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Whether Leave or Remain, it is the people who should now decide the future of our country

The public want to be heard and they mean to make their leaders listen

Friday 22 March 2019 18:54 GMT
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The Independent hands in Final Say petition to Downing Street

Even if little else good emerges from the Brexit phenomenon, and historians look back upon it as a strange aberration, it has at least confounded some unhelpful pieces of conventional wisdom.

On Saturday, for example, many hundreds of thousands are expected to join The Independent and others on the Put It To The People march in London – proof, were it needed, that people are hugely engaged with this vital issue. Some 3 million – and counting – have signed the official petition seeking a cancellation of Brexit, and for the Article 50 process to be ended. More than a million have given their support to a petition calling for a second referendum. While there may be some overlap between the two groups, together that constitutes a significant proportion of the adult population.

In all fairness, too, there are millions who are still passionate Leavers, perfectly decent people who simply believe that leaving the EU, under whatever terms they prefer, is the right course for the country. In a spirit of plurality, their views should also be respected, though it is also apparent that the Brexit Betrayal trek across England has enjoyed lukewarm support.

The message, then, is clear. The people want to be heard and they mean to make their leaders listen. Passionate Leavers and Remainers – whether they have changed their view in recent months or not – want a Final Say on the terms of Brexit. Some regard any terms as worse than the ones now enjoyed by the UK within the EU, including the budget rebates, the opt-out from the euro and a substantial voting presence in the union’s governing bodies. Others fear that “the Brexit we voted for” is slipping away from them. Both sides – all sides – deserve to have an equal say in the future of the country. It is a democratic imperative.

The other evening the prime minister, in an extraordinary and highly divisive performance, claimed that “you the public have had enough. You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree, I am on your side.”

She has a point. The wrangling, the complex arguments, the parliamentary and EU procedural rows, and an increasingly emotive and violent debate have all been tiring. Businesses do seek certainty, as they keep saying.

Yet why did that happen – especially since the deal was signed off last November? Because the prime minister was too stubborn to adjust to changing circumstances, and so we simply went round in circles, more precious time wasted.

It does not necessarily follow that everyone suffering from Brexit fatigue necessarily supports the May deal, simply out of exhaustion, having thrown the towel in because they can take it no more. That was always the flaw in her approach – to grind down her critics in the expectation that they would sooner or later give in. They have not, and they will not, because they do not want her deal and they can see through her tactics. The overwhelming parliamentary majorities against it and the lack of public support for it – not the same as Brexit boredom – show precisely how far she has failed to win the argument.

So we look to parliament for leadership, and the Commons today is more significant a force than it has been for decades. Speaker Bercow is prepared to stand up for its rights; its members, or at least some of them, are prepared to take back control from an over-mighty and frankly incompetent executive. However, it has all come rather late, and even now the Commons seems riven by dissent on every side, traditional party loyalties unable to cope with the strains, leading to formal and informal splits and the rise of factions such as the European Research Group, the social democrats in the Labour Party and the breakaway Independent Group.

Having been sidelined from the process – without any opportunity to vote on the “red lines”, for example – parliament has also failed to chart a forward path. There is still little sign of consensus developing. The only option that has much chance is the grand bargain of cross-party support for the May deal – but strictly conditional on a popular vote to ratify it, with Remain as an option on the ballot paper.

To a greater or lesser degree, all the parties have been guilty of wrecking Brexit, though it was always an ill-starred project. The whiff of insincerity always hung over Ms May’s attempts to “reach out” across party lines, a notion she was clearly uncomfortable with. She couldn’t even persuade her natural “confidence and supply” partners in the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party to vote for her proposals.

A series of indicative votes now in parliament may help our MPs to reach some sort of consensus. We already know that they have rejected no-deal Brexit twice, and will do so again. So have the cabinet – forcing the prime minister to grant a free vote on the issue.

Still, even if the House of Commons were harmoniously united, from Jacob Rees-Mogg to Chuka Umunna and from Nigel Dodds to Caroline Lucas, the British people still deserve a vote on their collective future – this time with all the facts, arguments and prospects for Brexit as known as they can be.

The reality, though, is that parliament is deadlocked and will probably remain so, even under the guidance of capable, rational figures such as Dominic Grieve and Yvette Cooper. With every week of postponed votes and fudged solutions buying the prime minister a little more opportunity to “run down the clock” and keep herself in No 10, hoping something will turn up, it has become increasingly apparent that only a popular vote, free and fair, will be able to break the impasse.

For practical and democratic reasons, the government has to put the deal, whatever it ends up being, to the people, because only they can decide, because only they should decide on their future and because that essential expression of consent it is the only way to start the process of healing the nation.

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