Brexit: The disaster of populism over pragmatism

Charles the First of Eng­land once said, “Democ­ra­cy is the pow­er of equal votes for unequal minds”. This say­ing now echoes across Europe after Britain decid­ed to exit the Euro­pean Union over lit­er­al­ly a split vote, with 48% vot­ing to remain and 52% vot­ing to leave. 4% is the mar­gin of votes that is set to rad­i­cal­ly over­haul Britain’s eco­nom­ic and social rela­tion­ship with its biggest region­al part­ner, which has also deep­ened fis­sures with­in the British Union. Scot­land and North­ern Ire­land unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to remain in the Euro­pean Union, while Wales and Eng­land edged a lit­tle ahead vot­ing to leave. Brex­it has sparked a resur­gence of nation­al iden­ti­ty in the Unit­ed King­dom, with the SNP ruled Scot­tish gov­ern­ment mulling anoth­er Inde­pen­dence vote and North­ern Ireland’s rul­ing par­ty call­ing for a ref­er­en­dum on a ‘Unit­ed Ire­land’.

To the world, the old­est Par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy has giv­en a fresh les­son on the wis­dom of the bal­ance of pow­ers, the need of the Exec­u­tive and the cit­i­zen­ry to con­stant­ly keep each oth­er in check. Brex­it is only a real­i­ty as the British elec­torate was giv­en pow­er over some­thing they do not ful­ly grasp.

Elec­tions to choose gov­ern­ments are a mix­ture of emo­tion and rea­son, where per­son­al­i­ties, track records and con­tro­ver­sies are in a con­stant tus­sle to deliv­er an out­come. The par­ties lay out clear pol­i­cy out­lines and promis­es, and the deci­sion rests with the peo­ple. A nation’s mem­ber­ship to orga­ni­za­tions like the EU is a com­pli­cat­ed and mul­ti-lay­ered eco­nom­ic and social arrange­ment. Elect­ed law­mak­ers bet­ter under­stand the advan­tages, dis­ad­van­tages and the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of an exit than the com­mon cit­i­zen. When the Brex­it vote was placed before the pub­lic, the polit­i­cal pitch­es pushed the emo­tion­al argu­ment to super­sede the prac­ti­cal. The EU vote is not sim­i­lar to a ref­er­en­dum on lets say gay mar­riage, which Ire­land cleared via a unan­i­mous vote. The ques­tion posed to the peo­ple of Ire­land was not a tech­ni­cal one, but a moral one — a human rights issue which cit­i­zens have a greater under­stand­ing of than eco­nom­ic reg­u­la­tions, legal frame­works and their impact.

Con­sid­er this – in the after­math of a ter­ror attack, will any nation hold a ref­er­en­dum over the entry of immi­grants or refugees from Mus­lim coun­tries? Will any nation ever weigh Geo-pol­i­tics in the court of pub­lic opin­ion and hold a ref­er­en­dum on scrap­ping a nuclear weapons arse­nal? Of course not. These are com­pli­cat­ed issues with far reach­ing sociopo­lit­i­cal con­se­quences, which can­not be decid­ed via the whims of the mass­es. Sen­ti­ments always pos­sess the pow­er to sub­due the prag­mat­ic.

The two key argu­ments that pushed the Brex­it vote are con­trol over immi­gra­tion, name­ly an end to the free move­ment of labour from Euro­pean nations, and safe­guard­ing tax­pay­er mon­ey from being spent on the EU bureau­cra­cy, with a focus on ‘fresh funds’ for the Nation­al Health Ser­vice and oth­er social sec­tors. These nar­ra­tives fueled an
emo­tion­al pitch, where the ‘Leave’ cam­paign lead­ers of the UK Inde­pen­dence par­ty and Con­ser­v­a­tive party’s Boris John­son clear­ly hid the real­i­ty of the inevitable uncer­tain­ty sur­round­ing a delayed exit. They didn’t tell vot­ers that invok­ing Arti­cle 50 of the Lis­bon Treaty would push Britain into 2 years of nego­ti­a­tions with Euro­pean nations,
kick­ing Britain out of the EU sin­gle mar­ket, even forc­ing it to rene­go­ti­ate pre-exist­ing trade agree­ments with around 50 EU trad­ing part­ners. They didn’t state that post the invo­ca­tion of EU talks there will be 2 years of inse­cu­ri­ty over the state of the econ­o­my, spark­ing volatile mar­ket and cur­ren­cy fluc­tu­a­tions as well as cap­i­tal out­flows, dam­ag­ing big and small busi­ness­es across Britain. In fact, the main voic­es of the ‘Leave’ cam­paign are not even top deci­sion mak­ers in the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment. They can’t even sug­gest poli­cies or effec­tive­ly deliv­er promis­es along the lines of their pitch. Cou­pled with the lead­er­ship cri­sis sparked by Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron’s res­ig­na­tion after back­ing the ‘Remain’ cam­paign and rum­blings in the devolved gov­ern­ments, Brex­it has land­ed the British union in chop­py waters.

John F Kennedy once said that, “the igno­rance of one vot­er in a democ­ra­cy impairs the secu­ri­ty of all.” The debate around Britain’s EU mem­ber­ship has not been ratio­nal, but marked by pure pol­i­tick­ing. Britain will gain no sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage beyond a self-right­eous notion of sov­er­eign­ty, yet the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic tur­bu­lence has
placed the nation in a vio­lent state of flux. No ref­er­en­dum is legal­ly bind­ing.

The absence of a unan­i­mous vote should prompt the British gov­ern­ment to take up the issue of EU mem­ber­ship in Par­lia­ment and allow the House to take a final call after a fierce round of debates. A tec­ton­ic shift of such a mag­ni­tude in Britain should not rest on a sliv­er of votes. The stakes are too high.