Sunday, January 06, 2019

A reflection on the prospects of Parliament giving us a second referendum

I’m a democrat, which means that the public should get what it votes for. And whilst that also means that it gets to change its collective mind if it chooses to, the question of who decides how to test that is left with Parliament, within the limits of Parliamentary terms and the ability to form a government.

We have, it could be argued, the worst of all worlds - a government that has no majority except that lent to it by other parties, and unable to agree amongst itself as to the best course of action. At the same time, we have an Official Opposition that is in a similar state, with a leader whose personal convictions lead him to go along with the will of the people as expressed in June 2016 but whose party membership is overwhelmingly against that notion.

You do wonder how we got into this mess, and how we might extricate ourselves from it, one way or the other. Evidently, we need to find a way to a Parliamentary coalition in the Commons that can select a route out of the impasse and deliver it. But why might it be too difficult to achieve?

For Conservatives, the news that their membership is overwhelmingly in favour of a stance - no deal - which is so contrary to the polling of the public at large is a reminder that, if you’re an MP with a job for life, as is the case for my two local Conservatives, Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) and Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich), your private thoughts on the sensibility of crashing out without a deal must be tempered by the possibility that you’ll be deselected if you try to take a different path. It is the ultimate country versus party versus career dilemma and whilst, for non-politicians, the answer might seem obvious, if you sacrificed so much to become an MP in the first place, might you so easily walk away from that?

I’d like to think that I would, but my views and the views of my Party are not so conflicted that, were I to be put in that situation, I would be as troubled.

And we must assume that the likes of Jo Churchill and Dan Poulter are deeply conflicted. They did campaign for Remain prior to the referendum, so presumably thought that we were better off staying in the European Union - let’s assume that they were sincere because the alternative is too ghastly to countenance.

And there is a strong tendency amongst most Conservative MPs to be loyal to the Leader, at least as long as the Leader has power and patronage, which for all the criticism of Theresa May, she still has following her survival of the vote of no confidence last month.

As for Labour, so many of their MPs represent seats which voted to leave that they appear as rabbits stuck in the headlights. Given how divisive the issue has become, and the division at the top of the party, which way do you jump, especially if your Constituency Labour Party is a Corbyn fan club? And, whilst opinion may have shifted nationally (if polls are to be believed), has it shifted that much in places where the benefits of European Union membership seem more esoteric?

Doing what is right, as opposed to what is best personally, isn’t as obvious a call as you might like to think, especially when the consequences are personal rather then philosophical.

For Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, Liberal Democrats and Greens, the dilemma doesn’t exist for the most part - they represent more outward-looking communities who see the value of European integration. It’s a pity that there are only fifty or so of them out of six-hundred and fifty...

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