I’ve been following the Brexit drama in the UK pretty closely since it passed in 2016. To me, it has seemed clear that the result of the referendum in which the British electorate voted -— by a 52-48 margin— to leave the European Union was a disaster, a self-inflicted wound on the UK. (Which, as I have a special fondness for Britain, saddened me greatly.)
And I’ve noted how the Brexit side has made their referendum victory something sacrosanct, wielding as a banner of righteousness the idea that the people have spoken, and that any re-examination of that decision is a betrayal of the people and of the British democracy.
It’s an embarrassment that such an argument should be seriously entertained. For a whole host of reasons, it is a bogus argument:
1) First of all, the issue (of EU membership) that was put to the public was really ill-suited for resolution by a popular plebiscite. Too many complexities. It’s the kind of decision that democracies need the people’s representatives to be knowledgeable enough and wise enough to navigate well in the national interest.
2) Second, the Leave position was pushed by a campaign that knowingly lied about a lot of things, not least that there would be money saved that would beef up the National Health Service.
3) And third, since when is any decision not wisely re-examine if circumstance allows one to revisit the question after new knowledge gives one a fuller view of the choice? Since when does one prefer making decisions by irrevocable leap rather than by a sequence of steps that provide the opportunity to check — as events clarify the nature of the choices -- whether we’d choose otherwise?
Especially when there’s the least possibility that the original decision was unwise. And boy, have the last 3 and ½ years provided abundant evidence of that unwisdom, that the UK would have been better off if this fairly narrow referendum result had gone the other way.
The results of that Brexit referendum have already done a great deal of damage to the British economy, as business retreat from the UK to place themselves in the vast EU market. Studies give the estimate that Brexit will make Britain poorer by a few percent indefinitely. And the entire British political world has been paralyzed over the problem for years.Even if there were nothing else, the importance of lies in giving “Leave” its 52-48 victory should be enough to make a second referendum a no-brainer. The British people know a whole lot more about the Brexit issue now than they did when Leave edged out Remain in that first referendum.
(How many voters understood the unsolvable puzzle that the problem of Ireland would be? How many understood that if you split the UK from the EU, there is a circle that simply cannot be squared: there’s no way of avoiding either dividing Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland (dangerous for the peace in Ireland) or divide Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom (anathema to the dominant element of Northern Ireland).)
Now that the British people can see more of the reality of the matter, they should be asked, in a second referendum:
“Given all you know about the Brexit issue that you didn’t know when you voted in 2016, do you think we should affirm the decision to leave the European Union or reverse that decision?”
Then proceed accordingly.
