Opinion: We Have A Clear Instruction From The People

Published on: 7 Dec, 2018
Updated on: 11 Dec, 2018

By Paul Beresford

The following was written as a response to Paul Kennedy who wrote an open letter to Sir Paul, the Conservative MP for Mole Valley constituency which covers five of the eastern wards of Guildford Borough.

Sir Paul Beresford

Dear Mr Kennedy,

Thank you for your open letter of the 6^th December which I read with interest. I am pleased to respond to some of the points you raise.

I do not accept your suggestion that the 2016 referendum result was ‘inconclusive’. In the final tally, Leave won the vote with a majority of 1,269,501. This is not a trivial figure.

With regard to how individual areas voted, as I have been writing to constituents recently, these figures are interesting but irrelevant as the 2016 referendum was a national event, we voted as one nation, not as 650 individual constituencies and not even as England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The outcome was a clear instruction from the people to the government, attempts by the Liberal Democrats and others to imply otherwise are not only disingenuous but potentially harmful to our democracy and the trust people have in politicians.

Lord Ashdown, a senior figure in your own Party put it best in an interview he did for ITV on referendum day. He said ‘I will forgive no one who does not accept the sovereign voice of the British people when it has spoken – whether it is by one per cent or 20 per cent…’ he followed up with ‘When British people have spoken, you do what they suggest. They command’. The Noble Lord has since abandoned this principled position, but I would suggest that his words that night continue to be the most sensible contribution by a Liberal Democrat to the entire Brexit saga.

Moving to your particular criticism of the agreement the government has negotiated with the EU, I feel this is largely unfounded. The first thing which must be kept in mind is that in any robust negotiation neither side will get everything it desires. With that said, I feel that the PM has delivered a genuinely compelling agreement which will form a strong basis for the first years of our political life after the EU.

Specifically, if we leave under the agreement the PM has reached we will; end the free movement of people; stop the annual forwarding of vast sums of money to Brussels each year; leave the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy; continue close cooperation with our European partners on matters such as security; continue trading in Europe with no tariffs, quotas or origin checks. Most importantly, a hard border in Ireland will also be avoided. I believe this is a very significant set of concessions.

When the vote takes place on the 11^th I will be voting against the chaos of no deal, against the betrayal of democracy that would be remaining in the EU – but I will also be voting for the positive terms of this agreement.

On the specific question of business and the economy, I am speaking to small, medium and large business owners and operators on a very regular basis. The one thing they crave above all else is clarity. I am told time and again that if business could just know what the future will look like, adjustments and adaptations can quickly be made. I could not therefore in good conscience vote to throw the economy into deeper uncertainty by rejecting the agreed deal and plunging the country into an indeterminate period of crisis.

Your comment about the danger of Russia is quite correct. Resurgent Russia is expansionist, authoritarian and dangerous. This is why I am delighted that the United Kingdom will continue to play a leading role in the organisation which has truly kept the peace in, and defended, Europe since its founding in 1949 – NATO. This organisation, along with the nuclear shield of the United States and the UK, has done more to keep peace in the world than any other since the Second World War.

I will also briefly touch on your quote from Sam Gyimah, a man I deeply respect, in which he suggests we would be “surrendering our veto” if we leave the EU. I would only point out that in the not too distant future all the member nations may be surrendering their vetoes! Jean Claude Juncker himself articulated what many European Federalists have long whispered when, in his 2018 State of the Union, he argued that the veto system should be abolished in favour of majority voting. This is a deeply troubling prospect and I anticipate that, if it comes to pass, more and more “Europe” will be forced onto nations which become less and less comfortable, until a fracture point is ultimately reached.

It is interesting that you advocate a “remain and reform” solution to this situation. That is exactly what David Cameron attempted in 2016. Through those negotiations, the EU demonstrated that they have a certain direction of travel from which they will not diverge in any meaningful way.

Brazenly positioned in the visitor centre at the European Parliament is a plaque which reads, “National sovereignty is the root cause of the most crying evils of our times…The only final remedy for this evil is the federal union of the peoples.” That is the measure of their resolve and that is the intended climax of the “European Project”. It would be naive in the extreme to think that the UK, one voice in 28, could fundamentally change what the EU is and what it is seeking to achieve.

Ultimately, if such deep integration is the path the nations continental Europe wishes to walk, then the UK will always remain a close ally and good friend – but the vast majority of the UK electorate will not accept that outcome for our country. I count myself amongst them.

I strongly reject your calls for a so-called “Peoples Vote”. The reality is that we have already had a people’s vote – it took place in June of 2016. I do not believe that it would be right or proper to seek to overturn the outcome of a democratic vote simply because I happen not to agree with it. Indeed, I believe that a Corbyn government would be an unmitigated disaster which would do inconceivable damage to this country, but I would recognise that he had the right to become Prime Minister in the event that Labour were to win the next General Election and I would not expect or demand a second ballot be held in order to confirm that a Labour government really was the choice of the people.

It must also be remembered that, since the referendum took place, this country went through a General Election in 2017 in which candidates standing on manifestos committing to leaving the European Union took over 80% of the votes cast. This is significant. Moreover, any Party is free to fight the next General Election on a platform of our re-joining the European Union, if they so choose. The democratic option to re-engage with Europe is still there for people to take. What would not be democratic, though, would be attempting to discard the decision of 2016 before it had even been implemented.

Finally, I note with interest that 8% of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party, in the form of Stephen Lloyd, resigned the whip this afternoon to vote in favour of the withdrawal agreement. I hope that this will be the start of a truly cross-party consensus on the matter!

See also: Opinion: Democracy Demands a Second Referendum

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