Yesterday morning I listened to Jonathan Sumption's Reith lecture ”In praise of Politics”. The following extract I found particularly interesting and relevant:
Extract:
”...There are serious arguments for leaving the European Union and serious arguments for remaining. I’m not going to express a view about either because they are irrelevant to my theme. I want to focus on the implications for the way in which we govern ourselves. Brexit is an issue on which people feel strongly and on which Britain is divided, roughly, down the middle. These divisions are problematic, not just in themselves but because they roughly correspond to other divisions in our society, generational, social, economic, educational and regional. It’s a classic case for the kind of accommodations which a representative legislature is best placed to achieve.Europe has now become the defining issue which determines party allegiance for much of the electorate. As a result, we have seen both major national parties which previously supported membership of the European Union adjust their policy positions to the new reality. Ina sense, that is what parties are for, it’s what they have always done, but there remains a large body of opinion, in both major national parties, which are strongly opposed to Brexit. One would therefore ordinarily expect the political process to produce a compromise not entirely to the liking of either camp but just about acceptable to both. Now that may yet happen but it has proved exceptionally difficult. Why is that?
The fundamental reason is the referendum. A referendum is a device for bypassing theordinary political process. It takes decision-making out of the hands of politicians, whose interest is generally to accommodate the widest possible range of opinion, and places it in the hands of individual electors who have no reason to consider any opinion but their own. The very object of a referendum is to inhibit an independent assessment of the national interest by professional politicians, which is why it might be thought rather absurd to criticise them for failing to do so. A referendum obstructs compromise by producing a result in which 52 per cent of voters feel entitled to speak for the whole nation and 48 per cent don’t matter at all.This is, after all, the tacit assumption of every minister who declares that the British people has approved this or that measure as if only the majority were part of the British people. It is the mentality which has created an unwarranted sense of entitlement among the sort of people who denounce those who disagree with them as enemies, traitors, saboteurs, even Nazis. This is the authentic language of totalitarianism. It is the lowest point to which a political community can sink, short of actual violence.
I am certainly not suggestingthat the referendum was unlawful, I am simply suggesting that it was extremely unwise and that the last three years are an illustration of quite a lot of the reasons why.” End of extract
Good Morning Sunday 10th May 2026
Why doesn't Starmer hold another referendum?
