EU Referendum Rules

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I will be as brief as I can, Sir David. I never thought of the referendum as a telephone contract before; I thought it was slightly more important than that. First, I am against the wording of the petition. If we put a threshold on turnout, it would simply be an incentive for people to stay at home; it would value their abstention like a vote. If we demand 60% voting one way, we would be saying that some votes are worth more than others, and that is a very non-UK tradition.

My second point is that the enthusiasm from both sides, before and after the referendum, has given the lie to what was said in opposition to having a referendum: that nobody cared about Europe. No political debate in this country since I have been in politics has raised such passion and commitment on both sides. Probably we should have had the referendum a good deal sooner than we did.

Thirdly, on the argument for having another referendum, I have looked through the record of the Second Reading debate on 9 June, and I cannot find one speaker in that debate, including some of the right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken today in favour of a second referendum, who was in favour of a second referendum or a referendum on the detail. It is sourness from losers who want another referendum, and it is being wrapped up as, “All right, we’ve lost the referendum; we’re out. We accept that—we’re democrats—but we’ll look at the detail.”

However, if we sit back and think about what that means, we find that it means complete uncertainty until the details are sorted out and a referendum is held. Although right hon. and hon. Members have said that it will not be another in/out referendum but will be about the details, if the details are rejected, it means either a third referendum or a reversal of the first referendum. In practice, it is a repeat referendum, which might require a third or fourth referendum, depending on how the legislation was worded. I am afraid that despite all the casuistry that has been used, it is an argument to have another referendum on the same issue.

An argument was made and it has been dealt with a bit. I strongly approve of the tone used by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) in this debate; I think that we need more of that and less aggression. He highlighted, as have other Members, the number of Labour voters and of poor and dispossessed people who voted out. It has been suggested that those people did not know what they were doing—that in some sense they were duped, or were voting out of anger and dispossession. That was not my experience. On the day of the referendum, I was out in my constituency, in what is either the poorest or the third poorest ward in the country, depending on how we count such things. I talked to people who were motivated to vote: some did not normally vote in elections, some did; some voted Labour, some did not. They did not say, “I am very angry and dispossessed.” They were voting out of a sense of patriotism and a belief that this country should be a self-governing democracy.

There is something insulting, particularly from Labour politicians, in saying that such people were just voting out of anger and did not know what they were doing. They certainly did know, and given that 70% of Labour constituencies voted to leave the EU, the Labour party has a great deal of serious thinking to do about how we relate to that. That is why I appreciated the statement that my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham made about trying to bring things together.

Finally, some in this debate have made claims about pledges made during the referendum. Let us be absolutely clear: lies or distortions—call them what you like—came from both sides in the referendum. In that sense, it was no different from a general election. In every general and local election that I have been in, I have thought my opponents were telling lies, and could justify it on many occasions. We would rerun every general election if we had to do so because lies had been told. The nature of debate in this country is to expose those lies, and the strength of our democracy means that they are exposed.

I was a member of the Vote Leave board. When we debated or said things, there was no idea that we could commit a Conservative Government to doing something. When I was asked “What does this mean?” during the 50 or 60 debates that I did in the run-up to the referendum, I said, “What we are actually voting for is the freedom for a United Kingdom Government to make decisions. I can’t commit that Government to doing anything, and neither can anybody else in this campaign.” To say that we have to hold to account those who made commitments, statements or arguments during the debate is simply nonsense in the kind of parliamentary democracy that we live in.

We should see the debate for a second referendum as what it is: people being angry because they have lost some hope. That will dissipate, and we can bring the country together. It would be dangerous, damaging and undemocratic to have a second referendum on the issue.