Oh Why 50?

[steepholm]

Jo Swinson rubs me up several wrong ways which I won't detail here, but I do want to mention the new Lib Dem policy to revoke Article 50 should they win a majority at the next election. It's a very unlikely contingency, admittedly, but policies shouldn't be adopted on the basis that they'll never have to be carried out.

The justification is that, if they win a majority in Parliament standing on that policy, they will have a mandate to revoke. However, they're comparing chalk and cheese. Typically, Westminster governments get around 42-45% of the popular vote: no party since the War has had more than 50%. The Lib Dems know this better than most, since they have used the fact to campaign for voting reform for decades. The referendum Leave vote, as we know, got 52%.

I think we've learned pretty thoroughly by now that Parliamentary democracy and democracy by direct plebiscite don't mix - but, partly for that very reason, having opened the Brexit worm can in one way, it can only be closed the same way. If I were a Leave voter, already resentful that my voice is ignored, having the referendum result discarded by fiat, by a Government with (as it would likely seem to me) less legitimacy, would make me feel that democracy had died altogether.

And that's a feeling that could very easily be exploited.

Comments

[shewhomust]

This may be cynicism on my part, but I read this as an admission that the LibDems will not win the election, and are trying to maximise their vote. No-one who actually wants to leave will vote for them anyway, so they have nothing to lose by positioning themselves as far to the pro-European extreme as possible, and scooping up votes that would otherwise go to Labour. I agree with you about the anger that would be stirred up if it came to implementing this, and conclude that even Jo SWinson doesn't expect it to happen. (For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that a second referendum would assuage that anger).

Oh, dear...

[steepholm]

I do agree about the likely motivations behind this move. Making policies on the basis that you will never have to implement them does seem incredibly dishonest, though!

Sadly, I also agree that a second referendum would not assuage the anger - although it would not stoke it to the same extent as revocation.