Tag Archives: Brexit

Why the UK should revive its constitutional tradition

Why the UK should revive its constitutional tradition

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The UK should revive its constitutional tradition, argues the philosopher John Gray.  We should scrap legislation such as the Human Rights Act (HRA), he says, and revert to an “ancien regime” where the only constraints on parliament were political.  Gray’s isn’t a solitary voice; the current Conservative government was elected largely to push back against constitutional changes of the last half century.  Yet for many, Gray’s call for the removal of substantive legal restraints on parliament is anathema, a recipe for diluting our basic rights and freedoms.  I think there’s much to be said for Britain’s constitutional tradition, not least its capacity to secure legitimacy for political decisions and its potential to help rehabilitate the left.

When it comes to constitutions, political scientists typically speak of two ideal types.  These are legislative supremacy constitutions and higher law constitutions.

Under a legislative supremacy constitution, a country’s parliament has supreme law-making authority.  This means that, in theory, legislators can pass any law they like, they “can do no legal wrong”, as the academic William Roberts Clark puts it.[1]  The only constraints they face are political in nature, whether there’s a majority for the law they wish to enact.  Another term for this type of authority is parliamentary sovereignty.

Legislative supremacy constitutions are based on two principles.  One is that only elections can legitimise law-making authority, and the other is that a country’s laws must represent the will of the people (as expressed through parliamentary majorities).  For these principles to stand, there can’t be any rules limiting what a parliament can pass.  If such rules were in place, then authoritative law would exist above elections and the public’s shifting preferences.  Hence, under this type of constitution, no body or institution can legally bind a parliament.

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The myth of pragmatism

The myth of pragmatism: how too much ideology broke British politics

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We’re often told that Brexit has transformed Britain from a pragmatic country to one where ideologues rule the roost.  At first glance, this narrative seems to have substance.  The governments of both Tony Blair and David Cameron prided themselves on being guided by “what works” rather than “ideological zeal”.  In contrast, the current prime minister, Boris Johnson, has spoken of delivering Brexit “come what may”.  Yet a closer look suggests this narrative is flawed.  Key policies of the Blair-Cameron era – the Iraq War, austerity, and changes to immigration – were based less on practical considerations and more on abstract ideals.  This excess of ideology helped drive a wedge between political elites and the British public, contributing to the populist revolt and paralysis we’ve seen in Britain over the last few years.

The Iraq War

Britain invaded Iraq in March 2003 as part of a US-led international coalition.  The government’s decision to go to war was shaped by geostrategic factors such as oil and maintaining a ‘special relationship’ with America, but prime minister Blair’s Manichean worldview also played a role.

Blair expressed this Manichean worldview in his 1999 ‘Chicago Speech’.  In it, the prime minister paraphrased Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis, arguing that communism’s defeat in the Cold War showed that the “massive ideological battleground” of the past was “over” and that spreading liberal democracy was in humanity’s best interest.  Blair further commented that, in the post-Cold War environment, this universal ideal was being blocked by “dangerous and ruthless men”, by the likes of “Saddam Hussein”, the Iraqi leader.  In Blair’s logic, then, if these ‘bad guys’ were removed, good would inevitably follow.

A meeting Blair held with a group of Middle East experts in November 2002 shows that this logic informed Britain’s invasion of Iraq.  These academics had come to Downing Street to discuss the consequences of removing Saddam from power.  They issued a stark warning: Iraqi society was fraught with national and religious divisions and toppling Saddam risked precipitating violence.  The essence of Blair’s response was that “Saddam is evil”, indicating that in his mind, eliminating the Iraqi leader could only have beneficial results.

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How culture replaced economics as the main political faultline

How culture replaced economics as the main political faultline

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Until recently, elections were widely seen as being won or lost on economic grounds.  Yet events such as the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election as US president have challenged this conventional outlook.  These results had more to do with conservative cultural values than with material interests.  Likewise, the backlash against Brexit and Trump has been mainly focused on defending liberal cultural values, not the state of the economy.  How did culture become more politically salient than economics?

Some say elite interests have prompted this shift.  In this view, the right has politicised culture to manoeuvre poorer citizens into backing policies that favour the rich, such as tax cuts and market deregulation.  This argument has some substance.  Trump’s election and Leave’s success both depended on blue collar voters, and in each instance culture was used as a tool of mobilisation and concealment.

In the US, this sort of politicking has been going on for some time.  The Republican party started provoking the cultural sensitivities of working class Americans following its victory in the 1994 midterms.  During this period, high-profile Republicans like Patrick Buchanan began preaching about the “war for the soul of America” and the left’s threat to “the values of faith, family, and country”.  But while the party talked up the kulturkampf, its policies continued to benefit economic elites.

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Information or ideology? Why most leavers still back Brexit

Information or ideology? Why most leavers still back Brexit

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The British Labour party’s decision to back a second referendum has raised the hope of ardent remainers.  The latter claim a “people’s vote is now inevitable” and “remain can win”.

Their optimism may simply be a matter of political manoeuvring.  They may be talking up the prospect of overturning Brexit to build support for this option.  However, their view of Leave’s victory in 2016 suggests they genuinely think they will prevail.  Many of them believe this victory stemmed from information deficiencies.  They see leave voters as being misinformed, uninformed, or both, implying that had they been exposed to more accurate information, they never would have chosen to exit the EU.

Some aspects of the Leave campaign were undoubtedly misleading.  The UK doesn’t pay £350 million a week to Brussels, for instance, and Vote Leave wasn’t in a position to suggest that the money Britain saved by exiting the EU would be spent on the NHS.  To say this campaign dealt in “lies and false promises” is therefore true.

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What if Brexit doesn't happen?

What if Brexit doesn’t happen?

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What will happen to Britain if Brexit is cancelled?  According to the writer Larry Elliott, the UK will return to the status quo of the last few decades.  That is, the country will revert to a regime of liberal globalisation that has mainly benefited the metropolitan middle classes.  Elliott makes this prediction on the basis that no-Brexit will dampen popular “demand for deep and urgent reform” and so “the real grievances of those who voted for Brexit will be quietly forgotten”.

Those who want to overturn Brexit have said it is necessary to “address the grievances of those leave voters who were protesting about the state of our politics and economy”.  This suggests that, if Brexit is stopped, a reversion to the days before June 2016 isn’t necessarily on the cards. Yet there are grounds for thinking that Elliott has a point.

While ardent remainers typically cherish the economic and cultural openness of liberal globalisation, they often fail to appreciate this phenomenon’s impact on many leave voters.  Since the 1980s this form of globalisation has decimated blue collar jobs and unsettled attachments to community and place.  For working class northerners and so-called Middle Englanders in particular, these changes have to varying degrees been felt as losses of livelihood, esteem and culture.  And that’s not all.

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Corbyn's contradictions: which side of Labour's political coalition will lose?

Corbyn’s contradictions: which side of Labour’s political coalition will lose?

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Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labour party, says he wants to “do far more to give a real voice to working class communities who feel they aren’t heard in politics”.  He also says the EU has weakened the British working class by enabling the “wholesale importation of underpaid workers from central Europe”.  Given that Corbyn is steeped in the Bennite socialist tradition, it’s fair to assume that these sentiments are genuine.  After all, working class political representation and Euroscepticism are cornerstones of Bennite ideology.[i]

Corbyn’s stance is close to the preferences of working class constituencies, particularly those in the post-industrial north of England.  The EU referendum shows this.  Politically, many people from this background saw this vote as an opportunity to have their voices heard after decades of being ignored by mainstream politics.  And economic and cultural anxieties were major factors behind their large-scale support for Brexit.

Yet despite this apparent affinity, many within the working class don’t like Corbyn.  In fact, at the last general election voters from this background swung towards the Tories.  A key reason for this seems to be perception.  The working class tend see Corbyn as the spokesperson for a middle class, metropolitan politics that says little for their material interests and typically more conservative values.  And in a way they’re right.

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