Tag: Referendum

If we take one lesson from Brexit…

With Brexit causing chaos and voters of all beliefs unhappy, it is clear we must educate the electorate for a more successful democracy

Teetering near the cliff edge, Britain has never looked closer to a no-deal Brexit. That or a second referendum and regular readers will remember Principled Politics believes a ‘People’s Vote’ should absolutely not happen, in the name of democracy.

But, putting aside the temporary mess in Westminster, we must look to the long-term. What lessons can we learn from the past two years? What one thing should we take away from Brexit, the referendum and the chaos that has surrounded us?

One thing stands out- and it is not that buses with slogans can change the course of history. No, it is that Britain needs a civic course on the curriculum.

The level of misinformation and uneducated opinion that was spouted throughout the EU referendum, on both sides, reveals the degree to which the electorate has little understanding of how the UK political system works.

Whether it was Leavers’ believing that the full £350 million was up for grabs (a simple history lesson on Thatcher’s rebate would have settled this), or Remainers believing that Brexit would lead to a European war (not kidding, David Cameron suggested this on the 9th May 2016), both sides fell into the trap of believing dubious lies about the EU.

More precisely, in an Ipsos MORI poll from June 2016, 20% of those surveyed believed MEPs to be unelected and just over half knew they were, in fact, elected officials.

Even now, half of Theresa May’s difficulties in Parliament arise from the fact she promised the electorate a unicorn and in reality, can only produce a donkey with an aerosol can taped to its head. A lack of education set the Brexit bar far too high, leaving the government- and the country- in high water.

To me, it is madness that in the twenty-first century, we still expect the electorate to make sensible decisions for the UK, without having the necessary education. We are yet to take the blindfolds off the group playing cards, yet to remove the musician’s earmuffs. We are yet to educate the voter.

An understanding of the UKs political system should be made compulsory in schools, similar to how students must get at least a C in maths and English to move beyond their GCSEs.

Regardless of whether a citizen chooses to participate in our democracy, political policies affect everyone- through taxes, regulations and government policy.

When you use the NHS, the quality of treatment you receive stems from the government’s policy on healthcare funding. When schools increasingly spend less and less on your child, this is a direct result of the amount given by the government to councils. In everyday activities, politics is deeply influential and must be understood on some level.

In December 2016, Jason Brennan wrote ‘Is this the end of democracy?’ for the New Statesman, in which he argued that:

“voters nearly always lack the necessary knowledge. They are not just ignorant; they are misinformed. Democracy is the will of the people, but the people usually have little clue what they are doing.”

It is ludicrous that up until this point, such an important piece of education has been missed.

Yet, there are several criticisms of compulsory civic education.

The first is that politics is for the metropolitan elite. Most people have no desire to change politics in any means, shape or form. People do not want to learn about politics, period.

Yet, my answer to this is that whilst I hated my maths lessons, I am glad I had them. Whilst Pythagoras’ Theorem has yet to come in handy, an elementary understanding of mathematics has proved useful to me time and time again, regardless of how ‘irrelevant’ it is to a history undergrad.

Politics is similar to the basics of our curriculum: maths, sciences and English. It can often be tedious, dry, and seemingly irrelevant in equal measure. But it is essential knowledge for making decisions that affect our lives: over how well our illnesses are treated, how our old people are looked after, whether we can afford to buy a house and how much tax we must pay.  To say a knowledge of politics is not necessary is to willingly embrace ignorance and therefore, powerlessness.

A second criticism to be made of civic education is that this could be easily be violated, with a government setting a partisan curriculum, causing a generation to be taught biased values.

But the reality is that neither Conservatives nor Socialists, Liberals nor Nationalists of the British democratic tradition have ever advocated indoctrination as a useful means of education.

It would be perfectly possible for students to receive a nonpartisan political education, of the sort I chose to take up in sixth form. In the same way students are taught about Catholicism and Protestantism, it does not convert them but simply opens their minds.

Even if individual teachers were to have a political sway, students at school do not take teachers at their word- the amount of backchat I have heard thoroughly reassures me. Schools are places where students question values and teach themselves new ones- from books as much as from teachers.

Having an educated electorate would benefit political participation in this country.

No general election since 1997 has been able to achieve a turnout of 72%, a figure consistently surpassed for the 50 years before 1997. In the second half of the twentieth century, participation was consistently high, now it is disappointingly lower.

Educating the electorate just might solve this real democratic problem.

An understanding of what goes on in Westminster might stop MPs from being dismissed as elitist individuals in a confusing world. It would unlock an understanding of the way the world works around us. If people understood politics, it would not seem so boring nor so irrelevant.

Fundamentally, if everyone knew what the Single Market was, if everyone understood that Parliament is sovereign as stated in our constitution (yes, we do have a constitution) and if everyone understood how unproportional First-Past-The-Post was, we might have a real chance of rejuvenating politics and even bringing about real change.

Brexit revealed that no part of the electorate was safe from misinformation and misunderstanding. It is time the UK introduced a compulsory civics course to return power to the people.

Featured image: Principled Politics

Would compulsory political education benefit UK students and the electorate? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!
 

 

Eu Referendum No. 2: Dangerous for Democracy?

For many Remainers, the idea of a second referendum is a chance to reverse a major mistake. But the reality is that this option may lead to much more severe consequences.

 Pigs flew through the sky. Donald Trump opened the borders indefinitely to illegal migration. And Nigel Farage said that a second referendum on Brexit may happen.

Well, the last of those is true, even if all three seem some sort of bizarre parody, echoing from a parallel universe. To be precise, Nigel Farage stated that:

I do not want a second referendum, but I fear one may be forced upon the country by Parliament… This poses a big question for Leavers. Do we stick with the view that the result will stand or acknowledge the fact that we face this potential threat?

Henry Bolton, the current leader of UKIP, sought to clarify that Farage had misspoken, but stated that should there be a second referendum on Britain leaving the EU, “we would win it hands down”.

Of course, Downing Street swiftly replied that “we will not be having a second referendum”.

But, Downing Street also stated in Spring 2017 that there would be no snap election, and more recently it announced that there would be a significant cabinet reshuffle. Well, the only major shuffle was Theresa May moving from captain of a sinking ship to the violinist playing passively whilst the Titanic disappears beneath the waves.

So, we cannot rule out the possibility that a second referendum will not happen within the next two years. But here is why it is critical to UK democracy that this never occurs.

A recent study carried out suggested that within stable liberal democracies, faith in democracy is decreasing.

More precisely, in a study conducted by Yascha Mounk, a Harvard University researcher, and by Robert Stefan Foa, a political scientist at the University of Melbourne, it was concluded that there was a notable decline in belief that democracy is vital to civil society.

Published in the Journal of Democracy in January 2017, their research appears to be the most recent comprehensive examination of this issue. The conclusion that democracy is on the down is drawn from surveying the attitudes of those in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.

In an article about their findings in July 2016, it was argued that:

[citizens] have also become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy.

This feeling of powerlessness is arguably reflected in the sudden backlash against the establishment, with the election of a TV celebrity as POTUS and the public decision to leave the European Union.

anti-democracy
Should we be more aware of antipathy to democracy?

However, this is my own conjecture. More conclusively, the study states that in the USA, a ground-breaking 26% of the ‘millennial’ generation, (roughly those born between the mid-1980s and late-1990s), believe that free elections are “unimportant” in civil society.

So, how does this link to Farage, British politics and a second referendum?

Well, despite viewing Brexit as the result of a campaign of misinformation and elitism from the ‘Westminster Bubble’, I think the UK must leave the EU.

If there were to be a second referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, and if the electorate voted to remain, (two big ‘ifs’), this could hugely threaten democracy.

For those who voted leave, it would simply feel like the establishment played them and called them ‘racist plebs’. Their opinion would be overruled by the second referendum. It is effectively like rolling the dice over and over until you get the number that you want. Put simply, it is not fair.

As much as it kills me to say this, ‘the people have spoken’, and Britain must leave the European Union for the sake of maintaining faith in democracy.

Of course, this could simply be hysteria over nothing.

Mounk and Foa’s study stands alone in the 2016/2017 era of politics and has gone largely unchallenged by any similar research. More importantly, it cites questionable statistics. Of those surveyed in Europe, only 36% of millennials felt that a military coup was an illegitimate form of taking power in a democracy, compared to 53% of “older citizens”. Surely more people would oppose the concept of a military takeover?

Nonetheless, an apathy to democratic systems has been widely noted by Western political pundits.

Voter participation is generally viewed as an effective method to measure a healthy democracy. The more people voting and engaging in politics, the greater degree of legitimacy a government has and the healthier a democracy is. If participation is low, it may mean that citizens are turning their backs on the system.

In the UK general election of June 2017, only 68.7% of the electorate voted. Whilst that was the highest level of voter participation since 1997, it pales in comparison to the 1960s and ‘70s where participation averaged at 75.8%. Current participation is even worse when compared to the 1950s where it was not uncommon for over 80% of the electorate to vote, such as in the 1951 general election.

So, there is significant apathy to democracy, and potentially even the threat that a minority of the electorate are falling out of love with the system.

A second EU referendum would undoubtedly alienate a section of UK society. Either Leave voters original win would be ignored, or some of the London elite would struggle to understand losing a second referendum to ‘racists’, ‘economic incompetents’ and the disgruntled. Nicola Sturgeon’s reaction to the first EU referendum only highlights how whole sectors of society can feel their view is ignored in a democracy.

Whilst not trying to be hyperbolic, the growth of the far-right and authoritarian politics is widely linked with the collapse of faith in democracy. In 2017, these ideologies grew, such as when the Austrian nationalist Freedom Party (FPÖ) re-entered government.

So, a second referendum should be avoided at all costs, the evidence is there and it should not be ignored without caution. For the sake of our democracy, Britain has no choice but to leave the EU.