Why the democratic case for a second referendum doesn't cut through with leavers

Why the democratic case for a second referendum doesn't cut through with leavers

How can having another vote on something be considered undemocratic? It's a good rhetorical question, posed by many remainers like myself, advocating a second referendum. There are, however, numerous possible answers to this. One is a point often made by Andrew Lilico, that rethinks should only happen after implementation, for the first to have had any meaning. We might then challenge the assumption that the first vote does indeed have to be meaningful (perhaps by saying that the process was flawed, or simply that giving the referendum this significance ex post facto is too harmful given other factors). We might also assert that the period of negotiations following the triggering of article 50 was that meaning. The vote can be seen as about starting a process, and once that process has arrived at a set of more concrete proposals, it might then be natural to see a referendum to ratify or reject that deal as a natural conclusion. None of these interpretations, of course, Lilico's included, were clearly defined prior to the result by anyone with the authority to do so, and we do not have the experience and precedent with this kind of referendum (where the yes option is not supported by a parliamentary majority) to have much of an established legal, political or philosophical framework to deal with these questions. Any response could be plausible depending on your desired outcome, and absent a massive shift of public opinion, that means any interpretation will therefore be disputed.

But I suspect there is a deeper reason why the case for a second referendum has had limited success cutting through with leavers (and quite a bit of success recently with unsure remainers). It is to do with how we conceptualize such a processs in the first place. The democratic case for a second referendum typically rests on the assertion that such a vote would amount to the 'people' having a say in what happens now. This may be justified by reference to people being allowed to change their mind, new facts being available, shifts in demography etc but to be persuasive it requires some kind of notion that such a vote would represent an organic process whereby what emerges is what 'the people' want. In other words, a vote is something to participate in, something that you are part of, rather than something which is imposed on you. The problem is, in highly divided societies, with a large amount of mutual suspicion, it is quite possible to see such a vote as an imposition rather than a valid participatory process. Such processes could simply represent an opportunity for some group seen as the 'other' to assert control your own life. It is quite easy in such a society to believe that your own group represents some true notion of what the people are. This might mean the working classes, it might mean inhabitants of the home counties, it might mean Nigel Farage's 'Little People' (or in the US context, the 'real America'). It is in the context of these kinds of social divisions that in the interwar period fascist movements could defend the overthrow of parliamentary systems in familiar democratic language. While perhaps always somewhat present, when cultural and social divisions become extreme it is quite possible to see any tactic as legitimate and any process which may not lead to your desired outcome as an illegitimate and imposed threat.

The American cognitive linguist George Lakoff argues that metaphorical systems are central to understanding how politics plays out, and that the prevalence of your preferred metaphor is key to political success. In the context of welfare, this means whether we conceptualize the state as a fatherly, disciplinary figure, or a nurturing, maternal figure might determine how active a state we are willing to support. In the context of a second referendum, the major battle for remainers should be to try and get people to conceptualize a second referendum as something participatory, something that is an action undertaken by a group called the 'people' which they are part of. As long as many conceptualize such a vote as something imposed from outside, the case for it will not cut through. Unfortunately, in a society divided as our own, and with those opposed better placed to get their message across, it is a very difficult one to win.