Reflections on a referendum (III): how's that hopey-changey stuff working out for ya?

I forget where it was, but one of the obituaries of Margaret Thatcher opined that while she intended her reforms to make Britain more like her father, it ended up making it more like her son - namely that while she intended to create a a nation of robust, self-reliant individuals, she in fact encouraged recklessness and shifting of responsibility.  Whether or not that's true (and I don't think it is), it came to mind at various points in this campaign, and not just when looking at her splendid 1975 jumper. This campaign has been marked by a lack of concern about consequences, and an irritating vagueness about 'Hope.' To outline risks and impacts has been characterised as fearmongering. 

That's unfair. Fear has been a bad name in  this debate. Because fear is a respectable response to unknowns or potential risks. It's legitimate to be afraid about economic turmoil, about our reputation in the world, about pressure on services and about impacts on national identity. It's right to respond to those fears, either to allay them or to mitigate them. Actions have consequences, and people, especially those about to vote, should understand them. What's wrong isn't the fear, it's all the lying. Leave are right to criticise Donald Tusk for his absurd claim that Brexit would destroy western civilisation; Remain are right to attack Leave's tactics on Turkey and about refugees. But the issue with all of these isn't the fear, it's the lies. 

Because to be concerned based on reality is responsible. To dismiss it is not. Blithely asserting that we don't need to worry about economic impact because Brexit will unleash hope isn't a positive campaign, it's a no consequences campaign. This reaches its apogee in the assertion that we could have EU free trade without free movement. More generally, because the collective leadership of Leave aren't a potential government, they won't be held to account for any failure. They can promise what they like; it will be someone else's fault if it never happens. This is one of my main objections to referenda generally, it's certainly one of my major objections to this one.

For the record, here are I think the consequences are clear. Remain vote does mean more integration within the Eurozone and continuing EU harmonisation around other areas. I don't think they will be major, but they will be real. I'm relaxed about that: common tax IDs feel fine to me. Far more significantly, Leave will hammer the economy in the short term. The currency response to the polls tells you everything here. This feels much less fine to me.

But more than this, the wider consequences are also clear. This started personally, and it will end personally, and messily. There is some unwarranted discussion about how every international negotiation after Brexit will be rational (hence we will get a nice trade deal). Personally, I don't think it's that rational for the EU to give us a better deal than its own members, but even if it were, it is unlikely to happen. Does no one remember Charles de Gaulle? Do we think logicians make policy? Having raised alarm over Romanians, will they give their assent to favourable terms for exit? This is fantasy. What is reality is the damage it will do to British politics as well. Whatever happens now, the Tory party has ripped itself apart and the Labour party is guilty of passive acquiescence to irrelevance (if Remain lose, it will be Jeremy Corbyn's fault). And when the hope doesn't materialise, voters will have new reasons to distrust their leaders. All of these are both entirely predictable and a direct result of calling this referendum.

Reflections on a referendum (II): I do not think democracy means what you think it means (with a short discourse on sovereignty)

This campaign has been dogged by a discussion of Democracy (capital D). I find this inexpressibly tedious, partly because I have at best a lukewarm attachment to democracy, but mostly because so does everyone else.

Not that you would know it. It's long been an annoying habit in public discourse to conflate everything one likes with democracy. As a result, things we don't like tend to be labelled undemocratic, when they are often, for example illiberal. Absurdly, when Obama intervened in the referendum, Leave called it undemocratic, as if having a view is equivalent to having a vote. Obama wasn't being undemocratic; he's doing something the Leave campaign didn't like.

This conflation leads to confusion, bad policy and poor outcomes. It also leads people to believe that pure democracy is something that is both desirable and present in the UK. Neither of these statements are true, though not for the reasons that have been advanced by Brexiteers. We have a democratic system, in that it's a system where most levers are decided by election, but not all. The judiciary is not (see America for why this is a good thing); the civil service is not (also good, even the US seem to believe this is mostly a good idea). Rather excellently, even parts of our legislature are not either (for the avoidance of doubt, I am talking about the Lords). We certainly don't live in a pure democracy - not every decision is put to the vote or taken on the basis of popular opinion. Thankfully. If they were, we'd have Hanging back; we'd also have a mess. California is a good example of what happens when politicians are overridden by referenda - governments cannot govern. Like every other "democratic" country, we have a system for balancing popular views with the need to govern.

The European Union has another one. I don't think it's a particularly good one, though it's not bad, and the task is complicated. It's plain to me that every major appointment in Brussels is effectively selected democratically. Power is vested in the Council of Ministers (all elected), the President (chosen by elected heads of state), the commissioners (appointed by elected officials and then confirmed by the elected Parliament) and the Parliament (elected, albeit by a system that I don't like). We may not like the role of the Commission, i.e., that they can propose legislation, but they can't pass it. Both the Ministers and the Parliament can block it. All of these are institutions with problems, in large part because we don't take them seriously as institutions (note who we send and how we vote for MEPs and who we select as commissioners). But they are democratic.

That they are democratic does not mean they are desirable. It is entirely legitimate to reject institutions for lots of reasons, including that it's badly designed. We may feel that the UK is misaligned with the rest of Europe, and that it should be separate (a version of the SNP argument at home, i.e., a single demos does not exist). But that is to make a claim about appropriateness of structure, not democracy. To conflate them is unhelpful. I'd make the same point about policy. By all means object to EU policy, but then object to EU policy, not its democratic credentials. As an aside, the UK is overwhelmingly in line with EU policy on almost everything that passes. Insofar as these things can be counted, we have been outvoted about 2% of the time since 1999, though a higher number recently. I struggle to think of major elements where we have been heavily defeated, though there may be. Of course, that the UK is outvoted is not undemocratic; the clue is in the name.

I feel there are echoes of this in the debate about sovereignty. If I'm completely honest, I find the debate here bewildering. Last time I really considered sovereignty, I was studying the Dutch revolt and it meant William of Orange, as a sovereign prince, could license piracy. I understood that. What I don't understand is the suggestion that we are not sovereign now. That we are having a referendum is obvious and literal proof that we have sovereign power to change the terms of our treaty relationship with the other EU members. We don't stop being sovereign if we choose to vest decisions in supranational bodies, just as we do with NATO or the ECHR. I think what people mean when they talk about sovereignty is that they think the EU is making bad decisions and possibly that they believe our Parliament would be better at making those decisions. In many cases that's impossible, some decisions can only be made effectively at a supranational level, for example the recent changes to mobile phone roaming charges. More generally, I'm pretty sceptical about our own capacity to deliver, but it's a reasonable position. I wish we were having a debate about institutional capacity, rather than "Freedom." That sounds technocratic, but the EU debate is about how we do the running of things; or rather, it should be. If it was ever in doubt, we resolved the sovereignty debate the moment the referendum was called.

One more tomorrow, on consequences.

Reflections on a referendum (I): the war against maths

I can't resist. We're three days out, other people have started weighing in with their thoughts, and I've found this whole campaign so appalling, I don't think I can let it finish without a small rantette. I was going to start Thursday but it felt wrong. However, that it's truncated is probably a blessing - I'll only have a chance to do a handful of these, to everyone's relief. I'll aim to keep the most important things.

So let's start with numbers (I'll come back to democracy and identity another time), because I think of all the dreadful things, numeracy has been one of the most dreadful. I know this isn't news - I've discussed before how politicians can't do basic calculations and that the electorate doesn't know how to interpret counting. Nor is this a partisan point, Remain have been guilty of absurd hyperbole, though their basic trajectory is I think right. Leave have been cleverer and have used numbers better, but in a fundamentally misleading manner. It's good politics in the short term, in the long term it fuels expectations that cannot be met.

Let's start with the most infamous - the £350m a week to the EU claim. Everyone who reads knows this is a meaningless number, though it's emblazoned on every Leave bus. It's been attacked by all and sundry. We've spent what feels like a month talking about it, yet the majority of people still believe it to be true. I am entirely prepared to have a debate about the real number, but this is impossible if people cannot grasp addition, and campaigners have no qualms about manipulating that. I'm tempted to blame Leave for using it. I really blame the electorate for falling for it.

That said, however it's cut, the number is still big. The net number is £100m+ a week, £8.5bn a year. People keep asserting that's a big number. But the world is really big, even the UK is pretty big, Our GDP is £1.8 trillion; government spending is around £600bn; the NHS alone is over £100bn. So the number is less than 0.5% of GDP and only just over 1% of government spending. Even if you don't believe Sir John Major that the NHS is as safe as a hamster with a python under prominent Leavers, £8bn won't solve it. More importantly, it's irrelevant anyway. Nobody thinks Brexit will be neutral on the economy, and it would be fantastical if they did: either erecting barriers to our main markets hammers the economy (I include to this view), or in the future, the UK as a open trading nation booms as the Singapore of Europe (I do not incline to this view, but it doesn't matter), as soon as that impact is 0.5%, then the £8bn has vanished. And all this is before we talk currency. If you are weighing up the economic consequences of leaving, don't even bother to talk about the payment, talk about growth - not for nothing is compound interest the most powerful force in the world.

Finally, the most important number: immigration, announced at the end of May as a net 330k. For most people, Brexit is really a debate about immigration. I spent an evening with ex-colleagues last week where the Brexiteers all talked a good game about everything else, but they're a minority in their own campaign and the country. The only thing that's moved the polls is immigration. I would note that 1) 330k isn't actually that many people. It's easy to talk about a the size of city it represents, but we have a lot of small cities. It's 0.5% of population, the same increase as from our natural birth rate. High, sure, but neither unprecedentedly so nor impossible to manage. People who think Britain is full need to spend more time in Wales. And 2) Half of it is not from the EU. Where we can cut migration as we wish, we are not doing so. It's curious that we thus think the whole thing is out of control. This isn't to deny that there may be localised impacts, but it is now and will be in the future much smaller than people think. This is clear from the perception research: people think the EU-born population (including, I presume, me) is three times larger than it is. There's a positive and a negative case to be made around immigration. They both start with counting. We haven't got there yet.

Democracy tomorrow

Bibliography, May 2016

BOTM: T. Capote, In cold blood

K. Amis, The alteration
B. Bainbridge, The bottle factory outing
W. Fiennes, The Snow geese (from last month. I forgot)
A. Leckie, Ancillary Sword
A. Leckie, Ancillary Mercy
C. Mieville, Railsea
S. Rohmer, The mystery of Fu Manchu

K. Vonnegut, Cat's cradle

I think The Alteration is one of Kingsley Amis' best books - far better than the dire offerings I've read recently - though it's not in Lucky Jim's class. It is clever, and done very well right through the end, which I think is a nice subversion of the conventions of such novels. I have read it several times, but I'm rereading it as part of my plan to read all of the John W. Campbell award. However, although excellent, partly because of the frequency of reading, I've given BOTM to Capote's classic, which does not suffer from being overlooked. It's a book that spawned a genre. And, though true crime is not a genre I've read a lot of or intend to, this is outstanding. It's tense, even though we know the outcome, which is no mean feat. Above all though, it brings the human dimension not just to the victims, but to the murderers and the wider 'cast.' I also think it does narrative perspective well: it bring vividly to life the way such actions upend some lives and communities, but quickly wash through others. I gather bits of it are slightly made up, but I have no quarrel with that.