rejoining would have to follow the same path as when we joined in the first place. We’d negotiate a deal, then rejoin, then ask the electorate if they were happy with what had been agreed. That was possible in the 70’s. It isn’t possible now especially when the EU is looking at the likelihood of a Reform Party governed UK.
“I wouldn’t say we’ve ever messed the EU around before we left.”
We joined late. We made a deal. Then Maggie used her handbag and demanded an improved deal. We refused the euro. Then we pulled out, still grumbling at having to pay back the EU some of the costs our withdrawal had caused them. Then we argued for years about the trouble we were causing for Ireland.
“Asking to rejoin now would be messing the EU about.”
I’m afraid that’s probably true. Many of us profoundly regret leaving – But how could we guarantee to the EU that Britain had finally made up its butterfly mind, once and for all, that we wanted to join and stay? Why should they trust us?
The EU would have to insist on our joining the euro, because that would make it harder for a future anti-EU government to pull out yet again. If I were an EU negotiator, I would also want to demand Britain commit to paying large financial reparations should they ever again decide to leave. That would only be sensible.
The bad boys of Brexit did us permanent harm.
@ David Allen,
“But how could we guarantee to the EU that Britain had finally made up its butterfly mind, once and for all, that we wanted to join and stay?”
I agree. We can’t. No more than the Scots , the Welsh, and the people of Northern Ireland can guarantee that they’ll always want to be part of the UK. This is democracy.
It’s not that any particular country has a “butterfly mind”. There are lots of minds coming into the electorate every year just as there are lots leaving every year. They are all different and the balance of overall opinion can change.
Not just on the question of UK membership of the EU or Scottish membership of the UK. But on many other matters too, such as single sex marriage, gay rights, racial equality etc. Many that Lib Dems will be fully supportive of but maybe some they won’t be.
Again this is democracy. You’re not going to win them all!
@David: This is perhaps arguing about trivia – the things you’ve listed as ‘us messing the EU around’ – surely those are just normal deal making when you have two sides who want different things negotiating. It seems odd to me to make out that’s the UK somehow behaving egregiously.
Yes, we chose not to be involved when the EEC was first founded in 1957 by just 6 countries. Do you consider that the vast majority of European countries who weren’t part of the initial 6 were also ‘messing the EU around? Also, our later joining was much delayed be de Gaulle vetoing it – hence why we only joined in the 1970s, after de Gaulle had died. Surely you don’t consider that to be ‘the UK messing the EU around’?
In the 1980s, Maggie demanded an improved deal because the financial arrangements at the time were particularly disadvantageous to the UK.
We decided not to join the Eurozone (alongside such countries as Denmark and Sweden) because we considered it not in our national interests. Again, there was no obligation to do so. In that case, it was the majority of EU countries seeking to make a change to the previous arrangements – so who was messing who around? (Answer: No-one)
Are you sure you’re not falling into the trap of looking for excuses to blame the UK for everything? 😉
Simon R, Are you sure you’re not falling into the trap of looking for excuses to blame the UK for – Nothing at all?
Sure, the UK does not have a monopoly on bad behaviour in Europe. Yes, de Gaulle messed the UK around. Mind you, his view was that the UK would be an unreliable member of the EU because of our abiding nostalgia for Empire. Well, was he proved wrong?
You say “Maggie demanded an improved deal because the financial arrangements at the time were particularly disadvantageous to the UK.” I’m afraid that’s a rather disingenuous apologia for gazumping. The rest of the EU can hardly have been delighted by Maggie’s hardball approach, or by our rejection of the Euro, or of course, by our chaotic demand to leave. Now, if we want to get back on terms, and eventually to rejoin, we have a mountain to climb.
@ David Allen,
We actually did both the EU and ourselves a favour by staying out of the euro. The pound was very much overvalued at the time it was serious suggested we should join in 2003. It was probably the real reason Gordon Brown decided against it. The much discussed “five economic tests” were only for public consumption.
When the GFC of 2008 hit, the crisis in the UK, due to the size of our financial sector, would have been impossible to contain. Yanis Varoufakis explains as follows:
“As UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Brown became an enabler of Brexit by keeping, for a variety of excellent reasons, the United Kingdom out of the eurozone. Had he acceded to Blair’s preference to adopt the euro, events would have unfolded very differently. Given the size of the City of London, no EU bailout could have re-floated Britain’s banks after the 2008 financial crisis without ditching the euro’s rulebook and without forcing an immediate, clean decision: federate or return to national currencies.
Brown thus became the unwitting enabler of Merkel’s penchant for kicking the can down the road. By keeping the UK out of the euro, he permitted Germany to continue resisting federation while ensuring that Brexit remained a relatively low-cost option for the British.”
https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2020/03/11/brexit-a-rational-choice-for-the-wrong-reasons-financial-news-project-syndicate/
@David Allen: That’s a fair question, but I don’t think I am. Notice I didn’t claim that either the UK or the EU was acting unreasonably in your examples – I’m not trying to pin blame on anyone. To my mind, in principle it’s perfectly reasonable for any country to say, This treaty is no longer working for us. Can we renegotiate it? (Maggie’s budget rebate). Or in extreme cases, We need to pull out (Brexit). Whether one or other party is behaving unreasonably is a value judgement you’d make based on the individual circumstances.
I queried your post because it seems to me that often in progressive circles, there’s a tendency to seek to blame all the World’s problems on ourselves, ignoring that there are invariably other parties involved, and it seemed to me your comments were an example of that.
In response to your question about de Gaulle, yes there’s a good case for saying that with hindsight, maybe he was partially correct. Thanks to basic geography (we are the biggest out of several local islands) our history is very different from most of continental Europe. That also gives us a slightly different place in the World and does make it questionable whether an organisation designed primarily to serve countries that share extensive land borders is a good fit for the UK. Maybe de Gaulle correctly perceived that?
Simon R,
Most politicians and commentators focus intently on the perceived iniquity of their opponents, while turning a completely blind eye to their own side’s faults and mistakes.
If “progressive circles” can go some way towards redressing the balance and acknowledging what Jesus called “the beam in their own eyes”, then that’s a good thing.
When the complacency enthusiasts respond by complaining e.g. that “you are talking Britain down” – that’s cant.
Hi Brenda and thanks again for responding. It is good to talk with a fellow Lib Dem who engages with others on LDV about a point of disagreement rather than the average person you get elsewhere who simply rants and repeats their stance while refusing to engage with points raised. It makes debate a pleasure as opposed to the battleground you almost always get elsewhere.
Overall I can understand your view that a referendum based on the concept of sovereignty of the people is the most appropriate democratic way to make major constitutional decisions. However, I think we need to consider many more factors than just who votes to decide whether referenda really are the best option.
To me the most fundamental factor comes at the beginning – Who decides on what is the question? Taking the Scottish independence referendum as an example, Orkney, Shetland and the Scottish Borders all voted substantially No, in part due to an acknowledged lesser feeling of Scottishness in the islands than many other areas and a separate vote for those areas was requested – Tavish Scott and Alistair Carmichael expressed this view (Wikipedia provides an explanation).
Then who is allowed to campaign and how do you ensure a fair contest financially. Many know that Remain and Leave spent their full allocation, but late on money was moved to other organisations supporting leave and even worse not a single penny was spent by Media companies.
These are just two factors of many, but the 250 words limit …