What a lot of noise over Article 50 and the High Court ruling. But I doubt it makes much difference in practice unless the legal process ends with the conclusion that primary legislation is needed AND the Lords decide to block it, in principle delaying things for a year. (I probably should say the "unelected Lords" using the language that many of the politicians in what I might call the "Hard Remain" camp have used in the past, even though they would become huge short term fans of the Lords in this scenario). In which case they might get the General Election they are angling for.
Owen Smith, the former Labour leadership challenger, indicated that he would use a parliamentary vote on Brexit to push for another referendum on the terms of any deal. “Labour should amend the Article 50 bill to give people the final say on the real terms of Brexit." This poses two problems. The EU will not start negotiations until we invoke Article 50. Once we do, I thought we were definitely leaving within 2 years. So there would be no point putting the final deal to a referendum, would there, because we'd be on our way out anyway! However, I have seen it suggested that the Article 50 filing could be revoked. Clarification on this point would be welcome. I suspect it could only be revoked, or the period extended, by the other 27 countries unanimously agreeing to do so. Let's assume that's a "no" or at best a "maybe". So there would be no point in committing now to putting the terms of a final deal to a referendum if, come the day, there was only one choice on the ballot paper - out or out. I suppose people who want to stay in at any cost might say we would vote between out and begging the other 27 countries to let us stay in. Not a great choice......
More importantly for me, we would be in a very difficult place if the final deal were rejected by Parliament, the people having voted to leave. I'm sure that would lead to an election and, if it produced a government committed to leaving (which it could with less than 50% voting for leave supporting parties, which would be fraught if the Remainers then tried to claim they'd won - when they hadn't). This scenario begins to sound a bit like the hokey cokey....in, out, or what?
But I think there is a yet more important question. Who says 650 MPs are more likely to come up with a better answer than the 34 million or so people who voted in the referendum? Not Matt Ridley, writing in The Times (7 November) who says "Elitists who pour scorn on the people’s views don’t appreciate how often democracy comes up with the right decision". He reminds us how often a "crowd-sourced" answer gets it right, even if hardly any single punter guessed the weight of the ox, or number of sweets in the jar. And he pours total scorn on the idea that only the more educated or intelligent are capable of understanding the issues. “It’s time for the elites to rise up against the ignorant masses,” read the headline of an article by James Traub in Foreign Policy in June this year, referring to both Trump’s nomination and the Brexit referendum result. Ridley thinks Traub is just wrong: the crowd still has a wisdom that no individual can match, and the results of modern elections do not contradict this. In a new book, Against Democracy, an American political philosopher called Jason Brennan argues that democracy is the "rule of the ignorant and the irrational" and that "political participation and democratic deliberation tend to make people worse. So in it's place he recommends an "epistocracy" where you should have to earn the write to vote by demonstrating a modicum of knowledge. Sounds like a slippery slope to me...a great many decisions are taken on our behalf by such groups of the great and good - quangos are staffed, public sector organisations are given budgets etc. So Ridley argues we already have a kind of epistocracy, though one where we all get to cast our vote every so often and throw the bastards out. As Ridley says "And rightly so, because the ideal future government of a country is too complicated a question for any expert, even if, like Mr Brennan, he is the associate professor of strategy, economics, ethics and public policy at the McDonough School of Business, at Georgetown University. Besides, there is no such thing as general ignorance or general expertise. Every brilliant person I know is also astonishingly ignorant on certain matters."
Risibly, Labour MP Paul Flynn has said the result of the European referendum was illegitimate because most of the people who voted were ignorant. This takes my breath away, as have other comments which have hinted that universal suffrage should be limited on some grounds of intelligence or qualification. Try putting that to a referendum, chum! In any event, Paul, I think many MPs would prove too ignorant to be allowed to have a say on almost any issue, if they could just be tested. As for the intelligentsia, Richard Dawkins, among others, argued that he should not have had to vote on a matter he did not understand. He says that is what parliament is for: to hand such decisions to experts, who understand the details. But Ridley notes that members of parliament are not experts, let alone omniscient ones. Even brilliant people can also be astonishingly ignorant on certain matters, even Messrs Brennan and Traub.Whether Britain is right or wrong to leave the European Union is a question that nobody, however clever, can possibly know the right answer to unless they have foresight and a crystal ball.
Anyway, the MPs may get asked to agree we should trigger Article 50, even though they are in no better position to figure out the pros and cons than we all were in the campaign. If that is the correct process I don't have a problem with that. But they must vote unconditionally that we should. It's what 17+ million people voted for, in a referendum that Parliament itself approved by 6 to 1. There is no logic in debating the terms when discussing Article 50. This is because Article 50 is not about trade deals or freedom of movement; "hard" or "soft" Brexit. Vernon Bogdanor, writing in the Sunday Times (6 November) pointed out that Article 50 triggers a negotiation on the withdrawal process, involving technical but important issues such as rights of British nationals in the EU and EU nationals in Britain. It provides for negotiations to take "account of the framework" for a country's "future relationship with the Union". But that future relationship, which can take years to negotiate and evolve, requires separate processes to undertake and to ratify.
I think we need to watch these people like Flynn. They believe in democracy when it gives them what they consider to be the "right" answer. A bit like the Corbynistas who are say they believe in democracy but shout down and vilify opponents. So I reckon that means they clearly don't.
I also can't help thinking that people who want to have a detailed, open debate about what we should negotiate are actually trying to make the negotiation impossible. As Philip Collins argues in The Times (18 November) "It is not unreasonable for the prime minister to wish to keep her detailed thoughts secret. A comprehensive wishlist would be an open invitation to critics to denounce its contents and deplore what was missing. It would inevitably, thanks to the trading nature of negotiating, ensure that some of the wishes were denied. The published list would therefore have to include dummy options that the prime minister was secretly prepared to lose. Then she would be denounced, either for dishonesty or for not bringing home the bounty promised."
However, Collins goes on to say that "None of this makes silence a virtue". He is very concerned about the difficulty - nay, impossibility in 2 years - of the transition. (I may return to the difficulty of the transition but not here). He argues that the only way out of this for Mrs May is to negotiate a transitional arrangement in which the UK leaves the EU but, temporarily (or maybe not) joins the European Economic Area (EEA), which is an agreement to secure the free movement of goods, services, capital and people between Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and the 28 member states of the EU. This would permit us to opt out of those EU laws, such as fisheries policy, which we found burdensome. We would have bought temporary certainty on commercial and social policy. Crucially, we would also have bought time to do a proper negotiation and Mrs May would have the scope to play poker her own quiet way.
This might be a very sensible approach. Politically it could be difficult, internally in the Tory party for a start. With the UK in a kind of half way house at the next General Election, it would almost certainly leave the whole issue to be debated all over again, with stay here or go further options, though no doubt some would also want to include "try go back in, if they'll have us". But the big problem is that the EEA requires freedom of movement, which is the one red line identified by the government so far.
However, it could be a workable way forward if the EU is prepared to negotiate on this point. Several sources have claimed the Germans and others are prepared to compromise to some extent on freedom of movement. Indeed, recently there have been suggestions that the eurocrats are well advanced in developing their Brexit negotiating strategy and one part of it is to introduce a US-style ESTA visa waiver which British visitors to Europe would need to obtain, at a cost of about a fiver (pounds or euros, can't remember), though it would last for at least a year and cover multiple visits. Stephen Kinnock, who I had hitherto thought had at least some sense, said this was a "hidden cost of Brexit". There are two problems with what Kinnock said. Firstly, as I read it, the visa waiver would be needed to enter the Schengen area, so we would need to have one even if we stayed in the EU - though they may not intend that. But if they did we would have potentially got a way of limiting freedom of movement by introducing the equivalent process. Secondly, if a fiver for a year's travel to the EU is high on Kinnock's list of issues and priorities, I'm afraid he has just reinforced Matt Ridley's point much more eloquently than I have. You see, Stephen, out of your own mouth has come the proof that MPs are no more competent than the rest of us in this matter and so there is no case for you to try to "call back in" a decision made by a larger and, per Ridley's argument, more intelligent group.
It's undeniable that 34 million people have more brains than 650 and are therefore, between them, more likely to have got it right.
Matt Ridley's piece is at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/the-crowd-has-a-wisdom-no-expert-can-match-nrx820tkl
Melanie Phillips article http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/high-court-judges-are-wrong-about-brexit-nqkh0tqxn
Philip Collins piece is at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/how-may-can-break-free-from-brexit-muddle-x6l877x99
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/16/britons-may-need-to-apply-for-online-clearance-to-visit-europe-p/
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