Britain will almost certainly rejoin the EU
London 2016 (Shutterstock)
What are anti-Brexiters thinking as 31 January approaches? The following survey is not drawn from a sample of one — myself, though I share the views to be described — but is the input from a large and diverse network of Remainers whose efforts to stop Brexit over the last three years brought them very close to victory in the closing months of 2019. That victory was thrown away by the opposition parties’ agreement to a general election.
If that fatal error of judgment had not been made, it is likely that the country would now be in the run-up to a second referendum on EU membership, with every likelihood of a different outcome from 2016. Remainers’ confidence in this regard is supported by the fact that 53 per cent of votes cast on 12 December 2019 were for parties in favour of Remain and/or a second referendum.
Regret that an election was held is one thing Remainers feel. They are also thinking that the outcome of the election makes it a matter of the highest priority to campaign for electoral reform. On 43 per cent of votes cast (29 per cent of the total electorate) Johnson’s new Conservative Party has 100 per cent of the power in the land. The Conservatives secured 330,000 more votes than in 2017, when a hung Parliament resulted; on 2019’s small additional figure the distorting effects of our First Past the Post electoral system produced a massive 80-seat majority.
This means that we have a dead Parliament, a zombie Parliament, a rubber-stamp mechanism for the Johnson government. During the course of 2019’s hung parliament we saw what the Commons should really be — a body that holds the executive to account and makes every measure stand or fall by its own merits, not by an automatic majority controlled by the executive. It was thrilling and important, and it is what parliament is meant to be. A system of proportional representation would realise this desideratum.
In the past, when politicians played by the rules of what John Stuart Mill called “constitutional morality”, the dire inadequacies of our electoral system seemed not to matter so much. In an age of unscrupulous third-rate politicians such as those we now have, this tenuous fig-leaf will no longer do. The UK is being dragged in a direction that most of its citizens do not want, risking serious economic harm — and that means loss of jobs, disruption of lives, diminished tax revenues for public services — and depriving current and future generations of significant rights. A dysfunctional constitutional system allows this to happen; and has been deliberately exploited so that it can happen. Reform is essential and urgent.
Knowledge of the EU and enthusiasm for it has been vastly increased by the Brexit debacle. The Remainer commitment to it has not waned and will not wane. At a conference of grassroots organisations on 25 January the zeal for rejoining the EU at the earliest opportunity was palpable. Optimism is high, because determination is great. Johnson now has the difficult part: negotiations will almost certainly result in a significant degree of alignment with the EU, if not indeed in actual membership of the single market and customs union with freedom of movement — the same thing as membership, but without a say.
This outcome — “following the rules with no say on the rules” — is not tenable, but neither is anything less than following the rules if the UK is not to shrivel into a third-rate economy. Johnson has a majority in parliament that will enable him to face down the ERG and the Faragists. But he will still have to face that section of the electorate which, whatever its reasons or its degree of understanding of the technicalities and consequences, thinks that it wants a decisive and obvious break with foreigners and all their nefarious doings. Therefore, whichever way one looks at the situation, Johnson is like the dog that chased a car and caught it: what the hell does it do next? He has a very difficult road ahead, and it is a road that quite probably leads to a pro-EU UK rejoining the EU.
Why can this be so confidently asserted? Because demographics are on the side of Remain. Young people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU membership, and the mess that the far right and far left have dragged the country into over Brexit will neither be forgotten nor forgiven. I include the far left because one significant aspect of the temporary victory secured by the Brexiters is the aid given them by the folly and ideology of Corbyn, McCluskey and their toxic clique. When Corbyn agreed to a general election in November 2019 Johnson and his own inner circle must have thought “God exists after all”
But as with all hubris, the reckoning is to come. Out there in the land is a determined, committed and growing British European movement that will not accept what has happened, and that will act accordingly.
