a425couple
2019-01-15 00:11:28 UTC
from
https://www.theitem.com/stories/brexit-vote-shows-how-direct-democracy-can-be-dangerous,320897
Brexit vote shows how direct democracy can be dangerous
Posted Sunday, January 13, 2019 6:00 am
By GEORGE F. WILL
"In my country the people can do as they like, although it often happens
that they don't like what they have done."
- Winston Churchill, 1946
LONDON - During the Second World War, as U.S. power was eclipsing
Britain's, Harold Macmillan, a future prime minister, reportedly said,
"These Americans represent the new Roman Empire and we Britons, like the
Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go." Today, Britain's
Brexit agonies - its two-and-a-half-year struggle to disentangle itself
from the European Union - indicate that America's Founders could teach
21st-century Britain something: Direct democracy is dangerous because
public sentiments need to be refined by filtration through deliberative
institutions.
A June 2016 referendum endorsed (52 percent to 48 percent) exiting the
EU. Implementing this has, however, become messier than anyone,
especially voters, anticipated.
European unification was conceived in fear - Europeans' fear of
themselves, a residue of wars produced by various atavisms, including
unhinged nationalism. For decades, Britain's Tories have been bitterly
divided about the project of "harmonizing" political practices and
economic policies, with a probable consequence of homogenized national
cultures. The embryo of the EU was a free trade zone - a single market.
But as the unification project became more ambitious, it required the
derogation of national parliaments and hence of nations' sovereignties.
So, in 1988, Margaret Thatcher voiced what became Conservative
Euroskeptics' cri de coeur: "We have not successfully rolled back the
frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a
European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance
from Brussels."
Hoping to cauterize the Conservative Party's long-festering wound, in
2016 then-Prime Minister David Cameron succumbed to the plebiscitary
temptation, scheduling the referendum that he thought Remain would win.
It lost, he resigned, and Theresa May, who had voted Remain, became
prime minister. She called an election expecting to increase her
parliamentary majority and thus her leverage negotiating terms of
divorce from the EU. Instead, she lost her majority and was forced into
an alliance with a Northern Ireland party.
It is dismaying that most of the binding law in Britain comes from the
European Commission in Brussels. But why, with its primacy at stake, did
Parliament punt one of the most momentous decisions in British history
to a referendum? The bedrock principle of representative government is
that "the people" do not decide issues, they decide who shall decide.
And once a legislature sloughs off responsibility and resorts to a
referendum on the dubious premise that the simple way to find out what
people want is to ask them, it is difficult to avoid recurring episodes
of plebiscitary democracy.
Last October, 700,000 marched in London demanding a second referendum,
which would indeed be based on better information: Few who voted Leave
30 months ago had any inkling of the complexity of unwinding decades of
ever-thickening legal relationships. May contends that another
referendum would "break faith with the British people." This, however,
postulates a false clarity about what the Leave-voting majority willed.
May favors "delivering the Brexit people voted for," but even the
political leaders who favored Brexit voted simply for leaving, the
details - wherein the devil always is - be damned.
A second referendum would have to offer a binary choice, lest there be
an unhelpful plurality outcome. But should the choice be: "Hard Brexit"
(no agreement about future relations with the 27 EU members) versus
May's agreement? Her agreement versus remaining in the EU? Hard Brexit
versus remain?
Although the deal May negotiated addresses immigration anxieties by
ending the free movement of people between Britain and the EU and limits
payments to the EU and subjection to the European Court of Justice,
Britain would remain indefinitely subject to many EU regulations and
some assessments but without the ability to shape them. On Tuesday,
Parliament probably will resoundingly reject the deal. The 73 days until
the March 29 deadline for leaving the EU will be eventful.
In 2016, a majority of voters over age 43 favored leaving; a majority of
those younger favored remaining. Since then, mortality has taken many
Leavers, and many young people have joined the electorate. So,
demography, combined with a new understanding of Brexit's certain costs
and myriad uncertainties, could cause 2016's big bang that began Brexit
to end with a 2019 whimper of a referendum saying, "Oh, never mind."
George Will's email address is ***@washpost.com.
2019, Washington Post Writers Group
Get the best of The Sumter Item in your inbox. Sign up for our free
daily newsletter.
https://www.theitem.com/stories/brexit-vote-shows-how-direct-democracy-can-be-dangerous,320897
Brexit vote shows how direct democracy can be dangerous
Posted Sunday, January 13, 2019 6:00 am
By GEORGE F. WILL
"In my country the people can do as they like, although it often happens
that they don't like what they have done."
- Winston Churchill, 1946
LONDON - During the Second World War, as U.S. power was eclipsing
Britain's, Harold Macmillan, a future prime minister, reportedly said,
"These Americans represent the new Roman Empire and we Britons, like the
Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go." Today, Britain's
Brexit agonies - its two-and-a-half-year struggle to disentangle itself
from the European Union - indicate that America's Founders could teach
21st-century Britain something: Direct democracy is dangerous because
public sentiments need to be refined by filtration through deliberative
institutions.
A June 2016 referendum endorsed (52 percent to 48 percent) exiting the
EU. Implementing this has, however, become messier than anyone,
especially voters, anticipated.
European unification was conceived in fear - Europeans' fear of
themselves, a residue of wars produced by various atavisms, including
unhinged nationalism. For decades, Britain's Tories have been bitterly
divided about the project of "harmonizing" political practices and
economic policies, with a probable consequence of homogenized national
cultures. The embryo of the EU was a free trade zone - a single market.
But as the unification project became more ambitious, it required the
derogation of national parliaments and hence of nations' sovereignties.
So, in 1988, Margaret Thatcher voiced what became Conservative
Euroskeptics' cri de coeur: "We have not successfully rolled back the
frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a
European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance
from Brussels."
Hoping to cauterize the Conservative Party's long-festering wound, in
2016 then-Prime Minister David Cameron succumbed to the plebiscitary
temptation, scheduling the referendum that he thought Remain would win.
It lost, he resigned, and Theresa May, who had voted Remain, became
prime minister. She called an election expecting to increase her
parliamentary majority and thus her leverage negotiating terms of
divorce from the EU. Instead, she lost her majority and was forced into
an alliance with a Northern Ireland party.
It is dismaying that most of the binding law in Britain comes from the
European Commission in Brussels. But why, with its primacy at stake, did
Parliament punt one of the most momentous decisions in British history
to a referendum? The bedrock principle of representative government is
that "the people" do not decide issues, they decide who shall decide.
And once a legislature sloughs off responsibility and resorts to a
referendum on the dubious premise that the simple way to find out what
people want is to ask them, it is difficult to avoid recurring episodes
of plebiscitary democracy.
Last October, 700,000 marched in London demanding a second referendum,
which would indeed be based on better information: Few who voted Leave
30 months ago had any inkling of the complexity of unwinding decades of
ever-thickening legal relationships. May contends that another
referendum would "break faith with the British people." This, however,
postulates a false clarity about what the Leave-voting majority willed.
May favors "delivering the Brexit people voted for," but even the
political leaders who favored Brexit voted simply for leaving, the
details - wherein the devil always is - be damned.
A second referendum would have to offer a binary choice, lest there be
an unhelpful plurality outcome. But should the choice be: "Hard Brexit"
(no agreement about future relations with the 27 EU members) versus
May's agreement? Her agreement versus remaining in the EU? Hard Brexit
versus remain?
Although the deal May negotiated addresses immigration anxieties by
ending the free movement of people between Britain and the EU and limits
payments to the EU and subjection to the European Court of Justice,
Britain would remain indefinitely subject to many EU regulations and
some assessments but without the ability to shape them. On Tuesday,
Parliament probably will resoundingly reject the deal. The 73 days until
the March 29 deadline for leaving the EU will be eventful.
In 2016, a majority of voters over age 43 favored leaving; a majority of
those younger favored remaining. Since then, mortality has taken many
Leavers, and many young people have joined the electorate. So,
demography, combined with a new understanding of Brexit's certain costs
and myriad uncertainties, could cause 2016's big bang that began Brexit
to end with a 2019 whimper of a referendum saying, "Oh, never mind."
George Will's email address is ***@washpost.com.
2019, Washington Post Writers Group
Get the best of The Sumter Item in your inbox. Sign up for our free
daily newsletter.