Brexit: Case for a Second Referendum

Debate between Lord Norton of Louth and Baroness King of Bow

Thursday 7th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, in essentially making a distinction between an argument for a later referendum based on whatever is negotiated under Article 50 and an argument for a rerun of what happened on 23 June. The noble Baroness, Lady King of Bow, said that she was making the case for a later referendum based on the negotiations that took place, but all the arguments that she advanced were for a rerun of the referendum on 23 June. They were based on why the electors got it wrong. That is an extremely dangerous path to pursue. It would convey the impression that the political class was not prepared to accept what the electors had decided. That would undermine trust in the political process when that trust is already fragile.

We cannot second-guess the electors. They voted. We might not like how they voted but there was a result. We asked the electors to make a decision on whether we should remain in or leave the European Union. They made the decision—perhaps by a small majority but it was a decision. In the past two days we have heard various people arguing, “But it was only advisory and there was a small majority. We should have had some sort of threshold or there should have been a much larger majority”.

To say that the referendum was advisory is misleading. We did not say to the electors, “Please tell us what you think and then we’ll decide whether to accept what you’ve said”. It was non-binding but that is a very different matter. There is no statutory obligation on Ministers to trigger Article 50 but there most certainly is a compelling political argument for doing so. The Government are bound by that political dimension. Yesterday I quoted Dicey, who distinguished between parliamentary and political sovereignty. The latter matters.

As for whether we should have applied some rules, we did not. At Second Reading of the European Union Referendum Bill, I raised the question of a threshold but there was clearly no desire to pursue it, so we put it to the people. It was a simple choice based on a majority. We cannot rerun it; we cannot apply rules that were not in place at the time. Therefore, I think that for the moment we have to accept the decision of the people and proceed on that basis. There may be a case for a later referendum based on negotiations—

[Baroness King of Bow]

I agree with the noble Lord. We accept the rule of the people, we see where it takes us and then we give them the democratic right to decide whether they want that or not.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

That is the line I am pursuing. My point is that we go forward on the basis of what has been decided. There may be a later case for putting the negotiations to the people, but we do so on the basis of that case, not on the basis that they got the decision wrong on 23 June—on which the noble Baroness’s argument was essentially based. We have to accept the decision and move on. There may be a later argument about referendums but it is not one to have now.