INTRODUCTION
The 2016 Brexit referendum was a binary decision: remain in or leave the EU. A clear majority of those voting, 17.4million people, voted to leave. The question was signed off by all main parties, and Parliament as a whole. They promised to implement the result at the time and in subsequent manifestos.
MISMATCH LEADING TO THE VIRUS
The sad mismatch was that, despite public promises, a large majority of MPs wished to remain, and so the people’s majority wish collided with Parliament which had given up authority on the issue to the people. A large number of those remaining MPs then devoted themselves to either resisting or sabotaging Brexit or seeking to promote a Brexit that kept us as close as possible to the status quo of remaining a member of the EU (the latter now having become part of the Labour election policy). The more that any compromise retained the characteristics of staying in the EU (eg Customs Union, Single Market, EU Courts jurisdiction) the more it was not really leaving the EU. These contrary positions- the mismatch-have led to positions being taken based on intellectual dishonesty quite unparalleled- usually justified by puffy pronouncements of creating unity or promoting the national interest- or at least the pronouncer’s version of it.
This series illustrates the point.
PART 1.THE VOTERS WERE MISLED- A DISHONEST IDEA – 11th November 2019
One dishonesty is that leave voters were misled in 2016, most particularly because of the stated saving of £350million linked to spending it on the NHS. Nobody should have been misled by that because the net lower figure was well publicised by those arguing against. But the message that substantial money would be saved and available to the UK people was correct. In addition those arguing leavers were deceived omit to say that those same people, as well as those voting remain, were heavily bombarded with forecasts of doom and misery by many esteemed establishment institutions- eg. Treasury, IMF, many economists, Think Tanks etc.. All those doom and gloom forecasters were wrong, and the UK carried on reasonably well compared to others, with record employment for example.
If leavers were misled by the leave argument, then both they and remain voters were misled by remain arguments. The fact is nobody knows whether and to what extent any voter was misled and by what, and equally nobody knows the motive of any voter except that voter. Yet politicians publicly pronounce on the voters’ intentions and motives, declaring them to support their point of view when they have no real idea of the truth, often at least implying that leave voters are not very clever and did not understand what they were doing. The only thing known as a fact is that 17.4 million people chose to leave. All such arguments are patently dishonest, at least patronising and maybe insulting.
The parties in the election must take great care not to repeat this type of dishonesty of the past.
