Claiming a retrospective mandate
When you find points of agreement among both Brexit supporting and pro-remain columnists it often turns out that they are saying something insightful.
This week both a prominent Brexit supporting writer, Iain Martin, and a prominent Remain one, (Lord) Danny Finkelstein, wrote powerful pieces about how much more hardline views about Brexit have been getting. Finkelstein referred in The Times to the psychological concept of "Group polarisation" when people discuss politics primarily with other people who think as they do and are driven to ever more robust positions.
I think they are on to something, and they are calling out a process which is incredibly unhelpful. One of the thigs which has made the Brexit process so divisive and so hard to resolve is that many people on all sides have been taking increasingly hard-line positions.
Before about 2015 it was comparatively rare to find a senior Conservative who spoke openly of outright support for leaving the EU. Until that referendum was actually called most cabinet-level Conservative figures spoke simply of giving the electorate a choice in the form of a referendum.
Those whose positions have merely stood still have experienced the most extraordinary change in how they are perceived. For example, when Philip Hammond was appointed Foreign Secretary. the appointment of someone who had declined to rule out voting Leave to that position was seen as a major concession to the Eurosceptics. These days they regard the present Chancellor as a high priest of Remain - without much more evidence for that view than there was for the previous one.
People who before June 2016 would have defended a "Norway option" or EEA option as being better than continued membership of the EU now decry any such solution as "Brexit in name only."
The hardening of attitudes exists on both sides of the divide and is one of the reasons that assembling a parliamentary majority for any given course of action is proving so difficult.
It is also noticeable that people on both sides have a tendency to misremember what they were saying a couple of years ago to fit their present position.
Some other leave supporters such as Nigel Farage who indicated before the referendum that they would not accept a narrow defeat - Farage said in a Mirror interview in May 2016 that a 52:48 win for Remain would be "unfinished business" - now expect Remain supporters to respect a result which they would not have been prepared to abide by had it gone by a similar margin in the other direction, while many of those who are now most prominent among those calling for a fresh referendum had said before the June 2016 vote that everyone should honour the result of that one. (This was, one presumes, when they thought they were going to win.)
The fact that people are taking a much harder line now, and think that they have always taken such a hard line, becomes particularly difficult when people start claiming now that the 2016 vote was a mandate for positions which simply were not being articulated at the time.
Anyone who looks back at the posts I made on this blog in 2016 will find that on a number of occasions I complained bitterly at the time that the official Leave campaign had never sought to set out exactly what a "leave" vote would mean.
A representative example is the post I put up here on 26th May 2016 called
"Why the Leave campaign should have backed Flexcit,"
but there were plenty of others.
Does anyone remember a "Vote.Leave" leaflet saying that leaving the EU with no trade deal in place will do wonders for the economy?
This week both a prominent Brexit supporting writer, Iain Martin, and a prominent Remain one, (Lord) Danny Finkelstein, wrote powerful pieces about how much more hardline views about Brexit have been getting. Finkelstein referred in The Times to the psychological concept of "Group polarisation" when people discuss politics primarily with other people who think as they do and are driven to ever more robust positions.
I think they are on to something, and they are calling out a process which is incredibly unhelpful. One of the thigs which has made the Brexit process so divisive and so hard to resolve is that many people on all sides have been taking increasingly hard-line positions.
Before about 2015 it was comparatively rare to find a senior Conservative who spoke openly of outright support for leaving the EU. Until that referendum was actually called most cabinet-level Conservative figures spoke simply of giving the electorate a choice in the form of a referendum.
Those whose positions have merely stood still have experienced the most extraordinary change in how they are perceived. For example, when Philip Hammond was appointed Foreign Secretary. the appointment of someone who had declined to rule out voting Leave to that position was seen as a major concession to the Eurosceptics. These days they regard the present Chancellor as a high priest of Remain - without much more evidence for that view than there was for the previous one.
People who before June 2016 would have defended a "Norway option" or EEA option as being better than continued membership of the EU now decry any such solution as "Brexit in name only."
The hardening of attitudes exists on both sides of the divide and is one of the reasons that assembling a parliamentary majority for any given course of action is proving so difficult.
It is also noticeable that people on both sides have a tendency to misremember what they were saying a couple of years ago to fit their present position.
The classic example is the very different position taken by many people about how final the referendum result should be compared to what they said before the event when they often thought Remain would win it. The first major petition for another referendum, which attracted 3.7 million signatures from Remain supporters, was created by a Leave voter shortly before the referendum in the belief that his side would lose. He was horrified when it was "hi-jacked" by Remain supporters after leave won.
(In the words of the late Windsor Davies who sadly died this week.
"Oh dear, what a shame, never mind.")
The fact that people are taking a much harder line now, and think that they have always taken such a hard line, becomes particularly difficult when people start claiming now that the 2016 vote was a mandate for positions which simply were not being articulated at the time.
Anyone who looks back at the posts I made on this blog in 2016 will find that on a number of occasions I complained bitterly at the time that the official Leave campaign had never sought to set out exactly what a "leave" vote would mean.
A representative example is the post I put up here on 26th May 2016 called
"Why the Leave campaign should have backed Flexcit,"
but there were plenty of others.
The real problem which is making it harder to get a sensible decision about what form Brexit should take is that in the absence of any clear strategy having been set out by the official leave campaigns at the time of the referendum - unlike certain groups such as the Leave Alliance who put forward "Flexcit" - people are now trying to claim a retrospective mandate for things they believe now but certainly were not saying three years ago at the time of the referendum.
Does anyone remember a "Vote.Leave" leaflet saying that leaving the EU with no trade deal in place will do wonders for the economy?
No, because Leave was saying that getting a trade deal after Brexit will be easy because the German motor industry is desperate to sell cars to us so they will make sure the EU offers us a good deal.
As Danny Finkelstein puts it
""People who were once quite pragmatic about the sort of relationship we should have with the European Union after leaving have become more doctrinaire. Only the hardest Brexit is now real Brexit."
"These are people who once talked about how the EU was fine 'when it was a common market' or who said we might become members of the European Free Trade Association or be like Norway. People who argued that we would arrange tariff free trade with the EU. People who argued to remain in the customs union after Brexit."
"They haven't even noticed that they have shifted their position."
"They have spent so long knocking around with each other, egging each other on, setting each other purity tests, that they have drifted, drifted, drifted until we are in the ridiculous position where the Prime Minister negotiates to leave the EU and they turn it down."
"Forgetting, as they do, that they are being asked to compromise with positions that they publicly advocated not that long ago."
I think Danny has a point.
There is no easy route out of the position Britain is in now, and no way to avoid an outcome which millions of people will be horrified by.
In my humble opinion the only way to get a practical way forward which is in Britain's interests is going to be for those MPs who believe, as I do, that Britain must honour the referendum result by ceasing to be an EU member state, and who I believe to be in the majority, to reach a sensible compromise about how to deliver Brexit which can be passed by the House of Commons.
In my humble opinion the only way to get a practical way forward which is in Britain's interests is going to be for those MPs who believe, as I do, that Britain must honour the referendum result by ceasing to be an EU member state, and who I believe to be in the majority, to reach a sensible compromise about how to deliver Brexit which can be passed by the House of Commons.
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