Leavers are the ones who should be demanding a second referendum | thearticle

How often do we hear exclaimed “This is not the Brexit I voted for” to pre-empt some particular Brexit arrangement the government is threatening to make? How often do we find the autonomy of

‘leave’ voters commandeered for some self-entitled speaker to declare on behalf of all of them “This is not what the people voted for”, “No-one voted for a no-deal Brexit” or “The people

didn’t vote to be a vassal state”, “… make themselves poorer” and so on? We hear it all the time. It’s the standard rhetorical move when one Brexiteer wants to rule out one particular

version and advocate another. It was used against May’s deal by the likes of the ERG, Johnson and Farage, against no-deal by almost everyone else, and against Johnson’s deal by Jeremy Corbyn

and those who would now wish to erase from history the small regret of having used it against May’s deal before they saw Johnson’s. By examining how the declaration “This is not the Brexit

I voted for” might function, we can throw light on the effectiveness of the referendum in delivering a “will of the people” and a Brexit mandate. It is helpful here to consider how a “Not

what I voted for” claim might be warranted in the case of a General Election. Following a GE we can assess a party’s performance against election promises and conclude, should these differ,

“This is not what I voted for”. A popular example is, “I didn’t vote for the Iraq war”. The component is also central in demands that MPs changing party should resign their seats and fight a

by-election, and in attempts to deselect MPs straying from the party line. In each case it is possible and reasonable to claim that the particular set of circumstances was not supported by

one’s vote. Contrast this with the 2016 referendum. True, the manifold statements advocating Brexit provided no shortage of candidate criteria against which the Brexit secured could be

measured and so, potentially, support the claim “This is not the Brexit I voted for”. Problem is, this richly described Brexit comprised an embarrassment of mutually exclusive claims

regarding the nature of Brexit which, taken together, cannot yield any remotely coherent concept a voter could be definitively for or against. This means that, while voting for a preferred

version of Brexit was impossible, it was no more possible to simply vote for the whole of Brexit-as-such because, comprising all the competing, contradictory claims, boasts, truths and lies

sold to the public as constituting ‘Brexit’, the idea collapses into incoherence, rendering the referendum useless in delivering a ‘will of the people’ or issuing any mandate. Consequently,

when it comes to Brexits – the Johnson-with-a-deal Brexit, the Johnson no-deal Brexit, May’s Brexit, Corbyn’s, Farage’s, Cameron’s never-to-be-seen plan, the ERG’s, or the customs union,

single market or vassal state Brexits – there is nothing to validate the claim of each to have the 17.4 million-strong mandate. No comfort can be sought in the wheeze that ‘each Brexit

option commands a 17.4 million mandate because the mandate is for all possible Brexits’. That is simply to explain what a mandate is not. It is useless to protest that ‘leave’ voters simply

voted to ‘leave’. The misleading simplicity of the ballot paper cannot disguise the fact that ‘leaving’ was never offered as a simple, singular alternative to remaining. The mantra “No-deal

is better than a bad deal” springs out of the recognition of this very point. Construing ‘leave’ as a simple ‘Not-in’ falls at the same hurdle. There is much disagreement about what

constitutes in/out here. No one with skin in the game of Brexit was content to offer an austere, detail-light account of Brexit’s topography. In the hands of politicians, and others, the

distinction in/out is fluidly mobile and politically relative. In formal languages, defining negation is a simple task. We should not be misled into thinking that natural languages are

similarly compliant. So, if the ‘leave’ vote couldn’t express the people’s ‘will’ or issue a mandate, what did it do? The ‘will’ and the mandate outcomes fail, essentially, because the

referendum did not enable ‘leave’ voters to know what they were voting for. In any rational democracy this ought to disqualify at a stroke any pretence the referendum might have to

democratic legitimacy and necessitate the revoking of Article 50. Contrary to what the referendum might have been expected to achieve, and contrary to what most MPs appear to maintain, the

most that can be claimed is that it granted free license to government to do whatever it wanted within parameters to be determined by itself; provoking the disquieting irony whereby in

‘taking back control’, the people actually surrender control of the authoritative account of their own Brexit visions, their thoughts, hopes, wishes and intentions to the government. This

commits us to seeing the vote as a performative act and not a declaration. Not what voters believed themselves to be doing when they felt they knew what they were voting for. In consequence,

the alternative to ‘remain’ is ‘handing control to government’, any government – potentially a Corbyn government – to write its own Brexit mandate. This license has no party-affiliation. It

does nothing to hold a government to account against a mandate. Rather, it initiates a competition; inviting interested parties to vie for ownership of the ‘will of the people’ and the

rights to what voters ‘knew’. I am surprised that Tory Brexiters are so sanguine about the possibility that Jeremy Corbyn may be just an election away from seizing that unfettered control;

but these are strange times. Thus, despite the sententious bluster with which parliament oozes its concern for ‘democracy’, the ‘leave’ vote achieved nothing more than to authorise

government to tell voters, post hoc, what they had voted for, and a free hand to construct whatever mandate they wish to impose upon, not receive from the people. The ‘people’s will’ becomes

simply a rhetoric-machine designed to bend the opinion of individuals to that of the perpetrators of the ‘will’ myth under cover of the lie that this view aligns perfectly with that of the

masses. It is a tool for the manipulation of the population. It is anti-democratic. The battle being waged in parliament is for the ownership rights to the will of the people and for the

extraordinary metaphysical authority to tell ‘leave’ voters that this is exactly what they knew they were voting for when they entered the polling station in 2016. Many who voted ‘leave’

protest that any further referendum would mean that their vote in 2016 is being ignored. Painful though the news may be, their vote signified nothing capable of being noticed or ignored.

Their justified outrage should focus not on the false injustice of their vote being ignored but on the real injustice of their vote being used; used to justify actions which potentially work

against their own best interests and to push through, in the name of democracy, the ideology of some or other set of MPs and unelected advisors, which cannot claim any warrant from the

people. The ‘will of the people’ is clearly so malleable in the hands of these politicians, who fashion it, with perfect line, in their own image, that the expression is leached of meaning.

Wielded as a trophy, proudly displayed with idle swank by every politician with a ‘Brexit’ to sell, this emaciated ‘will’ is entirely useless in differentiating between Brexits or in ranking

Brexits. The claim of leavers that “We knew what we were voting for” is re-formed to precisely fit the vision of whichever demagogue seeks control of that ‘knowledge’ to force it to serve

their own personal ambition. Consequently, any ‘leave’ voter seriously concerned to uphold the values of our liberal democracy must demand a further referendum to ratify whatever Brexit

government constructs in their name. A form of Brexit may yet prevail over ‘remain’. In that event I guarantee it won’t satisfy all ‘leave’ voters, but at least this time, should Brexit

reality part company with Brexit promises, they will legitimately be able to declare “This is not the Brexit I voted for”.