We, the people, deserve better
On Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn is right to call for a General Election. Theresa May is right to refuse a People’s Vote. In July last year I wrote that Theresa May would run out of time to negotiate a Brexit deal acceptable to parliament and that she would seek to extend Article 50. Today she is almost at that point. The leaders of all 28 states in the European Union are discussing the deadline of Article 50, because of the convulsive disruption that an unmanaged ‘no-deal’ Brexit on March 29th would cause.
The Prime Minister won’t change
The avalanche of parliamentary defeat that consumed May’s Withdrawal Deal bill last Tuesday evening has suddenly turned Mrs May into a mollifying seeker of consensus across the House. Her dereliction of duty as Prime Minister is as colossal as her defeat. She cannot change overnight; the time to reach out was the day after she became Prime Minister a few weeks after the Referendum, acknowledging a victory for Leave and only a four point difference between the huge Leave vote and the huge Remain vote.
Now, amidst the desperate, time-constrained scrabbling in Westminster and Whitehall, Jeremy Corbyn is right to call for a General Election. Theresa May is also right to refuse the call for a People’s Vote. A second referendum would be more bitter and divisive than the first. The question is now more complex since so much more has been thought through since the Referendum. The disentanglement of so many fundamental links between the member states of Europe cannot be reduced to an in/out question, a no-deal or remain question, which is where we are.
Parliament works
Parliament is working as it should, by holding this Government to account. The Government has signally failed. The people’s responsibility is to elect a new government which can do a better job – and if necessary go on doing so until we find one. The first referendum advised parliament to Leave. Parliament took this as an instruction and the Government has been trying to work out how to do it ever since. This minority Conservative government has failed, gone down to defeat on its signature policy, so it should ask the people to elect a new parliament.
Revoke Article 50
It’s parliament’s job to agree the solution to the puzzle, it’s the government’s job to run the country and it’s the people’s responsibility to elect a government. The only sensible way now to deal with the first referendum result is to revoke, not extend, Article 50 so that there is no compression of debate before another artificial deadline. Revoke Article 50, continue the discussion about Brexit in less fevered terms, but also set it in the context of running the country as a whole – dealing with food banks, intolerable poverty, scrappy public services, struggling nurses and doctors, over-worked teachers, relations with partner states in Europe and unstable states around the world. Let Brexit take its place down the list of issues of importance to the public where it was before the referendum was called. Once there is an agreement on what sort of Brexit the country wants, and only when there is agreement, and the EU agrees that what the UK wants is feasible for the EU, then give notice to leave on terms that are clear in their detail as well as in principle.
Fintan O’Toole in The Guardian writes that Brexit is about Britain, not about Europe. Only a General Election now will lead us on to a deeper examination of our society, rather than the displacement activity that is Brexit. It is the people’s responsibility to demand it, because we are society and our society is under threat.
See also Theresa May seems to be playing a Brexit blinder; Untrigger Brexit .