David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary, and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at the 2019 general election.
“My single piece of advice to any future Prime Minister is never, ever have a referendum on anything… in practice, [referendums] end up creating far more problems than they resolve in and of themselves.”
So says Michael Gove in his fascinating interview on the Brexit referendum with George Osborne and Ed Balls on the Political Currency podcast.
He makes a persuasive case. In the interview, Gove was explaining why he advised David Cameron against holding a referendum on EU membership in the first place. There was a personal motivation for his position in that any such referendum would produce a conflict of loyalties between his political friendships and his belief that the UK should leave the EU. But his broader analysis was surely right.
I say this with the benefit of hindsight. Unlike Gove (or Osborne), I did not immediately see the risks of the Brexit referendum (nor as a junior minister was I in a position to influence the Prime Minister if I had). When the promise was made, I assumed that if a referendum was held, Remain would win reasonably comfortably and the issue would be put to bed for a generation. Along with many others, I got that spectacularly wrong.
What was widely underestimated was how polarising the referendum proved to be. People picked a side and defined themselves by it.
Gove is an interesting case study. He initially promised Cameron that he would take a low profile during the referendum campaign out of personal loyalty to the Prime Minister. But he ended up chairing Vote Leave and was one of its most prominent figures. In the podcast, he explains how he became more and more involved, owing a loyalty to his beliefs and to others who were working extraordinarily hard to achieve their shared objective. He felt he could not shirk his responsibilities to the cause.
For others, anger grew about the nature of their opponents’ campaign. Leavers were furious about predictions of economic harm; Remainers believed that claims that Brexit could mean an extra £350 million a week for the NHS or that staying in the EU would result in a huge influx of Turkish migrants were fundamentally dishonest. Mutual trust within the Parliamentary Conservative Party was very badly damaged. Osborne acknowledges within the podcast that, in the last few days of the campaign, he thought his career may have been finished even if the country had voted to Remain.
The question asked in the Brexit referendum was simple – Remain or Leave – but the details involved in leaving were not. Gove argues that Vote Leave had a plan but this was not on the ballot paper, nor did it address the most difficult issues.
The matter of the Northern Ireland border was dismissed by Brexiteers but bedeviled subsequent governments. A deal with the EU (and no one during the referendum campaign suggested leaving the EU without a deal) was only possible if it addressed the Republic of Ireland’s concerns on the issue, but addressing such concerns either restricted our ability to diverge or put a border in the Irish Sea.
Hard-line Leavers argued that they were uniquely placed to divine the will of the people and said we should be prepared to leave without a deal. The rest of us may have argued that the people had never been confronted with the complex practicalities of leaving and that, in a representative democracy, the representatives had a role in finding the best outcome.
But it was all too easy to portray this as arrogantly ignoring the public. Incidentally, Gove – to his credit – was the only leading Leaver prepared to recognise the issue and seek to find a pragmatic solution to the problem.
The wider point (and I accept that some will hold a different view of the Northern Ireland border issue) is that a referendum will only provide a very simple answer (Yes/No; Remain/Leave) to what can be a very complex question. A referendum might be won based on promises or assumptions that, when it comes to the point of implementation, turn out to be undeliverable or wrong respectively (or, at the very least, seen by the government and Parliament implementing the result as being undeliverable or wrong).
When that happens, combined with feelings that have been strengthened and polarised by a referendum campaign, our constitution is put under strain. Institutions such as Parliament, the civil service and the courts end up under attack.
This can be avoided by taking the principled position that we are a Parliamentary democracy, that we elect MPs to make decisions, and that the Government’s authority rests on obtaining and maintaining the confidence of Parliament. Referendums undermine this settlement.
All of this means I share Gove’s view that it would be wise to avoid referendums. Does that mean we should never have a referendum again?
Although from a unionist perspective, neither referendum would be desirable, one cannot rule out a referendum on Scottish independence or Northern Ireland unification.
On the former, this has already happened. With the subsequent experience of Brexit, we should be even more relieved that the Scottish people rejected independence. The negotiations in extracting Scotland for the UK would have been even more complex and contentious. But if we were ever to get to a situation where there was overwhelming evidence that the people of Scotland did wish to leave the UK, a referendum would surely have to play a role. In this case, this should happen at the end of the process after the Scottish and UK Governments had negotiated the terms of departure. Any vote should be held on those specific terms.
Under the Good Friday Agreement, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland must trigger a border poll “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland”. There is quite a lot of discretion here but, again, it would be better to present a completed re-unification deal before holding the referendum.
But on other issues, one can question whether a referendum needs to play a role at all. For example, I think that a policy of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights would be a grave mistake but a government with a Parliamentary majority and a clear mandate should be entitled to do so.
On the same basis, a G=government elected with a manifesto commitment to a closer relationship with the EU – even rejoining – should be able to fulfill that commitment without a referendum, just as Edward Heath did in the early 1970s in joining the Common Market.
There is often an assumption that substantial electoral reform should require a referendum but historically this is not the case when one looks at, for example, broadening the franchise. A democratic mandate of some description should be needed but a Parliamentary majority elected based on a manifesto commitment would be sufficient.
Too often, referendums have been used to get governments out of a political hole. As they have become more common, political pressure to hold them increases and they become harder to resist. If there is one positive to take from the Brexit experience, we could try to build a consensus on this point. Gove is right. Referendums are no way to run a country.
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Author: David Gauke
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