Britain stands on the brink of a momentous decision. Under what terms should we leave the EU, to which we have been intimately bound – economically, culturally, socially – for the past 45 years? Yet, extraordinarily, our politicians are no closer to reaching a consensus on a satisfactory form of leaving the EU than they were in 2016, when we voted for Brexit in that fateful referendum. Fearful of the electoral consequences, neither party has been prepared to present us with the painful dimensions of that decision, preferring, instead, to pretend that Brexit requires no hard choices.
This leaves the country in a dangerous political vacuum. Two years on, it will only be resolved by putting a concrete proposal to leave the EU to a popular vote, as the Observer argued 18 months ago. But both parties have failed to back a referendum, claiming that leaving the EU – however we do it and regardless of the cost – represents the unchallengeable will of the people.
It’s time to call this out once and for all. By itself, the 2016 referendum did not afford sufficient democratic legitimacy for taking Britain out of the EU, come what may and however bad the terms. Voters were not presented with a clearly articulated option for leaving. The poll followed a campaign in which voters were told that leaving would be a pain-free way to “take back control” of our borders; to enrich ourselves by seizing economic independence, while freeing up billions to pump into the NHS. Brexiters acknowledged no costs or risks to the painstakingly negotiated peace in Northern Ireland. True populists that they are, they mis-sold voters a disingenuous delusion. And lo and behold, they have failed to deliver.
But Theresa May, the circumspect Remainer who embraced the referendum result as her path to No 10, also has much to answer for. The referendum gave her a mandate to negotiate the best possible exit terms and bring them back for approval. It was not a blank cheque for her to take Britain out of Europe on any terms, regardless of the price. Yet a blank cheque is what she has sought. She has ridden roughshod over parliament. It was only given a vote on triggering the article 50 process setting in train our departure because Gina Miller took the government to court; it will only get a vote on the final deal because Tory MPs rebelled against her.
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But the parliamentary vote on offer does not provide sufficient scrutiny for the biggest decision Britain has faced in decades. MPs will only get a vote for or against the deal. If they vote against, Britain will crash out. That forces their hands: reasonable parliamentarians will be obliged to vote for the deal in order to avoid a disaster. To make things worse, both main parties are hamstrung by internecine disputes. Neither has faced voters with the honest truth that Britain cannot leave the EU without making serious trade-offs. Both have absorbed the deceit of the Leave campaign – the idea that Britain can somehow have it all – to advance their own narrow political interests.
At no point has May tried to resolve the trade-off between border control and market access that the EU insistence that we cannot cherrypick from its four single market freedoms implies. At no point has she been clear that if Britain wants to opt out of free movement of people, there will be significant costs. She has swallowed the populism of the Leave campaign as a price worth paying temporarily to neuter the threat from her party’s Eurosceptic flank. Labour has not only failed to challenge her chicanery, it has helped sustain it. It is focused on opposing the process rather than the substance of Brexit. It says it will vote against any exit deal that doesn’t provide the “exact same benefits as our current EU membership”. No such deal exists and, in pretending that it does, Labour is a worthy heir of the Leave campaign.
The country is at a dangerous impasse. No political party is advocating a concrete plan that has any chance of securing agreement from the EU. Our leaders continue to pretend that voters were not deceived. Unchecked, this dishonesty will sow the seeds for popular backlash. You cannot beat the populists by aping them, a lesson that Britain’s governing classes appear to have yet to learn.
What will ensue from this political stalemate? Most likely, the political declaration describing our long-term relationship with the EU that May secures alongside the withdrawal agreement will amount to a vague form of words that allows her to claim she has secured a permanent deal in Britain’s interests, but that leaves all the details to be hammered out after we have left. This would be a democratic travesty, the ultimate blank cheque for the Leavers in her party who will circle around her, looking to replace her with one of their own before the ink on the withdrawal agreement dries. And if May were unable to win the support of parliament, the risk is the UK would crash out without a deal, an outcome without majority support in parliament or the country.
Labour’s proposed way forward is nonsensical. The shadow foreign secretary has said Labour would vote against any deal in order to trigger a general election and that a Labour government would seek to extend negotiations beyond March 2019. But the Fixed-term Parliaments Act makes an election unlikely: why would Tory or DUP MPs join the opposition in a vote of no confidence that is quite separate from a vote on the deal? And a general election in which Labour asks voters to believe that it could somehow negotiate a better deal than May would not deliver the clear verdict the country needs.
The only way out of this democratic conundrum is for MPs to force the government to put its deal to the electorate. This is not about rerunning the referendum: it is the only way of making sense of its result. Voters must be offered the option to accept the deal or to seek to remain in the EU on our current terms. The idea that the 2016 vote is binding – that Britain has to leave the EU regardless of the lack of a realistic exit plan or of changing circumstances – is preposterous. And the circumstances have changed immeasurably. The government has not been able to secure what voters were promised in 2016. The electorate of 2016 does not somehow trump the better-informed electorate of 2018.
Some have argued that there should be a no-deal third option. But there is no significant political constituency positively advocating crashing out with no deal. The hard Brexiters remain defined by what they are opposed to, rather than any concrete proposals. Even crashing out of the EU on WTO terms would require agreements already to be in place: existing EU quotas would need to be allocated between the EU and the UK and our proposals for doing this have already been blocked. Crashing out with no deal would be economically calamitous and this scenario should only be put to the public vote were May to fail to secure a deal.
There are of course risks involved in holding another referendum. Perhaps the greatest is that we see a rerun of the 2016 referendum campaign, in which one side broke the law and neither campaign covered themselves in glory. Those advocating staying in the EU would need to run an altogether different campaign from the project fear of 2016, centred around a positive case for EU membership. We live in a world where the major challenges we face – climate change, microbial resistance, global tax avoidance – don’t respect national borders. International co-operation has never been more important and the EU, despite its imperfections, offers the best mechanism for that. There is no way Britain can leave the EU without undermining our sovereignty. We will either be a regulatory rule taker from the EU or, worse, from economic giants such as the US and China as a result of trade deals negotiated as a junior partner.
The Leave campaign not only lied to voters. It broke the law to cheat campaign spending limits and ran a xenophobic campaign that demonised immigrants. A successor campaign would probably seek to further polarise the public, whipping up a backlash against what it would depict as a betrayal of the people. But these arguments must be taken on or the nasty brand of politics wins by default.
It’s a tragedy that continued division over Brexit will suck life from the debate about the gaping regional inequalities that helped create fertile territory for populist anti-EU sentiment in the first place. But thanks to the duplicity of the Brexiters, there is no other option. Leaving the EU will make people poorer and hit the least affluent parts of the country, already racked by eight years of unnecessary spending cuts.
For two years, we have been failed by Britain’s political class on the most important question this country has faced in decades. Neither party has been prepared to level with us about what leaving the EU might cost. The Observer appeals to all MPs: it’s not too late to put the national interest first. We are being led to the brink of disaster as we prepare to leave the EU. We must be given the chance to deliver our verdict on the terms of departure. We must have a referendum on the deal.
