BREXIT IS THE CERTAIN ROUTE TO A DIVIDED BRITAIN / THE FINANCIAL TIMES OP EDITORIAL

Brexit is the certain route to a divided Britain

MPs should not bow to claims that a second referendum would lead to trouble

Philip Stephens

The most often-heard argument against a second vote on British membership of the EU is also the least plausible. By this account, revisiting the issue would be “divisive”. Old wounds would never close. Deal or no deal with Brussels, the sooner the barricades are thrown up across the Channel the sooner a spirit of national unity can be restored.

This relies on the outlandish assumption that the 48 per cent of Brits who voted in 2016 to remain part of the EU are now content to hum the English nationalists’ tunes. Those who saw the country’s fortunes as inextricably bound up with Europe are ready to shrug their shoulders at the prospect of a poorer, less secure, closed Britain.

In the real world, revisiting the decision taken in 2016 would be divisive only in the sense that the Brexit vote was itself divisive. Plebiscites are exercises not in democracy but in crude majoritarianism. The institutions and norms of liberal democracy are there to protect the rights of minorities. Referendums afford no such respect to the loser.

In two of the nations of the union that comprises the United Kingdom — England and Wales — a majority backed leaving the EU. In Scotland and Northern Ireland the greater number wanted to remain. Opinion across all four nations was divided around just about every demographic axis.

England’s great metropolitan cities — London most notably — produced big pro-European majorities. They were outvoted in provincial cities and towns and rural areas. Across Britain, young people backed staying in the EU by a hefty margin — only to see a different course set for their lives by those whose futures are mostly behind them. The university-educated affluent were solidly Remain. The less advantaged mostly joined the Leave camp.

Two-and-a-half years after the referendum the chasm looks, if anything, deeper. Traditional left/right divides have been rubbed out by the Brexit faultline. Opinion pollsters say the numbers suggest that a second referendum most likely would see a shift just sufficient to produce a Remain vote. Brexiters warn in one breath that a second referendum would be dangerously divisive and in the next claim, curiously, that it would hand them a landslide. A dispassionate view would probably judge the outcome too close to call.

It is safe to say that, whatever the fortunes of prime minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal when parliament votes on the package next week, the costs and consequences of leaving the EU will be felt and fought over for years to come. Brexit is a process, not an event. Untangling the closely woven threads of integration will be not be easy. The arguments could rage for a decade. Along the way the young will not be applauding the old for denying them a future in Europe.

More likely the fractures will widen. The UK union is the likely victim. When the people of Scotland voted in 2014 against separation, they were opting for an open over a closed future. Scotland’s unique ties with the other three nations of the UK sat alongside Britain’s place in the EU. Brexit changes fundamentally this calculus. For all the nonsense spouted by some Brexiters about “Global Britain”, the road out of Europe leads back to little England.

What else does “taking back control” of borders mean except closing the door to outsiders? Leaving the single market and customs union is an act of protectionism. It will restrict exchanges — personal as well as economic and political — between Britain and its neighbours.

At its root, Brexit is an expression of English nationalism — a rejection of “Britishness”, the ingeniously expansive identity invented to embrace UK union and empire. The next time they are given the chance, the people of Scotland will surely choose Europe over England.

Northern Ireland’s place in the union is no longer beyond question. For the moment Mrs May depends for her majority at Westminster on the votes of the Democratic Unionist party. But the implacable stance on the Irish border that has seen the DUP hold the prime minister to ransom in the Brexit negotiations also marks out the distance between unflinching Ulster unionism and broader opinion in Northern Ireland. Demography is on the side of those seeking a united Ireland. Brexit pushes in the same direction.
It is too soon to say what parliament will come up with if, as expected, Mrs May’s deeply flawed Brexit blueprint falls to heavy defeat next week. Nothing can be ruled out in a nation suffering what can only be described as a collective nervous breakdown.

Hardline Brexiters call themselves champions of parliamentary sovereignty. Yet they rail against John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, for giving MPs the opportunity to exercise that sovereignty. These Brexiters also whisper that “the people” (they mean angry nationalists who have been trying to intimidate pro-European MPs) will take over the streets if the MPs dare to challenge the outcome of the 2016 referendum. When last did the House of Commons bow to fear of the mob?

This is what happens when parliamentary democracy falls victim to a demagoguery that decrees that once voters have taken the “right” decision they cannot change their minds. It would be naive to think that a second referendum would close all the fissures opened up by Brexit. It might save the UK from the break-up of the union.