Accidental Authoritarianism

Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament has justifiably left a lot of people worried about the threat he and his brand of politics poses to representative democracy. That this comes at the same time as judges are dismissed as partisan, political opponents accused of treason and large parts of the population are relegated to not of ‘the people’ gives a real urgency to this anxiety. It seems worth trying to diagnose why this brand of politics seems so effective right now. Certainly this can be viewed in context of the wider success of authoritarian populist movements internationally. But I think what’s going on here is largely the result of specific political and institutional tensions resulting from the way the 2016 referendum was set up. Broadly, there were two big problems. Firstly, the nature of the referendum campaign encouraged a extreme, tribalistic and conspiratorial thinking as the go to intellectual framework for Brexit. Secondly, the contradictory mandate and absence of a clear legal framework for dealing with this kind of referendum set up a tension between parliament and the institutions of the state on the one hand and the Brexit supporting press and politicians on the other. It is this, combined with the latent appeal of authoritarian, strongman politics that can always be seen here and there in functioning liberal democracies, rather than a kind of  ‘slide into authorarianism’ that is at the heart of our current predicament.

The 2016 referendum was a highly unusual one. It was one where the government proposing it supported a ‘no’ vote, without setting out a plan for what would happen if this did not occur. The entire process was a gamble on a majority voting remain; at no point had the government determined if leaving the EU would be feasible, or if so how. What leaving the EU would mean would either be determined during the campaign or retroactively.

The representation of the leave position was, as these things are, handed over to a group of think-tankers, SPADs and campaign managers, whose primary experience and interest was in political advertising. And that was their role here- not to work out the details of how a policy could be made workable, or what the point of it was, but to win a campaign. A particularly unscrupulous set of individuals (the most intelligent of whom, Dominic Cummings, now advises the Prime Minister) spent a huge amount of time and energy trying to work out the most effective strategy for winning the referendum. In their judgement, this involved contradictory messages (allocating the same sum of money several times, promising savings in agricultural subsidies, but also protection for farmers, dramatic price drops but also no adjustment shocks, free trade deals with the third countries but also no additional barriers to trade with the EU etc), outright lies (Turkey, the bus etc), appealing to widespread anti-immigrant sentiment, and demonising political opponents as unpatriotic or part of some kind of sinister ‘liberal elite’.  

This style of campaign would have disastrous consequences in the event of a leave vote. For one thing, it made a ‘loser’s consent’ a hard proposition for those most involved or impacted. But most significantly, it set up a series of impossible expectations about what Brexit would mean. The prominence of anti-immigrant rhetoric and linking this with European freedom of movement made single market membership incompatible with Brexit. This is also true of talk of free trade deals with third parties. Brexit was thus set out in such a way that it had to imply a radical break with the European Union. But at the same time, it also was promised to be a relatively smooth process compatible with increased levels of public expenditure in social services. In other words, the campaign was set up in such a way that the best strategy for the Leave campaign was to set up a policy that was divisive, contradictory and undeliverable. Thus from June 2016 onwards the government has had to try and implement a policy it did not believe in, with no coherent rationale, but in the wake of a campaign whose promises rendered an economically (and morally) palatable outcome untenable. MPs would have to ratify agreements they thought disastrous.

Crucially, the referendum set up no legal mechanism to ensure that any of this actually happened, it was all dependent on the government of the time and enough MPs concluding that it had to, which was largely dependent on public opinion favouring that course of action. This blurred the distinction that normally occurs after a vote between accepting the legitimacy of a result and supporting it. Any act by a public figure that made the implementation of the result less likely, including simply continuing to make the public case against Brexit, could be construed as not accepting the legitimacy of the result, if this is taken to mean believing it therefore ought to be implemented. This meant that appeals to the respect the ‘will of the people’, however authoritarian and dangerous, occurred against a political backdrop which made them plausible and persuasive. And the experience of the referendum campaign itself suggested to many an unscrupulous politician that this style of argument could be effective.

The tension between parliamentary democracy and Brexit was thus an inherent consequence of the referendum itself, particularly given the way the campaign panned out. It meant that those asserting the legitimacy of the result were asserting a higher legitimacy over and above the normal, institutionally mediated procedures of representative democracy. That notion of legitimacy implied that the correct course of action was the one most in accordance with an abstract idea- Brexit- rather than one that was most desirable. It meant that the overarching criterion when deciding, for example, whether the UK should remain a member of the customs union, was not whether anyone thought leaving was a good idea, but whether remaining was truly “Brexit”. This all but ensured an outcome that most MPs, and the remain supporting public, simply could not agree to.

Against this backdrop, the appeal of Johnson’s authoritarian, anti-parliamentarian reflexes makes sense.  Not because it is justified, but because it plausibly relates to political reality. Furthermore, it is in tune with popular conceptions of democracy that are primarily majoritarian (particularly in the UK, without a culture of consensus politics). They also have deep roots in popular discontent with politicians, and a suspicion of process and institutions as things which frustrate common sense. Brexit simply gave expression and saliency to these ideas, and in doing so turned a large chunk of the population and its politicians into accidental authoritarians.