Five tropes about Brexit which it is time to retire.
There are five Brexit-related insults which are used too frequently in some form or other against politicians or voters whose position on Brexit the person making the argument disagrees with that it is fairly unusual for a debate or discussion about the subject to take place without at least one of these accusations being deployed.
All five of them are true occasionally.
However, in my humble opinion, all five of these tropes are wrong and unfair most of the time, and more to the point, all of them reflect an unwillingness to accept that intelligent and honest people can disagree with the person deploying the argument. It is this refusal to accept the existence of honest disagreement which has made the Brexit debate so divisive, angry, and difficult to resolve.
As the American economist Thomas Sowell wrote,
It's high time to stop using all five of these lazy excuses for ignoring people whose views are not identical to yours.
1) It's time to stop calling Remain supporters "unpatriotic."
The overwhelming majority of Remain voters are patriots, who love our country. They voted against Brexit because they thought our country would be better off as part of the EU not because they want Britain to cease to be an independent country.
2) It's time to stop calling Leave supporters "racists" and "xenophobes."
The overwhelming majority of Leave voters are neither racist or xenophobic. Any group of millions of people is bound to contain a few people who meet that description but if the ordinary leave voters I talk to are remotely representative, most of the 17.4 million people who voted Leave did so because they think there are problems with the EU, particularly around the organisation's democratic deficit, didn't think the international order of which the EU is a key part was working for them, or wanted more freedom for Britain to run our own affairs.
3) It's time to stop calling opponents of a hard Brexit "traitors" or "enemies of the people."
The British constitution has developed a whole series of checks and balances over the process of centuries to protect the people from over-mighty government and ensure that we are ruled by laws and not by depots. Those checks and balances became more important, not less, on the day Britain voted to leave the EU.
Judges who interpret the law according to what they think it actually says rather than what any particular faction might find convenient, are only doing their job on behalf of the people. So are those who want parliament to scrutinise and hold the Executive to account. So are MPs who are trying to find a way to implement the decision of the referendum by seeking a form of Brexit which can pass parliament, even if that form is not as hard-line as some people want.
Very few people were demanding a "WTO Brexit" at the time of the referendum and there is no mandate for one: there is a mandate to leave the EU but honest and intelligent people can disagree about what relationship we should have with the rest of the EU from outside after we have left.
4) It's time for people on both sides to stop calling the other side "stupid."
Too many people on both sides of the Brexit divide are have developed such an extreme case of confirmation bias that they are completely unable to recognise that there are genuine arguments for the other point of view. They will state repeatedly that there are no good arguments whatsoever for Leave or no valid reasons whatsoever to support Remain, and no matter how hard you try to explain
If the arguments for either side had been as overwhelming as the most enthusiastic partisans for each side believe, the result would never have been as close as 52:48.
5) It's time to stop accusing any politician who does something you don't like of putting their party interest before the national interest.
So poor is the reputation of MPs now that this is the one I will probably have least success in persuading anyone not to use, but actually it is the worst example of lazy and totally nonsensical thinking of the lot.
Ironically if MPs really were putting their party interest first, the way through the Brexit mess would probably be less difficult. The Prime Minister of the day - whoever it was - would cut the best deal they could get, persuade everyone in their party to shout about what a brilliant deal it was and it would sail through parliament.
But on this issue neither Margaret Thatcher, John Major, David Cameron or Theresa May has been able to do this, precisely because large numbers of their MPs won't follow orders about Brexit if they think those orders are against the national interest.
The Labour party has exactly the same problem.
This particular accusation is distinct from the others is that it is thrown with most venom at those who voted the same way in 2016 as the person making the allegation - for example, those who are not reconciled to Britain leaving the EU often reserve their most extreme expressions of contempt not for those who have always supported leave but for those who voted Remain but accept the result of the referendum.
Instead of recognising that a major part of the motivation of people in this category is a wish to respect a democratic plebiscite and deliver what the electorate voted for, hardline remainers often accuse them of knowingly damaging Britain for political advantage.
Nine times out of ten when any commentator, whether it be a journalist or a rival politician, accuses someone of putting party before country, what they really means is
"This politician is not doing what I think is in the national interest, and I'm not prepared to engage with the possibility that they genuinely believe that what they are doing is in the national interest, so I'm going to adopt the laziest explanation of why they're not voting for what I think they should vote for and accuse them of putting party before country."
All five of them are true occasionally.
However, in my humble opinion, all five of these tropes are wrong and unfair most of the time, and more to the point, all of them reflect an unwillingness to accept that intelligent and honest people can disagree with the person deploying the argument. It is this refusal to accept the existence of honest disagreement which has made the Brexit debate so divisive, angry, and difficult to resolve.
As the American economist Thomas Sowell wrote,
It's high time to stop using all five of these lazy excuses for ignoring people whose views are not identical to yours.
1) It's time to stop calling Remain supporters "unpatriotic."
The overwhelming majority of Remain voters are patriots, who love our country. They voted against Brexit because they thought our country would be better off as part of the EU not because they want Britain to cease to be an independent country.
2) It's time to stop calling Leave supporters "racists" and "xenophobes."
The overwhelming majority of Leave voters are neither racist or xenophobic. Any group of millions of people is bound to contain a few people who meet that description but if the ordinary leave voters I talk to are remotely representative, most of the 17.4 million people who voted Leave did so because they think there are problems with the EU, particularly around the organisation's democratic deficit, didn't think the international order of which the EU is a key part was working for them, or wanted more freedom for Britain to run our own affairs.
3) It's time to stop calling opponents of a hard Brexit "traitors" or "enemies of the people."
The British constitution has developed a whole series of checks and balances over the process of centuries to protect the people from over-mighty government and ensure that we are ruled by laws and not by depots. Those checks and balances became more important, not less, on the day Britain voted to leave the EU.
Judges who interpret the law according to what they think it actually says rather than what any particular faction might find convenient, are only doing their job on behalf of the people. So are those who want parliament to scrutinise and hold the Executive to account. So are MPs who are trying to find a way to implement the decision of the referendum by seeking a form of Brexit which can pass parliament, even if that form is not as hard-line as some people want.
Very few people were demanding a "WTO Brexit" at the time of the referendum and there is no mandate for one: there is a mandate to leave the EU but honest and intelligent people can disagree about what relationship we should have with the rest of the EU from outside after we have left.
4) It's time for people on both sides to stop calling the other side "stupid."
Too many people on both sides of the Brexit divide are have developed such an extreme case of confirmation bias that they are completely unable to recognise that there are genuine arguments for the other point of view. They will state repeatedly that there are no good arguments whatsoever for Leave or no valid reasons whatsoever to support Remain, and no matter how hard you try to explain
the reasons why a rational person might support the other side they not only won't be convinced - which is fair enough - but won't even recognise that a valid argument has been presented.
Since there are no rational grounds for backing the other side, everyone who does must, they think, either be evil or stupid.
If the arguments for either side had been as overwhelming as the most enthusiastic partisans for each side believe, the result would never have been as close as 52:48.
You may not like it but there really are rational arguments against your position and not everyone who disagrees with it is stupid
5) It's time to stop accusing any politician who does something you don't like of putting their party interest before the national interest.
So poor is the reputation of MPs now that this is the one I will probably have least success in persuading anyone not to use, but actually it is the worst example of lazy and totally nonsensical thinking of the lot.
Ironically if MPs really were putting their party interest first, the way through the Brexit mess would probably be less difficult. The Prime Minister of the day - whoever it was - would cut the best deal they could get, persuade everyone in their party to shout about what a brilliant deal it was and it would sail through parliament.
But on this issue neither Margaret Thatcher, John Major, David Cameron or Theresa May has been able to do this, precisely because large numbers of their MPs won't follow orders about Brexit if they think those orders are against the national interest.
The Labour party has exactly the same problem.
This particular accusation is distinct from the others is that it is thrown with most venom at those who voted the same way in 2016 as the person making the allegation - for example, those who are not reconciled to Britain leaving the EU often reserve their most extreme expressions of contempt not for those who have always supported leave but for those who voted Remain but accept the result of the referendum.
Instead of recognising that a major part of the motivation of people in this category is a wish to respect a democratic plebiscite and deliver what the electorate voted for, hardline remainers often accuse them of knowingly damaging Britain for political advantage.
A similar situation can be seen on the pro-Brexit side. It is interesting that the most serious deselection attempt against a Conservative MP from hard-line Leave supporters has been mounted, not against any of those MPs who have supported a second referendum or amendments which can plausibly be argued were an attempt to frustrate Brexit, but against a "soft-Brexit" supporting MP who opposes a second referendum, accepts that Britain should leave the EU, backed the Prime Minister's Withdrawal agreement (the real-hard line Brexit opponents joined the ERG in the lobby to vote against it, though for opposite reasons) but has tried to find an alternative status outside EU membership which can get through the House of Commons if the PM's deal fails.
Nine times out of ten when any commentator, whether it be a journalist or a rival politician, accuses someone of putting party before country, what they really means is
"This politician is not doing what I think is in the national interest, and I'm not prepared to engage with the possibility that they genuinely believe that what they are doing is in the national interest, so I'm going to adopt the laziest explanation of why they're not voting for what I think they should vote for and accuse them of putting party before country."
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