A case against the #PeoplesVote movement

Last Saturday 700,000 people marched in London, expressing their desire to vote in a would-be second referendum on Brexit. The magnitude of the turnout signifies a fierce divide in the country. I write this piece primarily because I can not stay idle while I see our democracy being attacked. I will respond to the main arguments laid out by the ‘People’s Vote’ advocates, as well as advance my own reasons for why I believe it to be an abhorrent idea.

I should begin by saying that I, like the vast majority of 18 year-olds at the time, voted to remain in the 2016 referendum. I now find myself in the minority. Here is a picture of a Brexit opinion poll taken at Cambridge University.

It seems that just 4 out of 63 of our nation’s brightest young minds believe that the democratic vote of Brexit should stand. Allow me to make my case for why these four individuals are in the right.

The Main Arguments for a People’s Vote

The Leave campaign lied

The first point launched by a staunch Remainer is often along the lines of, ‘The people were misinformed’ or, ‘The people know better now’. I imagine that most Leave voters feel rather insulted when they are told that they were ‘misled’. Those who use this argument don’t even attempt to understand the core reasons for leaving the EU in the first place. They also conveniently ignore the dishonest tactics of the Remain campaign, which are now lumped into a term called ‘Project Fear’. Prior to the referendum, the people of Britain were told that if they so much as voted to leave there would be an immediate recession, hundreds of thousands of people would lose their jobs as Britain plunges into economic chaos. This all turned out to be untrue. As of now, the unemployment rate is at 4% (lowest since 1975), wage growth is at it’s highest in almost a decade, and the proportion of low-paid jobs is at a record low. As businesses prepare for Brexit, the economy has not tanked the way the Remain campaign suggested. This is despite all of the more recent fearmongering about the consequences of a no-deal Brexit. An example of such fearmongering is this Guardian article that warns citizens that the UK may run out of food in the event of a no-deal. With ludicrous headlines like these, it is no wonder why our country is so divided. It is about time that people respected that both sides have been dishonest in this affair. The claim that the Brexit vote is invalid due to misinformation is itself a form of misinformation.

The Leave campaign broke the law

The Leave campaign went over their £7m spending limit by funnelling £675,315 through pro-Brexit youth group BeLeave. Since this news came to light, the high court has said that the Electoral Commission gave the Leave campaign illegal and incorrect advice regarding campaign donations. As a result, it is unlikely that this crime will amount to anything. Whether or not it should amount to anything is up for debate, though not for the Remainers who think that this justifies holding another referendum.

BeLeave is a group whose sole objective was to get young people to vote for Brexit. Take another look at the picture included above. It seems to me that whatever this group tried was a catastrophic failure. Consequentially, ‘People’s Vote’ backers seldom claim that this money had an impact on the actual result. The point usually doesn’t go much further than, ‘they broke the law’.

There was foreign intervention

It is clear that Russia isn’t very discrete when it comes to intervening in foreign affairs. They are known for having ‘troll farms’ that consist of social media bots spreading propaganda. This is quite obviously immoral and undesirable. It isn’t possible to defend their actions, but you don’t need to do so to refute the argument. I have three requests for those who place foreign intervention as a major reason for a second referendum.

1. Name one modern election that wasn’t influenced by any foreign states.
2. Prove that pro-EU states did not intervene in any way.
3. Give me a reason to believe that a second referendum wouldn’t be influenced by foreign states.

Cambridge Analytica, despite being UK based, often gets included in this conversation. They are famed for using illegally obtained data to create very personalised political ads for Facebook users. It is important to note that they didn’t obtain the data, that was all Facebook’s wrongdoing. Facebook incompetently permitted a seemingly normal quiz that would seize not only all of your data but all of your friends’ data too. Cambridge Analytica didn’t break the law when they used this data. The uproar needs to target the root of the problem which is Facebook’s unethical disregard for user privacy.

There are two year’s worth of new voters who feel differently

I encountered this argument whilst engaging in a discussion over an internet forum. One user said rather unapologetically that in the last two years, many Brexiteers have died while many Remainers have come of age. The idea of disregarding someone’s vote because they have died is grotesque and must not be normalised.

Young people argue that their opinion matters more because it is their future that is at stake. This belief implies that the elderly weren’t thinking about the future of their country when they voted. Rather, they just voted to leave because they had nothing to lose! It is, in fact, the elderly and not the young that know what it was like when the UK was not in the EU/EEC. This is another consideration that is rarely mentioned.

The most noticeable banner in the image reads, ‘I’m 16 and Brexit stole my future.’ I would certainly agree with this individual that he does not have much of a future, but not for the reasons he may think.

The Referendum was non-binding

This point is made by some Remainers that want us to believe that the referendum was simply an opinion poll that the government needn’t take seriously. Let’s turn the tables and imagine that Britain voted to stay in the EU. What would happen if the government then went on to trigger Article 50 and leave the EU regardless? How would Remainers feel in this scenario? They would quite rightly be furious, and I suspect that they would take to the streets in numbers much larger than 700,000. It really makes no difference whether the referendum was ‘binding’ or not. The British people were asked in a democratic vote if they wanted to leave, and the majority said they did. Ignoring their will would be to ignore a democratic decision.

The people deserve to vote on the terms

Many ‘People’s Vote’ supporters are afraid to admit the true reason behind the movement. It is obvious to anyone with the capacity for thought that the sole reason behind the movement is to reverse the democratic decision to leave the European Union. Unsurprisingly, they don’t like to word it in this way. They prefer to babble about how ‘the people need to agree on the kind of deal’. They say this as if the general public knows or cares about the different kinds of trade agreements that the EU have in place. The truth is, they evidently don’t care about the trade deal that Theresa May gets out of Brussels. The only real criticism the Prime Minister is getting is that her deal is too soft, which is why the ‘People’s Vote’ leaders themselves don’t seem to have too much to say about her Chequers deal. Instead, they ramble on about how ‘the people deserve to decide what kind of deal Britain gets’. They use this rhetoric to mask their true intentions (to Remain) as well as to manipulate the result in the case of a second referendum.

I won’t make such a severe accusation without providing a worthy explanation. Let’s imagine the second referendum had the following options:

• Norway Agreement
• Canada Agreement
• Chequers
• Stay in the European Union

Above there are three options that result in the UK leaving the EU and one option that results in the UK remaining. The fact that the Leavers are going to have their votes split three ways means that the Remain option is going to be disproportionately larger than the other three. Thus, in this scenario, only a fool would predict any outcome other than a Remain majority. Now you may begin to see the sinister tactics that are being used by the ‘People’s Vote’ leaders. Not only are they dishonest about why they want a second referendum in the first place, but they also want to manipulate the ballot to their own advantage.

What is more democratic than asking the people what they want?

There are some MP’s and Lords who see it fit to claim that the ‘People’s Vote’ is actually more democratic than not.

I can’t think of anything more democratic, anything more British, than trusting the judgement of the British people. — Sadiq Khan (Mayor of London)

Britain did trust the judgement of its people, Sadiq. They were asked whether or not they wanted to leave the European Union. The majority decided that they did. They were told by your party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, that their decision was to be respected and that ‘article 50 has to be invoked now’. Now they are told that their vote shouldn’t count because you know better.

It deeply saddens me that people of importance are distorting the meaning of democracy in this way. They don’t realise the damage they’re doing to themselves, their party or their country.

Arguments Against a People’s Vote

The phrase ‘People’s Vote’ is haemorrhage-inducing

The name is actually incredibly rude and offensive. Peter Hitchens gets it spot-on during his debate with Lord Andrew Adonis:

I’m quite annoyed by the way in which Andrew calls it the people’s vote. Who do you think voted in the previous one? Squirrels? – Peter Hitchens

The actual reason for the name follows the same pattern of dishonesty seen elsewhere in the movement. They don’t want to call it what it would be, which is a ‘second referendum’. They know that everyone would inevitably ask themselves, ‘Haven’t we already had one of these?’. They instead use the phrase ‘People’s Vote’ to dehumanise leave-voters as well as to make it sound democratic, which is, of course, a lie.

Feeding the far-right

The far-right tend to be nationalist until the point where it becomes dangerous. One of the key issues of Brexit was immigration and so the far-right were always going to vote Leave. If they are incredibly angry and anti-establishment as it is, what do we expect to happen when they are told that their vote didn’t count?

The far-right aren't exactly small or dying out either, quite to the contrary. Their adopted leader, Tommy Robinson, is gaining popularity by the day. The media is berated by the Left for so much as covering news related to him. As a result, they aren’t reporting how much traction he is getting. It isn’t difficult to find out for yourself. You only need to look on Facebook to see that he currently has over 1 million followers, 400,000 more followers than the Conservatives and only a few hundred fewer followers than the Labour party. Defenders of a ‘People’s Vote’ ought to be aware that these people, some of whom are dangerous, will interpret a second referendum as an attack on their democracy, and there is no reason to believe that they will simply let that slip.

The Reasons for leaving still stand

The reasons for a second referendum that are commonly spouted are listed in the first section of this article. None of these arguments actually address the reasons why the country decided to leave in the first place. Take a look at this expensive-looking flag that was present in last Saturday’s march:

This to me sums up the entire movement. They still haven’t accepted the result, that is blindingly obvious. But this flag shows that they haven’t even tried to understand why the result went the way it did. Let me remind them.

Immigration

From 2011 to 2016 the official net migration figures for the UK were in excess of 300,000 per year. This is actually a conservative estimate. The number of new National Insurance numbers issued each year (which are required for work) was more than double this figure. These immigrants have a much higher birthrate than British-born citizens. In 2014 women born overseas accounted for 27% of live births in England and Wales, a number which is steadily increasing. This represents an enormous change in the country’s demographics. Some people will try to justify this shift, citing humanitarian reasons. ‘The immigrants were all refugee’s fleeing war!’ Unfortunately, this isn’t quite what happened. You don’t have to take my word for it. Frans Timmermans (Vice President of the European Commission) said that six out of ten migrants to Europe had no more right to be there than anyone else. He said that the majority of migrants to Europe were ‘economic migrants’ from North African countries such as Morocco or Tunisia, where there is no conflict. These people are taking up space in Europe that could have been taken up by actual refugees fleeing persecution. Anyone who believes that this is justified should feel ashamed of themselves. THAT is where free movement gets you.

The horrors of free movement don’t end there. Free movement doesn’t allow you to choose who you let in. The world is a diverse place with an array of belief systems and values. Is it so hard to conceive that people from a completely different background and belief system might not seamlessly integrate into their host country? These are genuine worries. These immigrants were not in any way encouraged to integrate with European culture. Instead, it was decided for Europe that it was to pursue a policy of multiculturalism instead of integration. Immigrants were told, ‘You and your values are perfect as they are and we are lucky to have you.’ Anyone who dared to argue otherwise was labelled a racist. Anyone who commented on the vast numbers of immigrants was labelled a racist. Unsurprisingly, the people, and I use this word in the true sense, got sick and tired of being called racist. Their response was to vote in a way to show that their opinion still mattered.

There is a significant proportion of the Left that have destroyed the meaning of the term racist, and now they are seeing the consequences. The consequence isn’t just Brexit, take a look at the rest of Europe. There is a growing wave of nationalism across these lands for exactly the same reasons. In Germany, you have the rise of the far-right group Alternative für Deutschland, now the third-largest party and an ever-posing threat to Angela Merkel. Similarly, the Swedish Democrats made significant gains in their recent election, making them the third-largest party in Sweden. In Italy the Euro-sceptic, populist-nationalist Matteo Salvini is becoming the most influential politician in the country. Even across the seas, we saw Trump get elected on slogans such as ‘build a wall’. Immigration was the core issue behind the decision to leave the European Union. The reasons for this swift political change in Europe can easily be understood. Those in the picture above are completely oblivious to the political and social impacts of free movement and must not be taken seriously.

Sovereignty

A study recorded people’s reasoning for their vote in 2016. The most frequent reason given for leaving was, unsurprisingly, to control immigration. The second most frequent reason given was:

The principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK

The decisions, in this case, likely relate to legal and economic decisions, areas that are currently impacted by the EU. The UK has a long history with the word ‘sovereignty’, and this word was often used by the leave campaign. The word is commonly used in the context of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’, for which the accepted definition is as follows:

The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, namely that Parliament thus defined has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever: and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament. — A.V.Dicey (constitutional lawyer/ scholar)

‘No person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament’. Being in the EU means you have to abide by EU laws and so it wouldn’t be uncontroversial to say that the notion of Parliamentary sovereignty was damaged when Britain joined the EU. The law enthusiasts among you will know of the famous Factortame case which was the first time the EU law was deemed to be supreme over Westminster law. The Brexiteer notion of ‘taking back control’ refers to cases like this. Leaving the EU will allow the UK to once again set its own laws relating to trade, human rights, and migration.

The European Union is only a union by name

It is accepted but seldom articulated that the EU is the continuation of Germany by other means. This should not be interpreted as a forewarning or an insult to Germany. They are doing what every country should do, which is to put the interests of their people first. Geographically, they are in the ideal position as they share more common borders with neighbours than any other European country. They are by far the largest and the most economically productive of all the countries in the EU. Thus, they have the most leverage when it comes to the decision making process.

Many countries, especially those in the Eurozone, are perfectly content with having Germany take the lead. The UK is different. It is geographically cut off from all of those countries. The British people never felt particularly close to any of the neighbouring EU countries and every Eurovision contest would indicate that this feeling was mutual. Additionally, the UK is an economic power in its own right. It is still the world’s 5th largest economy and London is considered by most to be the financial capital of the world. The UK has one of the strongest service sectors in the world and should seek to benefit from free trade agreements with non-European countries post Brexit. Many British people feel that the EU places the interest of Germany (and by extension the Eurozone) above everything else. It doesn’t bode well with the British that Eurozone countries have a permanent voting majority and can outvote the UK whenever they want. The EU would never prioritise the Pound despite Britain being a major contributor. On his decision to vote for Brexit, Michael Caine famously said, ‘I’d rather be a poor master than a rich servant.’ The idea of being a servant to someone else will is not an idea that resonates very well with British people.

Ignoring Democracy is a dangerous road

In his debate with Lord Andrew Adonis, Peter Hitchens raised a question which never received an answer.

Once you have unravelled democratic legitimacy as the source of authority, what do you have left? — Peter Hitchens

We seem to have come to a point in our society where not everyone values Democracy equally. There is a dangerous idea lingering in our spheres that Democracy should only be considered if it goes your way. Even more dangerous is the idea that ignoring Democracy can be considered more democratic than not. To those who still believe me to be wrong in this respect, I have one question for you.

If Britain were to hold a second referendum, what would stop there being a third?

It seems pretty obvious to me that the answer is nothing. Nothing would stop a third referendum from happening. By then, democratic legitimacy would have already been unravelled as the source of authority, and the second referendum would be as meaningless as the first. I will never understand why so many people seem to be incapable of grasping this concept.

The Future

The good news for democrats (using the original meaning of the word) is that it doesn’t look like this movement will amount to anything. The only being if the negotiations were somehow delayed until 2022, in which case Labour, being the most prominent supporter of the movement, could include the ‘People’s Vote’ as part of their manifesto. Luckily, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn shows no signs of succumbing to the pressure. Corbyn never liked the EU in the first place and even he is sharp enough to be aware of the sheer number of working-class Brexit voters that would boycott his party if he did. The ‘People’s Vote’ movement is a threat to our democracy and I urge you to think twice before supporting it.