Liberty put on a one-night fundraising show tonight at the Hackney Empire (a grand old Victorian theatre now well restored) under the title ‘Bonfire of the Liberties’.
Performers included Rory Bremner and Marcus Brigstocke, and several other stand-up acts, introduced by Shami Chakrabarti, and we went along.
I was surprised not to see more Liberal Democrats I recognised there - there were a few but not many. But seeing several Labour people made me realise that there are many Labour members who still see civil liberties are a Labour issue - for much as we Liberal Democrats see the Government as limiting them and lazily think that so by extension presumably Labour members must also think the same, many longstanding Labour members see themselves as the internal opposition to their own Government on this issue (and indeed for many, other issues too).
In fact most of the performers didn’t really talk a lot about civil liberties - but it was nevertheless a very entertaining evening.
But the most striking satire of the evening for me wasn’t about civil liberties at all, but about Europe.
Marcus Brigstocke asked the audience if anyone supported having a referendum on the European treaty. A few people cheered. And that gave him what he needed to set off:
Yes - we support having a referendum because it’s our democratic right.
Our democratic right - to vote in a referendum on a document we haven’t read
A document we have no intention of reading
Our democratic right to vote on something that we haven’t even read a summary of
A document we don’t even know anyone who has read.
But we want a referendum because it’s our democratic right.
So there you have it. Of course you can run through lots of familiar arguments about one of the features of democracy being people voting on issues in which they are not experts. But in a democratic vote people do normally have at least some general idea of the implications of voting one way or the other.
In this case, however, you really would have the vast vast majority of people passing judgement on a document which they basically have not the first idea what it’s about, and in which they have no interest.
That is not democracy.
November 6th, 2007 at 18:04
I’ve read it.
Anyway, Gladstone said “trust the people” not “trust the regular library users”.
November 7th, 2007 at 1:31
Hi Antony
Actually Gladstone didn’t say that - he said “trust in the people, qualified by prudence”. It seems to me that asking people to vote on something about which they know *absolutely nothing*, as opposed to things they only know the general consequences of, fails the “prudence” test.
Obviously asking them to vote on whether they want the UK to stay in the EU or not, which I support, is something which they do know generally about and so are in a position to vote on.
While I haven’t personally actually sat down and read the whole thing I am quite familiar with its contents - but unless you and I between us know a statistically significant proportion of the electorate personally, the fact that you and I have read it (at one remove, in my case) is not relevant. The point is that the vast majority of the public - and even of “regular library users”, as you put it - don’t know anyone who has read it.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:49
So, all that the government needs to do to avoid referenda is to ensure that the public remains sufficiently ignorant of the issue?
November 7th, 2007 at 11:32
Rob - thanks, yes, that’s exactly what I’m arguing for!
Lots of effort has been put in to trying to inform and engage the British public on the EU and what it does (I have done quite a lot of it myself…) but with the best will in the world I do not think a document about the internal working arrangements of government institutions is ever going to get a very wide amount of public interest. In a democracy the public want to make the decisions - but at some level of detail you reach a point, if you ask any member of the public, where they expect politicians to sort out the details for them. It seems to me that the precise size of the European Parliament, for example, which is typical of the level of detail of most elements of this treaty, falls into that category.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:18
I had to check to get it exact, but the full quote is-
“Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear”.
Aren’t you tending towards conservativism by that definition.
Two points that I would be interested to hear your response on,
1. You wouldn’t cancel the General Election on the basis that the electorate haven’t read the parties’ manifestoes. When the election comes they might get a sense of the contents from the mass media and from the parties’ campaigns. But surely the same is true of a referendum.
2. You support a referendum on membership and I agree with you that it is a preferable way to frame it. But it’s essentially the same thing. Membership means whether we remain a signatory state of the T of Rome, the Single European Act, Maastricht, Amsterdam, etc, and in paricular whether we become a signatory state of the new treaty that will supercede them. So, the question has the very same practical effect. It’s just expressed differently.
One other thing, I accept that interest in turnout in a referendum would be less than in, for example, a General Election but so is turnout in a local election or the European Parliament election, but that would never be advanced as a reason not to hold those ballots.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:26
My position is that in a democracy one of the features is people who are not fully up on all the issues, taking the decision. But in most elections (national or local) the public does at least have some general idea of what they think the consequences of voting a particular way will be (albeit some of it derived through the media, as you say).
But a referendum on this treaty seems to me to be different in that only a statistically insignificant number of people have any idea at all of the issues at stake or consequences of voting a particular way - indeed I don’t think I know what the consequences of a ‘no’ vote would be, and I don’t think the vast majority of the electorate would know what the consequences of a ‘yes’ vote will be. As I’ve said, I think the decisions in this are beyond the threshold where the public expect to be able to leave detailed decisions about procedure to politicians.
It seems like we are basically on agreement on the value of having a referendum on EU membership instead. I don’t think it is quite the same thing as a vote on this treaty. A ‘no’ vote in an in/out referendum would have a clear consequence: the UK should leave the EU. But a ‘no’ vote in this referendum - what in fact would the consequences of that be? Most people certainly would not think that by voting no to it were they asking for UK withdrawal from the EU - and on balance (though the consequences of a no vote are difficult to predict) I suspect they wouldn’t be. A UK no vote would undoubtedly kick off further rounds of negotiation, probably at least another inter-governmental conference, and probably in the direction of the rest of the EU doing more things without us, I would guess. But it would be different to a simple ‘no’ vote in an in/out referendum.
November 8th, 2007 at 22:59
I apologise for my flippant comment. Nevertheless, I do think that ‘public ignorance’ is a poor reason for opposing a referendum in the long term. My point, although I made it somewhat poorly, was that a culture of public ignorance could be used to justify denying referenda, and we should not be in favour of that scenario arising (or, if you believe that we are already at that point, continuing). In my opinion, one of the best ways to avoid public ignorance is to have more referenda, more often. Could it be that one of the main reasons the public is so poorly engaged with these issues to begin with is that they are so rarely asked to engage in a meaningful way?
Now, I can probably agree with you that the EU reform treaty is probably not the best place to start building a referendum culture, but at some point we’re going to have to bite the bullet and put some important piece of legislation to a referendum and be prepared to take the consequences, whatever those prove to be. I worry that the constant talk of having a referendum, and the consistent denial of it by the party in power, will reinforce the view that the public should not be directly consulted.
November 8th, 2007 at 23:15
Rob
Thanks for your longer comment. I respect your point of view on this - and perhaps in the bigger picture you are right. I do agree with you that if you do want to build a referendum culture this wouldn’t be the ideal starting point!
But I’m also not sure that I do want to build ‘a referendum culture’. Within mature and well established democracies it is the exception rather than the rule. Switzerland does it well but there are plenty of other places where referendums have not worked well. I’m not an expert but Ireland seems to be possibly a good example of this, where they don’t have referenda as commonly as in Switzerland, but considerably more often than us. And yet (from what I gather) you still have a sizeable proportion of people seeing any referendum as a de facto opportunity to comment on what they think of their government at the moment.
And I also don’t think that Parliamentary government is at all a bad system. I don’t want to go into it here, partly because it’s a long and complicated argument but mostly because I’m not too knowledgeable about it (!), but it seems to me that through history those who have been opposing (a) demagoguery, or (b) the rise of Leninism have made powerful arguments for the value of intermediate institutions such as Parliament. This argument seems to me to have no little force.
But as you say that is an argument for the longer term. On the more immediate issue of a referendum on this treaty, I have long argued with those pro-Europeans who have said that it would be good to have a referendum on something like this, because it would “force us to have the debate”. Starting from where we are now, I don’t think it would do that at all - the vast majority of voters would not engage in any debating at all, and would simply vote on other issues.
November 9th, 2007 at 0:15
I was there, Jeremy ! Didn’t see you, although I did see David Davies chatting to Shami Chakrabarti. I agree with your comment about Labour supporters and what hope would there be if we had to rely upon the Conservatives to protect civil liberties !
Referendums are poor instruments at best. They are absurd for treaty ratification, which deserves line-by-line scrutiny which only parliament can provide. There was no referendum on the North Atlantic Treaty or any other treaty I can think of. As a party we made a great mistake to call for a referendum on the constitutional treaty and to give credence to the idea that a referendum was appropriate. Eurosceptics say the government is afraid of a referendum whereas in fact they are afraid of ratification by a parliament that has actually examined the document in question.
The particular problem with a referendum on any EU treaty is not that the public is ignorant but that they have been deliberately and systematically misinformed by eurosceptics and, as Jonathan Calder rightly says, federalists have not made their case.
November 9th, 2007 at 0:43
The comments which Jonathan Calder has made and which David refers to, are here.
November 9th, 2007 at 21:27
There remains a fundamental problem of sovereignty though. In my view, sovereignty should belong to the people, and they delegate that power to Parliament. Of course, our present constitution doesn’t work that way, but that’s a case for constitutional reform.
If the people delegate power to Parliament, I don’t believe that Parliament should delegate that power without consent from the people. I know that this creates all manner of awkward problems, but I can’t help thinking this way. It’s a principle which, for me, trumps the practicalities of European integration.
I should point out that I’m entirely in favour of many of the things that the EU does, and I think that the pooling of sovereignty in many areas is a good thing. National parliaments should indeed give up powers in some areas; for example, the power to restrict the movement of people, goods and communication within the EU has been given up, and we’ve all gained from that. I just think that people should be asked to give their approval to these things, precisely so that they cannot be taken away later.
November 9th, 2007 at 22:11
It’s not clear to me that the reform treaty, specifically, actually does ‘delegate power’ (at least significantly - you can make the argument that every piece of legislation, and certainly every international treaty, does in some sense).
Checking my usual checklist of elements of the treaty here, I can’t see much that does - giving national Parliaments 8 weeks to object to new legislation, for example, doesn’t seem to do that, nor does a new protocol more clearly limiting the powers of the EU when no express power has been conferred on it.
Of course we have shared or delegated power within the EU more generally - but that supports a referendum on EU membership in general, not just this treaty.
A further wider question is the presumption that the power you mentioned being delegated from the people, exists uniquely at a national level - ie that it is a delegation of power because it is being shared within the EU. I don’t in fact accept that power exists only in “nation-sized” parcels in this way. I, as an individual citizen, am entitled to some say over what government does to me, but that is not limited to national government - it exists at other levels too, from the local to the supranational.
November 9th, 2007 at 23:36
Following the exchange above, David has now followed this up on his own blog here, followed by a three-part critique of what the treaty actually says, here, here and here.