Brexit Deal: Referendum

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Susan Elan Jones]

They are certainly expressing their own views by signing the petition. I always think it is healthy for such petitions to be tabled. These are part of a very important debate.

The first petition is not dissimilar to another petition that calls for the final Brexit deal to be put to a referendum, with revoking article 50 as an option. On the other side of the coin, there is a petition that calls for the rejection of all demands from the EU for penalty charges for Brexit. Finally, the fourth petition calls for no referendum on the final deal between the UK and the European Union. The petitioners do not mince their words one bit:

“The attempts to propose yet another referendum and pose a set of questions to the British public on the final deal is a distasteful proposal, considering we were already given a free and fair referendum last year, to now agree to another referendum would be an appalling waste of taxpayers’ money and send out the wrong message to the British public that the vote last year was meaningless.

The referendum should not be re-run just to placate individuals unable to accept a democratic decision”.

There we have it. Therein lies our problem. Brexit is a subject about which we all think different things, and our country is deeply polarised.

Back in the day—it seems such a long time ago—when Prime Minister Cameron was listening to his focus groups, it all seemed so simple: offer a referendum on EU membership, unite the Tory party with a pledge, and ensure that enough UK Independence party voters come on side to beat Labour in the marginal seats in the 2015 general election. That bit seemed to work for him, but the next bit of the plot did not go quite so well. Try as team Cameron and other remainers might, they did not get a remain vote.

There have been many interpretations of the 2016 referendum campaign and result. It is certainly difficult to find a new one, but I have not been shy of trying. For all I have read and heard about this subject, I do not think that any other commentator has used one of Aesop’s fables to press their case. Allow me to try to remedy that omission. I think the little tale of the goat kid and the wolf explains perfectly what is happening— I should inform you that it is only a very short tale, Sir David.

“A Kid, returning without protection from the pasture, was pursued by a Wolf. He turned round, and said to the Wolf: ‘I know, friend Wolf, that I must be your prey; but before I die, I would ask of you one favor, that you will play me a tune, to which I may dance.’ The Wolf complied, and while he was piping, and the Kid was dancing, the hounds, hearing the sound, came up and gave chase to the Wolf. The Wolf, turning to the Kid, said: ‘It is just what I deserve; for I, who am only a butcher, should not have turned piper to please you.’”

The official moral of the tale is that everyone should keep their own colours. My adapted version of the moral is this: if one believes that Brexit is a lot of old cobblers, do not introduce an initial referendum on the subject. However, I hasten to add, I am speaking for myself and no one else. With the referendum genie firmly out of the bottle, we need to ask whether there is a case for one before the April 2019 exit date.

According to Survation, in an opinion poll for The Mail on Sunday, 49.5% of voters now want a referendum on the final deal, compared with 34.2% who definitely do not and 16.3% who say they do not know. Intriguingly, according to the same poll, 34% of the 2016 leave voters want such a referendum. That should not be such a great surprise. It is a view that Ross Clark expresses with great lucidity in The Spectator magazine:

“If we going to be forced to fund EU projects and not have full freedom to set our own regulations and cut our own trade deals with the rest of the world I can’t see the point of leaving at all. If we are not prepared to transform ourselves into a Singapore, recasting Britain as an unashamed honeypot for business and enterprise then Brexit will have been a waste of time and money. If we are going to remain a European-model social democratic country then we might as well remain in a club of other European social democracies”.

Now, I disagree profoundly with Mr Clark’s political views and with what he wants for our country, but his logic relating to a referendum on the final deal makes perfect sense. He also makes a compelling argument for holding a multi-option referendum, with electors expressing a first and second-preference vote.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a wonderful speech. Has she had the opportunity to look at some of the work that the Constitution Unit has done through citizens’ juries, and similar work by Catherine Barnard at the University of Cambridge? People who voted to leave, when asked what they actually want, move in quite a sophisticated way, which demonstrates that the real question is not whether we are leaving, but what we want to go to next. On that issue, it is entirely legitimate to give the decision back to the British people. Why should anyone object to that?

[Susan Elan Jones]

I confess that I have not actually read that, but I should be delighted to do so, because it sounds a very thoughtful and extensive piece of research. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising it.

One of the strongest arguments for holding a referendum lies in the gap between the promises that were made on what Brexit would be and what has in fact happened in the meantime. Allow me to quote the Foreign Secretary—I like quoting him, ever since he wrote in a newspaper article three days after the general election that my seat had been won by the Conservatives. At that point I started to question the accuracy of some of his statements. Initially he told us that he would vote to stay in the single market. In the aftermath of the referendum, he wrote in The Daily Telegraph that

“there will continue to be free trade, and access to the single market”,

adding for good measure that there was no “great rush” for Britain to extricate itself from the EU.

This past weekend the Foreign Secretary took to the great literary medium of Twitter to say that, after meeting the Prime Minister, he

“found her totally determined that ‘full alignment’ means compatibility with taking back control of our money, laws and borders.”

What on earth is that supposed to mean? But it is interesting. Even more interesting, of course, was the glorious red bus that travelled the length and breadth of the land proudly proclaiming that a vote to leave would mean £350 million extra per week for the NHS. To my mind, the bus was the evidence equivalent of the chap going around with a sign saying that Elvis is still alive. Unfortunately, however, the ramifications are rather greater.

Here are a few other considerations. Were we ever told that in the 2017 Budget we would see the Chancellor set aside £3 billion over the next two years to pay for the administrative costs of preparing for Brexit—more than the £2.8 billion granted for the NHS in the same Budget? What of the downgrading in growth forecasts and the fall in our credit ratings? What of the very real concerns about jobs, as well as consumer, environmental and labour standards? What of the real issues of respect for the devolved Administrations and for our parliamentary institutions? What of probable Russian meddling in the referendum process itself? What of the elusive impact assessments, which apparently have vanished into thin air?

At the end of June the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union said that analyses were being done of 50 to 60 sectors. By 25 October we were being told that not only did they exist but they were “in excruciating detail”. Last week, however, when asked by the Chair of the Exiting the European Union Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), whether the Government had undertaken any impact assessments, the Secretary of State’s answer was no. This is not Harry Potter and the Ministry of Magic; it is supposed to be the serious business of the Government preparing for the biggest change our country has seen since the second world war. What in heaven’s name are we supposed to make of the obvious governmental chaos in this area?

What of a final divorce settlement, which will cost somewhere between £36 billion and £39 billion according to official sources, but up to £100 billion according to a former Brexit Minister? That represents “total capitulation”, according to one fulminating Daily Telegraph columnist—there is nothing like The Daily Telegraph when it fulminates, is there? Then there are the serious economic and constitutional issues relating to the Irish border and full regulatory alignment. What of the recent study by the Bank of England, which stated that a “disorderly” Brexit could cause

“a wide range of UK macroeconomic risks”,

such as a massive fall in the value of the pound?