Should Labour support a People’s vote? — Phil Dore & Grace Davis debate
This article is a debate between Phil Dore and Grace Davis about whether Labour should support a people’s vote. Each writer was given 800 words to make their opening argument and a further 400 to counter the views expressed in their opposite numbers opening remarks. Their order in this article was decided by coin flip.
Phil Dore — For a People’s vote
Brexit is a process riddled with Orwellian contradictions. A cabal of old Etonians, disaster capitalists, and Tory MPs are lauded as anti-establishment insurgents. Meanwhile, the 700,000 ordinary people who marched through London in October are dismissed as “the elite”. Failure to deliver on the 2016 mandate is called betrayal, whereas a no-deal Brexit that was in nobody’s manifesto before the vote is totally in keeping with this mandate. The will of the people must be obeyed, and the only way to give the people what they want is to push through a deal that almost nobody wants.
Chief among all these contradictions is the idea that another referendum would be “undemocratic” as if a fair and properly-run vote could ever be anything but democratic. “The people have spoken”, we are told, and are never allowed to speak again. As for the growing number of young voters who have turned 18 since June 2016….well, they’re not allowed to speak at all. A People’s Vote would “undermine faith in our democracy” insists Theresa May, as her actions engulf Parliament in chaos and paralysis.
The human cost of Brexit is growing. A friend of mine is an independent retailer in South Wales, owning two shops that prior to the referendum were in profit and employing 9 people. Since then the devaluation of the pound pushed up her import costs by 15–25%, wiping out her profits and forcing her to lay off staff. In the New Year she had to close one shop to protect the other, resulting in further job losses. She’s in no doubt that if we have a hard Brexit, her other shop will be gone too. Those who speak of a “jobs first Brexit” should note that Welsh shop workers were among those who lost their jobs first. Elsewhere in Wales, the Ford plant in Bridgend is already under threat, and we must fear for the future of the Port Talbot steelworks and the Airbus facilities in Broughton and Newport.
Within civil society, a movement has developed, and Labour should take note of which way the tide is moving. When the People’s Vote campaign launched in April 2018 it was widely-dismissed. Since then it has grown exponentially. My own organisation, Wales for Europe, now has branches covering every part of Wales. We also have an active social media campaign, #NotMyBrexit/#NidEinBrexit which has sent over 2000 messages to MPs demanding a public vote on the final deal.
We began 2019 with an action day where our campaigners went out to speak to voters in 19 locations. We pounded the streets from Fishguard to Newport, from Penarth to Anglesey, both in areas that voted Leave and those that voted Remain.
The following week we met in Cardiff for the national Wales for Europe conference, which was focused on how we can fight and win a People’s Vote here in Wales. The original Stronger In campaign was deeply flawed, and we talked openly and honestly about these shortcomings. It was a technocratic campaign that spoke only to the head and not to the heart. Remain made its arguments mostly over the airwaves, and was distinctly lacking in ground game. It was a campaign dominated by London, and regional concerns here in Wales were barely acknowledged.
If a new vote is called, we at Wales for Europe intend to fight an entirely different campaign. This is why we are building our ground network of volunteers to knock doors during the referendum, and get out the vote on the day itself. We will run a campaign that speaks to both the head and the heart. It will seek to address not just the consequences of leaving, but also the reasons people voted Leave in 2016. It will be run by people in Wales, for people in Wales.
Some say a People’s Vote would be risky and create division. I’m not dismissive of those concerns, but what are the alternatives? Pushing through a deal nearly everybody hates? The chaos of no-deal? A “Norway Plus” where the only part of the EU we meaningfully leave is the part where we have a say on the rules? Submitting poor Brenda from Bristol to the third general election in four years? Which of these is supposed to be risk-free and lead us to happiness and unity?
Every way forward involves risk, so let’s go with the only way that is democratically right. Consult with the people, so that they can measure the promises made in 2016 against the realities of 2019. Only by doing so could we be sure that whatever happens next would be truly the will of the people.
Grace Davis — Against a People’s vote
Brexit — the last chance for the Labour Party to prove it’s a party of working-class people
Brexit is the greatest challenge facing British politics in generations. It is a challenge that will test the parties and could break the parties. From the position we are in now, no Boris-crystal ball could answer the problems Brexit faces, and no amount of scare-mongering from the liberals will convince us their opinions are now relevant. The fact is, we just don’t know if we will be on the right side of history on this issue.
However, that doesn’t mean we can turn our backs on the voters who have voted to leave the European Union. We can’t see what the future holds for an independent Britain, but nor can we see what one holds for a Britain which didn’t keep its promise to its citizens to leave. And I fear the consequences of the latter for the state of our politics is far worse than the anti-Brexit side cares to mention.
And we can list economic figures as to why we shouldn’t leave the EU, but to do so is to go against the very reason people voted to leave. Votes like this aren’t rational: they’re emotive. No amount of statistics will persuade people who voted otherwise that their decision was wrong.
Perhaps Brexiters should accept that Brexit won’t, at least initially, be beneficial for the economy. But if we only ran our country according to which policies are best for the economy, our country would be run by a technocratic oligarchy. Benign, but not democratic; this misses the point of what we value as a nation when we make our decisions. We accept that decisions are not perfect and that the voting public does not always know what a group of intellectuals at Oxford or Cambridge will know, but this might just have to be the price we pay for democracy.
So then, isn’t the obvious extension of democracy to hold a second referendum? A “people’s” vote? Well, no. The only thing obvious about this solution is that it patronises those who voted for Brexit in the first place. It tells people to “try again”. With public distrust of politicians at an all-time low, we can’t afford to show the electorate that we just didn’t care about their first answer and will do everything we can to avoid acting on it. People don’t need to be protected from their own decisions. They are adults with opinions, who chose to use their voices, much to the grievance of those in Westminster.
And we have faced difficult questions with referendums before. Dicey, a British constitutional theorist who wrote his famous ‘Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution’, from which we derive a basis for the British constitution from, became increasingly convinced that devolution just couldn’t constitutionally happen. An intellectual case had been made from that point on that devolution could never really work. It disrupts how we think of parliamentary sovereignty, and is one of the hardest things to reconcile with our constitution. But, 100 years after Dicey published these works, we voted for devolution in a referendum in 1997. Now, we wouldn’t dream of taking devolution away. We just made it work when there was every reason to believe it couldn’t.
But, we should back Brexit as a party specifically because we still claim to represent those who voted Brexit. We are presented with a simple question on this matter. We represent the working-class people who overwhelmingly voted Brexit, or we don’t. People on the side of the people’s vote often claim that these same working-class people will be the ones who lose out as the result of any economic downturn, but these same working-class people don’t care. And whether people on the side of the people’s vote choose to accept this, or allude themselves to think otherwise, working-class people will not think Labour represents them unless the party commits wholeheartedly to Brexit. This is not an academic debate, it is about how the people we claim to represent view the Labour Party.
Until we fully commit ourselves to a Brexit position which involves leaving the EU and not turning our backs to the people we claim to represent, we will not be in a position to frame the debate of how exactly we should leave the EU. When we accept that Brexit must happen, we put ourselves in a better position to specify the type of Brexit we want. This should be a Brexit which puts the rights of workers at the forefront, and which remains in the customs union to prevent any issue with the Irish border question.
The case for Brexit cannot be argued for with economic models and polls and statistics. Sometimes people feel passionately and emotively about something, and that should be allowed in a democracy. Brexit, by no means, needs to spell disaster for Britain. But unless we enter into the debate and stop cowering from people’s vote advocates, we cannot answer the problems of Brexit directly. And by doing this, we are doing working-class people a disservice, by allowing the only vision for Brexit to be one put forward by Tory elites.
Phil Dore — Counter
Your article relies heavily on exhortations to respect the vote of working-class people. It’s a common trope in Brexit discourse, but it relies on a very narrow stereotype of who is a working-class person — white, older, socially conservative. Working class people apparently aren’t young, socially liberal, LGBT+ or people of colour, and don’t live in Scotland or Northern Ireland. There are of course plenty of working-class people who fit into one or more of those demographics, which overwhelmingly voted Remain. I struggle to see a strategy that enables Labour to win an election while simultaneously alienating young people, social liberals and Scottish voters. A recent leaked report from the TSSA suggested that Labour could lose up to 45 seats if it backs Brexit.
You mention that “we just don’t know if we will be on the right side of history.” I can point to a few clues. A recent YouGov poll suggests the public has gone from a four-point lead for Leave to a twelve-point lead for Remain. It also seems clear that the more Brexit is distilled into a concrete, real-world proposal, the fewer people like it. Witness the historic defeat of Theresa May’s deal in Parliament and the overwhelming opposition to a catastrophic no-deal exit.
Jeremy Corbyn’s latest proposal is a positive step towards a “least-worst” Brexit. However, least-worst is not the same thing as good. If his proposals are accepted we will be able to say we have “delivered Brexit”. However, it would be a Brexit that delivers virtually none of the promises made by the Leave campaign in 2016. Worse, the only part of the EU we would meaningfully leave would be the part where our MEPs vote on the rules. It would be the biggest loss of UK sovereignty since the Battle of Hastings, and it would be Labour that signed it off. I can’t see anyone, leaver or remainer, telling us on the doorstep, “You gave us what we wanted.”
Far from betraying democracy, second referendums have already happened in Ireland and Denmark. Indeed, in 2005 the Tories called for a second referendum on Welsh devolution. If we take a Brexit deal back to the people, it won’t be to say, “Are you sure?” It will be to say, “We’ve tried to deliver what you asked of us. Here it is. What do you think of it?” That is a perfectly democratic thing to do.
Grace Davis — Counter
The only Orwellian contradictions which exist as a result of Brexit can be found in the People’s Vote camp, who justify their position on the basis of democracy, whilst denying the democratic mandate which was brought about by the first referendum. A no-deal Brexit was in no one’s manifesto, but the vote to hold the referendum was, and the mandate for a Brexit, regardless of what type of Brexit it is, formed as a result of this. The only thing which the lack of manifesto promises proves is that we need a General Election under which parties can lay out, in their manifesto, the type of Brexit they would implement.
However, a Labour Party which does not fully support Brexit is not one in a position to frame the debate on what Brexit actually means for Britain. Accepting Brexit means that we can begin to make the case for a Brexit which works for working people, and puts our trade union principles at the forefront of any trade deals we make.
The case which so many People’s Vote supporters seem to make that holding a second referendum is somehow more democratic just shocks me. The fact that anyone can argue that it is anything but patronising to tell the electorate to “try again” is baffling. A “people’s” vote, but only the middle-class people who were statistically more likely to vote to remain — the People’s Vote does not represent those who voted leave and are happy with the result. Working-class people do not need to be babied into changing their mind on the vote when they are adult, rational people who made a decision, perhaps not on the basis of economics, but nonetheless knowing what they were voting for.
Finally, the most confusing argument that is made for a People’s Vote is that this referendum will be different; that there will suddenly be some kind of reformation to the way in which we campaign for referenda, which will result in a second referendum being less toxic and dangerous than the first.
Another referendum will be just the same.
And it will have the same outcome, and any division can only expect to be exaggerated as people, actual people, become angry at the constant doubt that those in Westminster have for their ability to make informed decisions. The People’s vote campaign is not the campaign of the people. And a Labour Party which supports a second referendum does not represent the working-class.
Phil Doré is national organiser for Wales for Europe, and a Labour Party member.
Grace Davis is a PPE Student at Oxford University and LGBT+ Officer for Welsh Young Labour.