Vernon Bogdanor is largely regarded as the UK’s foremost constitutional expert and is a Research Professor at King’s College London. Isabella Pojuner, News Editor at The Beaver, interviewed him on the UK’s current constitutional crisis: Brexit, before the Prime Minister offered up a deal a few weeks ago.
You wrote in your recent Guardian article that “the sovereignty of the people is coming to trump the sovereignty of parliament.”
What I meant was that for the first time in British history Parliament is enacting a policy in which it does not believe. The majority of MPs and peers are Remainers. So also are the majority of members of the Cabinet. They believe that they have been instructed by the British people. The sovereignty of the people, therefore, has overcome the sovereignty of Parliament – a very significant constitutional event!
Is a free vote on Brexit in Parliament possible, and is it suitable?
A free vote on Brexit is hardly possible, and probably unsuitable. The government hopes to secure a deal embodied in a withdrawal treaty. It will seek to persuade Parliament to ratify this treaty. If it fails, the PM could hardly continue. Therefore, the government will not offer a free vote. Nor will Labour. Keir Starmer’s six conditions are deliberately laid down such that no conceivable deal could possibly meet them. Labour seeks an election and will, I am sure, whip its MPs to oppose the government, whatever it brings back from Brussels.
Talk of a leadership contest is once again prominently circulating, and Labour is currently in opposition of the Government’s proposed deal. While talk of a leadership contest has again prominently circulated over the last couple of weeks, with moves toward 1922 Committee action, Bogdanor wrote in the Guardian last week that hopes of a no-confidence motion “appear to have fizzled out.”
The People’s Vote march almost matched the turnout of the 2003 Stop The War protests. Will the sovereignty of the people trump the resilience of the Government?
There is a case for arguing that a ‘People’s Vote’ is actually in the interest of the government. Otherwise, if Brexit does not produce the promised benefits – and remember that the PM was a Remainer – the Conservatives will be blamed. They will seem to ‘own’ Brexit. Perhaps the people should own it instead, if the people still want it.
Are referendums bad for democracy?
Referendums are good for democracy if not used too frequently as in Switzerland. They require voters to think carefully about particular issues, as they did in 2016. Turnout was higher than in any general election since 1992 since there are no safe seats in a referendum and every vote counts. In a general election, by contrast, many seats, for example seats in the North East, are so safe that there is no incentive to turn out. Elections are decided only in the marginal seats.
There is much more scope, perhaps, for referendums at local level to encourage participation and reverse the decline of local government.
Referenda may require voters to think carefully, but do they?
Yes, voters do think. They should not be patronised. The main reasons for Brexit were: 1. To control EU immigration. 2. To restore the sovereignty of Westminster. If that is what one believes, it is rational to vote for Brexit. I, of course, do not share that view, but I have never believed that voters did not know what they were voting for.
Would a second referendum, such as the type you have publicly stood for, be too many? Some commentators have stressed the idea of voter fatigue.
The idea of voter fatigue is absurd. Voting takes 10 minutes at most. If one voted every year, and was a voter for 70 years, one would have spent under 12 hours of one’s life voting – equivalent, say, to three days of TV viewing. Is it not worth sacrificing three days of viewing to sustain democracy.
You have discussed the concept of ‘disentrenchment’: that we are removing ourselves from semi-codification. Without a definitive constitution, in basic terms: what can and can’t the government do? Are we reverting back to the past, or will our constitution evolve?
When we leave the EU, we lose the benefit of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, which entrenches rights – a much wider range than is in the European Convention – for example, a wide-ranging right to equality, a right to education, healthcare, etc. The Charter is the only element of EU law which is not to be incorporated into British law. That means our rights in future will depend on Parliament. Most other democracies do entrench rights. Are our MPs so much more sensitive to human rights issues that they can be trusted with this important function? I think not!
I hope, therefore, that Brexit becomes a constitutional moment, leading us towards a codified constitution. But I am not over-optimistic!
Do you believe in extending the franchise to 16-17 year olds? In addition, what about EU nationals? – perhaps on the condition that they have assured residency rights.
I am in favour of lowering the voting age to 16, but I am strongly against ad hoc arrangements for particular elections. 16 should be the voting age for all elections. The purpose of the 2016 referendum was to legitimise Britain’s policy towards the EU. That meant that the result had to be accepted by both sides as fair. It would not have been if the outcome seemed to have been determined by those put on the register for ad hoc reasons. That was the justification, I think, for excluding EU citizens and 16 year olds. So the franchise was exactly the same as that for parliamentary elections – with the minor and comparatively unimportant additions of peers and citizens of Gibraltar.
You say the purpose of the referendum was to legitimise EU policy. Some have pointed to Cameron’s desire to subdue the rise of UKIP. Do you agree? Or perhaps, what is your view on the role that individuals can play in constitutional moments in history?
Yes, Cameron faced threats from UKIP and from his own back-benchers. He had no alternative, in my view, to calling the referendum. In his Bloomberg speech he said that consent for the EU was wafer-thin. And the best argument for the referendum was that it led to Brexit. If the majority of voters do not want to stay in the EU, then we should not remain in the EU.
As for the role of the individual in history, a much larger subject! Would there have been a Russian revolution without Lenin? Would the Holocaust have occurred without Hitler? Would we have stayed in the war in 1940 without Churchill?
All questions requiring a great deal of thought.
Regarding your time at King’s College, have you garnered a sense of how students feel about Brexit, and if so – are they justified?
It is well known that the vast majority of university students are opposed to Brexit. As a Remainer, I agree with them!
Why?
Bogdanor directed me to an article he wrote in the Financial Times before the EU referendum, in which he wrote that the EU:
“…is an intergovernmental organisation with a difference, since member states consider not only their own interests, but the interests of Europe as a whole. The Continent has suffered in the past from the absence of such a perspective.”
Of course the EU needs radical change if it is to become more effective and more accountable…But, with the EU moving in a ‘British direction’, Britain is in a strong position to help shape its future – unless, of course, she decides, on 23 June, to cut herself off from the Continent.
He added:
Some core member states of the EU, such as Germany and France, might perhaps move towards tighter integration. But this core will probably be a small one, and Britain may well be joined by other countries, freeing themselves from what they regard as a monetary and fiscal straitjacket, in a larger outer circle.
In an article he wrote for ‘World Today’, Bogdanor reiterates the importance of the ‘European interest’, that the European Union is:
…not just a matter of political machinery, but a civilisation…the rule of law is likely to be better protected in a united Europe than in a Europe of nation states.
Can we expect a resolution to the Remain/Leave conflict in the near future?
I feel the conflict will continue for some time – because it reflects a cultural conflict – between the so-called exam-passing classes, most of whom live in the conurbations, and particularly in London, and of course includes all students at LSE; and the so-called left-behind.
The latter think, with some reason, that the exam-passing elite does not listen [to] them. I think they are right. We spend so much more on 18 to 21-year-olds who go to university as compared with those who don’t and further education colleagues are the Cinderella of the education system. These colleges have suffered badly from austerity. Sadly, the Labour Party seemed to stand for the self-interest of the middle classes in the 2017 general election.
Professor Bogdanor will be releasing a book in January entitled ‘Beyond Brexit’.
In the Guardian article published last week, Bogdanor wrote: “She could hardly return to Brussels to say: ‘Parliament will not back me – will you please give me something better?’ The EU would reply: ‘We only deal with those enjoying democratic legitimacy.'”
For a second referendum to occur, he says, the Electoral Commission expects a six month period between the bill passing and the referendum, including a 10-week campaign period. We would leave the EU later than 29th March 2019.
The second referendum, he says, would have three options: Remain, the most-recent proposed deal, and no deal. So a two-stage referenda: Remain or Leave, and then the deal or no deal. He says: no deal Brexit “need not be as terrible as some suggest.”
