A house divided against itself cannot stand

The weekend march in London in favour of a second Brexit referendum sent a signal that parliament would be wise not to ignore. According to the organisers, around 700,000 people ventured out onto the streets to demonstrate their support for a vote on the final terms of the Brexit deal. Unlike in 2003, when they estimated that 750,000 people took to the streets to protest against Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War, police refused to put a figure on Saturday’s crowd. Suffice to say, however, the People’s Vote march was one of the biggest popular rallies on the streets of the UK’s capital city.

I don’t wish to be a spoilsport, but it is unlikely to succeed in its objective if past history is anything to go by. In the early 1960s, popular marches against the deployment of nuclear weapons attracted crowds of up to 150,000 – pretty good going in pre-social media days – yet the UK still continued to deploy them. The violent poll tax riots in early-1990 did not prevent the government from going ahead with the introduction of a local flat tax, although it perhaps did undermine Margaret Thatcher’s position as prime minister and she was forced to resign later that same year. And as we all know, the UK soon became embroiled in the Iraq War despite significant opposition at home.

So how should we interpret major expressions of public support? It is difficult to argue with certainty that the weekend protests represent a significant shift in wider public opinion as the 2003 experience shows. Although people recall the anti-Iraq War protests as suggesting that the majority of the electorate was opposed to military action, YouGov conducted a series of 21 polls between March and December 2003 which showed that 54% of respondents believed it was right to take military action against Iraq. What is even more interesting is that polls conducted in 2015 suggested that only 37% of respondents say they believed military action was right at the time. This is a form of cognitive bias best described as consistency bias in which past attitudes are incorrectly remembered as resembling today’s attitudes.

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that big demonstrations such as those against Brexit or military involvement in Iraq represent a commitment by a passionate minority on a topic where society is genuinely split. It could, of course, be the case that public opinion has shifted on Brexit: After all, the opinion polls clearly suggest that those believing the UK made the wrong decision two years ago now outstrip those who believe it to be the right decision by a good five percentage points. But that does not mean the government will change its mind. Indeed, as I noted here, it is almost impossible to conceive of a second referendum any time soon on the grounds of democratic legitimacy.

Moreover, we have less than five months before the government is due to leave the EU, and Christmas is coming up fast. It is logistically difficult to imagine that the government will be able to pass the necessary parliamentary legislation and conduct any form of information campaign before the UK leaves the EU on 29 March 2019. As the lawyer David Allen Green has pointed out, “referendums on a UK-wide basis sit badly with the UK constitution” because while a mandate derived from a general election is a weak one (parties can simply ignore their manifesto commitments) a mandate derived from a referendum is a different beast. A second referendum merely gives us a second opinion. Which one should we choose? In Allen Green’s words, “what if the further referendum is on a lower turn-out?  Or a different majority? Which mandate takes precedence?” And as I have noted previously a second referendum would take place in an divided country which would exacerbate already-inflamed tensions.

Much as it pains me to say it, I cannot see a second referendum as being the answer to Brexit divisions. So how should they be dealt with? Perhaps the best option is for the government to push for the softest possible Brexit and dare the hardliners to challenge them: Keep the UK as closely tied to the EU as practicably possible in the hope of minimising the economic damage. Indeed, to all intents and purposes keep kicking the can down the road by finding ways to delay a full Brexit. It would, of course, provoke a dreadful row within the Conservative Party. But it was Abraham Lincoln in his famous 1858 speech, quoting from St Matthew’s Gospel, who asserted that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Brexit is really an internal Tory party matter which is never going to be resolved by compromise. This particular divided house may need some bloodletting.