Brexit: The Ministers Dilemma
After last week’s victory in the courts, MP’s now have the ability to debate the terms of Brexit. The majority of MP’s wanted to remain and this gives them a chance to vote on the terms of exit and indeed, the triggering of article 50. They have the potential to curb leaving, but should they?
This week, Businesswoman Gina Miller, heading up the campaign to uphold Parliamentary sovereignty and democracy, will no doubt go down with the Remain camp as a stellar example of persistence in the face of the adversity and insanity of of 52% of the UK population, stood at the steps of the high court victorious in her bid to retain sovereignty of the UK Parliament against any attempt to bypass it in the Brexit-exit. Gina Miller rightly stating this was about process not politics.
After the success of her campaign, she was abused on twitter, including racially and told to “go home”. This has been an ugly chapter in proceedings which even hit US Sports presenter Gina Miller in an embarrassing mix-up.
On Thursday 3rd November. The UK High Court ruled that Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty cannot be triggered by Theresa May alone. It has to go through the parliamentary process. With the UK, being a parliamentary democracy, this was an essential defence of UK democracy. Oddly, Brexiteers, consistently vocal about democracy following the vote, appeared to vilify the judges upholding our democratic process, with pro-Brexit papers applying abhorrent tactics to target high-court judges personally for their decision to uphold law, which they have no choice over! We cannot forget that the first thing that a genocidal dictatorship attempts to destroy is the judiciary. Without the rule of law, their crimes can know no bounds.
Unless this is overturned by the Supreme Court, this now means that MP’s will get the final say in what the UK does to exit Europe and indeed, in theory whether Article 50 should be triggered at all.
Being realistic, it is unlikely that MP’s would risk voting against the will of the people. However, it’s worth investigating whether they even can or should. What does the data say?
Parliamentary Boroughs v Proportional Representation
Whilst not the same as a general election, the results of the EU referendum, now that Parliament is involved, has to be considered from the perspective of the MP’s who make up the house of commons. The EU referendum was a simple, straight, ‘in’ or ‘out’ decision. In essence, it was Proportional Representation. This is not the same as the split along Parliamentary boroughs which can lead to some very different results. If we consider the result of the last UK General Election but rank them in order of the number of votes received, we would have achieved a very different outcome.
As shown in previous infographics on the last general election, the results of Proportional Representation (PR) would have seen UKIP take the position of the UK’s third largest party. For those who have been following UK politics, PR is a democratic voting mechanism which uses the proportion of voters to decide the make-up of the house of commons. It’s the same as the European Union themselves use for the Council of Europe. The Liberal Democrats have been fighting for this type of democratic process to be instilled in the UK for years. If they had achieved their aim of changing it in coalition with the Conservatives in the last government, their position would have been very different. In any event, they lost the trust of their voters and were not in the running last time.
52:48 v Boroughs?
Keeping that potential for different results in mind, we have to consider how all the UK boroughs lay in their representation. Counting up the boroughs as they voted, this makes for grim reading for Remainers.
Looking back to 22nd June 2016, the day before the referendum, only 25% of MP’s, 158 of them, publicly backed Leaving the EU.
Hence, despite the moral and procedural victory on the 3rd November, realistically, MP’s have a tough decision to make. Do they go with the will of their constituents or do they stand by their own principled view before the referendum?
The reason for this is that London is a very large area with a number of boroughs having very large populations. That naturally created a skew towards Remain votes when viewed from the point of view of Parliamentary sovereignty and ward boundaries. Boroughs are simply counted, not proportionally adjusted by the number of people within it. There were many more smaller wards that voted to Leave than larger ones that voted to Remain. For example, the Borough of Bromley in London has 322,000 people living within it, of which 92,398 voted to remain, whilst Preston has a total population of approximately 123,000 with 34,518 who voted Leave. Mathematically speaking, what counting them does, as is the Parliamentary norm, is give Preston the same weight as Bromley, even though there are few people in the town than the borough.
Summary
On the data alone, it’s a no brainer. Under a democratic Parliamentary process, you have to choose to go with the larger parliamentary majority, which if MP’s all go with the wishes of their constituents, means that the UK has to leave the EU. There is no question about it.
In reality, the data firmly backs and confirms the Leave position, thereby giving it little to worry about if it comes to a parliamentary vote and rendering the pro-Brexit attack on judges even more irrelevant. Unless a large enough percentage of those suffering from any form of “Brexit-remorse” lobby their MP’s to remain, we are absolutely leaving the European Union. This seems unlikely, so we are heading for the exit.
What do you think about the latest twist on Brexit? Are you planning to lobby your MP to stop the process or negotiate in our best interests?
If you liked this article, don’t forget to hit-the-heart.
