Is there an ethical basis for ignoring the Brexit result? June 29th, 2016
I’m not proposing a middle class revolution but I do wonder if there is an ethical basis for ignoring the EU Referendum result. So that’s my question, is there?
I’ve read many different blog posts setting out the potential legal hoops that might be brought into play to either avoid or hinder the leaving process. These don’t sit comfortably with me, as a process was put in place and ignoring it on a technicality seems anti-democratic. I’m also not a great fan of the second referendum petition, just because asking the same question over and over again until you get the right answer will only feed into the divide in this country.
Protecting the democratic process is essential if we hope that people will engage with it in the future. Whatever many people believe about the current constitutional arrangements, the UK Parliament is sovereign and it created this situation.
As far as full disclosure goes, I did vote to stay in the EU. I have a business that depends on remaining in the customs union. It doesn’t look like any new model will allow that to continue so I’ve got a high vested interest.
Where does an ethical objection to the result lie? Seventeen million people have expressed an instruction that we leave the EU. Although a small majority, it is a majority and, without the safeguards more sensible countries would put on an issue of constitutional significance, it should stand.
The ethical dimension to this is based around the question of whether those seventeen million people all voted for the same thing. It is clear that leaving the EU covers a wide number of options. Remaining in the European Economic Area, accepting free movement of people, contributing to the EU budget and being bound by EU legislation is one option. Being completely removed from the EU and limited access to the single market is another. There are other variations that might be negotiated that sit somewhere between those two.
Will any of those options satisfy all of the seventeen million people who have voted to leave? Does the simple interpretation of the vote mean that any situation where we do not take part in the decision making process of the EU satisfy the majority?
Once we progress to the formal process of leaving, what do we do if negotiations throw up a situation which does not satisfy the 52% of the country that voted to leave? Some will not tolerate continued free movement, some will not accept restricted access to the single market and some will not accept being bound by EU legislation. I can’t envisage a situation where all three of those conditions exist. We’ve been told repeatedly that there is no option where those three conditions will exist.
An example I can think of is fishing. Going through all of this just to find you out you end up in the EEA with the same quotas but no influence over policy is surely not what they want.
To an extent I’m assuming that any negotiated situation is not going to satisfy the 48% who expressed a desire to remain in the EU decision making progress.
The upshot is that unless a perfect solution is negotiated then a significant majority of the country are not going to be satisfied.
A number of people have raised the proposition of a second referendum once we know the negotiated future. I have some issues with that proposal. As far as I can see, in all of the opinion of the Article 50 process to leave the EU, there is no way to go back once it is invoked. Once implemented we do leave. It’s just about how we leave.
If a negotiated solution comes out of the Article 50 process, and is put us in a new referendum, then not accepting it probably won’t mean returning to business as usual. It is likely to mean the most extreme separation from the EU with limited access to the single market.
I don’t have any answers to this and just pose it as a question. Will the implementation of the referendum result actually cause a high level of dissatisfaction with the majority? Does that matter and do we need to implement the referendum irrespective of the future situation?
I do know this is the most desperate of liberal appeals to logic and as a result don’t see it as mattering one way or the other. I think the referendum result will be implemented as it stands, the title isn’t really much more than click bait to be honest.
Having said that I would be really interested to hear from people who did vote to leave on how they see their interests developing through a negotiated future, and how competing interests can be satisfied.
Posted in Politics | Comments (0)