One of the most fatuous claims regarding the EU membership referendum of 23 June 2016 is, should the UK not soon leave the European Union, the referendum’s result will have been ignored. Such a position raises the question of why, in the nearly three years since the result was confirmed, so much time has been spent by politicians debating what form withdrawal should take, negotiating with their European counterparts on the terms, and appointing three separate Secretaries of State devoted entirely to leading our exit from the EU, including now, apparently, someone called Stephen Barclay. If all of that is merely coincidental with the referendum result, a person would surely be entitled to believe our current political situation is an even bigger shambles than anyone had realised.
Nor need we worry about subverting the rule of law. Much like the recent indicative votes Theresa May wouldn’t commit to honouring, the referendum was not legally binding, and quite possibly couldn’t have ever been given the vagueness of its counterfactual. That may echo the bleatings of a Remoaner hanging onto a technicality, but in the context of whether or not our democracy is being eroded away, it’s crucial. The electorate advised we leave the EU, civil servants and MPs spent three years seriously exploring the possibility, and at the end of process, the majority concluded there was no way to do it without causing at least some damage to the country. The closest thing to legislation guiding what MPs should do next (aside from the retrospectively passed, and already amended, EU Withdrawal Act) is the Commons Code of Conduct stating ‘Members have a general duty to act in the interests of the nation’. On that basis, it wouldn’t be an affront to democracy to revoke Article 50, but rather our democracy functioning exactly as it’s supposed to.
David Cameron did insist we would always adhere to the result of the plebiscite he called, but since then, he’s been replaced as leader of the Conservative Party, his government has lost its majority, and the Supreme Court has ruled against the executive triggering Article 50 without referring to Parliament, so in lieu of law, Cameron’s word probably shouldn’t be considered definitive. The Tory manifesto that superseded him made similar promises, but again, considering the Tories didn’t actually win a majority, it’s debatable what mandate that gives Mrs May and her government, or indeed what mandate any election manifesto provides in a parliamentary system that last saw a party win a majority of the popular vote in 1931. The fact this manifesto was 80 pages longer than the two-line definition of ‘customs union’ nobody bothered to read probably doesn’t strengthen its authority.
That leaves the argument that none of this really matters; that irrespective of whether the electorate was ever guaranteed action directly corresponding to the result of the referendum, they thought they were going to get it and therefore they should. Rather than uphold the laws and conventions designed to protect people, we should simply satisfy people’s perception of what democracy is, lest they lose faith in the process and voter turnout suffers its inevitable dip at a slightly different point in the cycle. The long-term integrity of our institutions should be sacrificed to maintain order under the short-term threat posed by those who kick and scream loudest, dragging effigies through the street.
I fall on the other side of the argument. Admittedly I might feel differently if I didn’t believe the vast majority of the population – not just those who voted to remain, as the petty tribalism of the discourse would suggest – will have lost should we eventually leave the EU. I find it difficult to say, given the spectacular weight of evidence prohibiting me from imagining such a scenario. Regardless, the Prime Minister is now reaching across the Commons to build support for a deal that would leave our economic relationship with the EU materially unchanged simply so she can claim to have respected the will of the people on a technicality, even though everybody knows, at best, it’s only what six people wanted. That is not democracy in any sense of the word. It may be practical, or even inevitable, but no one should see it as affirmation of how democratic our governance is, just as nobody should see revoking Article 50 as affirmation of how democratic it isn’t.