With Boris Johnson set to succeed Theresa May the only way possible, namely by circumventing the electorate and putting himself forward as the ultimate populist demagogue in a Britain where every party has to have one to be heard, our post-Brexit prospects look worse than ever. But how much shit are we really in and what does the future hold? To find out I inveigled my way into an all-day “Brexit and the Constitution” event at the British Academy (soon to be renamed the English Academy). What I learned there will erode your bone marrow. Duly warned, read on.
The day opened with an attempt by ERG plasm based lifeform, Bernard Jenkin, to reassure himself that his intemperate ideology hadn’t put a bomb under his kid’s school bus. This was styled as a “keynote speech” but was in truth a man standing shyly at a lectern, looking to an audience that included constitutional scholars like Vernon Bogdanor (who’d blank him afterwards when he was thanked for his question) and being embarrassed.
‘Fuck,’ he must have thought, ‘these people may actually know what they’re talking about.’ Consequently, he attempted to lull them to sleep with a lifeless, monotone recap of Leave’s most pernicious myths. ‘The vote could not be more explicit,’ he said, referring to the old imported chestnut that Leavers didn’t know what they were voting for.
However, by arguing this he inadvertently cast himself as less informed that the 17.4 million who’d autodidactically made themselves constitutional historians from a standing start. The issues were complicated, he said – look at the confusion over article 24 of the GATT, or the ongoing argument over customs arrangements in Northern Ireland. Political journalists, particular those working for the demented BBC, didn’t understand these things, Remainers didn’t understand these things – hell, even he didn’t understand them, but fortunately Leave voters in the 2016 referendum had. And although their counsel hadn’t been sought on how to proceed, there was no question they’d privately researched the consequences of leaving before casting their ballot.
As the day rattled on lots of useful titbits arose. From Lord Gus O’ Donnell, in a talk on central government and public bodies, I learned ministers were bedevilled by ‘an anglo-centric view on Brexit’, that poor civil servants trying to push for evidence-based policy had ‘been shot’, and that May’s creation of the Department for Exiting the European Union – where any actual experience of working with the EU counted against you – had been a monumental mistake that had bled power and resources from the Cabinet Office.
It wasn’t all bad news though, Brexit would mean a boon for civil service recruitment, meaning all the non-jobbers and overpaid wonks who’d been culled in the Coalition years would be back like all the dead people revived when the Avengers reversed the snap. Sure, we had no trade negotiators right now, said Jill Rutter from the Institute of Government, but in the world to come we’d have the chance to recruit many – “a cadre of people minded to stick with it”. The implication that the ones we had were not so minded, was met by silence from an increasingly despondent crowd.
Still, MP Nicky Morgan cheered up the room when she suggested that, like all disasters, there should be an inquiry into Brexit when it was all over. A judge would meticulously gather all the hitherto undocumented evidence, not already freely available in contemporary accounts by Tim Shipman, to find out what went wrong. It was not explained what would happen if the newly united Ireland and independent Scotland failed to cooperate – but at least the loss of that dead flesh would mean not having to deal with a multiplicity of processes across various public bodies in devolved territories. Phew!
So what about devolution? Would Brexit mean a new settlement in the unlikely event the Union held together? Lord Bew argued that the DUP’s vote in the 2017 Election should be read as support for the status quo. Only 3% of protestants had voted for a united Ireland, he said. Yes, but weren’t those protestants aging and being slowly replaced by virile, horny, prophylactic eschewing Catholics? No, and he’d bet the British presence in Ireland on it!
The Scots were furious of course. The EU Withdrawal Act, denied consent by the Scottish Parliament, had been given royal assent regardless, thereby breaking the Sewel convention. The government had misread the 2017 Election, imagining the SNP’s loss of Westminster wreckers meant support for Indyref II: The Reckoning, was on the slide. ‘The issue won’t go away,’ said Prof Nicola McEwen. This felt true, after all the stench of Scottish independence has loomed and touched many – just ask Alex Salmond’s former secretaries.
The Welsh were also furious. Why was it, asked Prof Laura McAllister from Cardiff University, that any kind of constitutional remodelling was always done the English way? Labour was losing to the nationalists – the people were apoplectic because theirs was the weakest assembly in the world, and fuck me, they only had forty backbenchers to deal with the post-Brexit settlement! Not only that, the English, now asserting themselves after years of keeping a low profile to placate their moaning neighbours’ grievances, still had the gall to call these elected parliaments – in Cardiff and Edinburgh, “devolved institutions”.
Honestly, it was enough to make you think that this awkward, unequal and increasingly impractical decentralisation of power had been a terrible mistake that had laid the foundations for fervent nationalism and the ultimate break-up of the most successful social and cultural union in the world. Ultimately though, there was nothing to worry about, as the devolution panel agreed that no one would vote to break up the country while people feared for their pensions – pensioners of course, the last group of people who’d endanger the union.
We now moved on to a panel on what kind of democracy we wanted as the walls of the old came crashing down. Our government, after all, has no backing from parliament – it’s an executive entirely reliant on an uncooperative set of MPs to get its business done. How to break the deadlock? Well, agreed Prof Meg Russell from UCL, Lisa Nandy MP and walking argument against free movement, Gisela Stewart, it was simple: a citizen’s assembly. That’s right, people would be selected from the electoral register, representing every hue of voter, except the ignorant and impulsive kind who’d won it for Leave, and they’d sit in a hotel, with free tea and biscuits, as their Irish brethren had done when deciding on abortion, making a recommendation to government on all our behalves.
Would it be democratic? After all, 99 Irish men and women formed the policy the electorate voted on in their constitutional referendum. How would Remainers sell it to the 17.4 million? Wouldn’t they suspect that any evidence-based discussion would find for Remain? Er, I mean – wouldn’t the kind of people who wanted to do this be Remainers? No one asked so answer there was none. Instead Nandy quoted Gramsci – “the old is dying, the new is yet to be born” – but thanks to the Irish citizens assembly, there was no longer any guarantee it would be.
Regardless, we were still in the shit. Brexit isn’t done and it’s a legal and constitutional quagmire that’s stretched our parliamentary democracy to its limits, tested centuries old conventions, and worse, empowered John Bercow. Was there any way out under the current arrangements? Lord Sumption noted that our political constitution was flexible because it was convention based – so one could advise people not to break these conventions but it wasn’t strictly illegal. Conversely, just to make things clear, the UK was one of the few countries in the world that, sans a written constitution, could do something lawful but unconventional – say proroguing parliament.
Would Boris do it? Well, said Sumption, the constitution was only worth the political pressure applied to it. If Johnson called an election on Brexit in October, with no extension forthcoming, purdah would be effective prorogation preventing any MP – as there would be none, from intervening to stop no deal in those dying days of EU membership. But honestly, what were the chances of that?
So, certain that Britain was doomed, Boris would break it, and Brexit would break us all, it was left to Sumption to sum up the whole sorry state of affairs with one, withering, indisputable observation: ‘The referendum circumvented the most effective political process ever devised to reach a compromise.’ He was referring to our newly unfashionable representative parliamentary democracy, an old girl now trying to cross a busy road with two broken legs. ‘Give her some splints!’ I felt like shouting, but didn’t, as no one would know what the fuck I was talking about.
Brexiteers wanted to take the country back in time but instead they’ve fast-tracked the future
The 1997 election was so vapid, so threadbare – Labour elected on the basis of 5 vacuous pledges and a guarantee not to raise income tax, that it seemed that only a country as politically ignorant as ours could have waved through such a campaign. Where was the scrutiny? The interest in political minutiae? If only people were better educated. If only politics was a compulsory subject in schools.
Why wasn’t it? Well, if you were cynical you’d argue it suited the political class for the polity to be as ignorant as possible. Ensuring politicos were self-selecting guaranteed that the majority would still be vulnerable to reductive political messaging, outright lies, and tabloid editorials aimed at those with a reading age of 11.
General Elections are designed to court the impressionable and the blinkered. The internet age offers the same people a chance to be brainwashed from the bottom up. The most dangerous thing a political party can do for its electoral prospects and those of the archaic and self-serving institutions that prop up the, for want of a better word – establishment, is to shine daylight upon magic; to funnel information and a historical perspective into developing minds before intellectual rigor mortis sets in.
Very little of what we think of as traditional stands up to that kind of scrutiny – parliamentary convention, the monarchy, the structure and funding of political parties, and yes – the media lens through which of all of the above is refracted and packaged for ease of consumption. This is why Brexit is a watershed moment. The cat’s out of the bag and the bag, containing Larry the Downing Street cat, is in the river.
Jonathan Sumption, at a recent all-day convention on Brexit, noted that since Parliament had endangered its legitimacy by effectively suspending itself and using direct democracy to settle a constitutional question; a process that culminated in it being instructed to act contrary to its settled will and informed position; the nature of public criticism had changed.
Historically, and understandably, Joe and Jacinda Public had concentrated their ire at politicians – politics for many being orientated around personalities and individual hypocrisy. But now, with Brexit acting as an acute focaliser, public scrutiny has shifted to parliamentary process and precedent, and its efficacy, for the first time since the 17th century.
What have the people learned from this intense period of political education? That the absence of a codified or written constitution, with clear and unambiguous checks on a government’s behaviour and use of power, has lead to confusion, paralysis and brinksmanship, in which only the most focused and perhaps Machiavellian characters can shape the agenda and prevail. All else are rendered impotent bystanders.
I’ve always respected our parliamentary traditions and quietly despised those who’d tear them up to make politics assessable to the dead-eyed who have no interest in educating themselves. Mystique need not mean mystification; the archaic is our tether to the past – it has value as a signifier of the esteem in which we hold something as valuable as our representative democracy.
Brexit is infuriating for many reasons – it’s mob rule, anti-intellectual, it privileges local interest over national interest, anecdotal evidence over scientific data; it has inflamed nationalism – both the reconstructed kind reviled by the left – the traditional blend that flaunts its bigotry, and the SNP’s new beans – a repudiation of our cultural Union, fuelled by a hatred of English power and influence, masquerading as outward facing inclusive internationalism – one of the greatest political con tricks of all time.
But for me, what grates is the failure of our parliamentarians to respect the institution to which they’ve been elected, with the result that the case for reform – that is, vandalism, has now become urgent and unstoppable.
Who, post-Brexit, is going to argue that Parliament didn’t eye its crumbling architecture and decide this was the perfect time to live up to the suggested metaphor? When the post-mortem gets underway, it would be a blind coroner indeed who didn’t note that the absence of a federated UK sold its nations short, or that it was astonishing that the courts were required to rule on political matters like revoking citizens’ rights, bypassing parliament on constitutional issues and opportunistic prorogation. Far too much, he’d conclude, wiping blood onto his gown, pivoted on a gentleman’s agreement – the gents in question long dead.
The irony is that Brexit has been ostensibly about preserving British identity. But the result is that the institutions most closely associated with it, along with its constituent nations, are likely to be forever changed by what has taken place. Brexiteers imagined that the day after leaving we’d return to a time before 1973, when we were broadly homogenous and largely monocultural. However, the result of a highly polarised and politicised people scrutinising the inner workings of our system like never before will be to catalyse a change in that system, and the relationship between its working parts, on a scale never before seen. The traditionalists saw a fire and reached for a full bucket, but that pail contained gasoline.
Historians might think it was right that a system based on a lot of junk thought and sectional interest was undone by just that.
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on August 31, 2019 at 12:03 Leave a CommentTags: Brexit, Politics, UK Constitution