Mrs May is at it again

In the House yesterday, the prime minister stated:

I can confirm today that we intend to return to the meaningful vote debate in the week commencing 7 January and hold the vote the following week.
- thus deferring until after the holidays the vote which she and the leader of the House promised to give MPs on the 11th December before cancelling it on the 10th. What is to say that she will not further delay it? For purely political reasons, she is increasing uncertainty in the business community. The strategy is clearly to take the decision down to the last possible date, leaving no time for constructive amendments to the government's withdrawal plans. She clearly believes that faced with a choice between the withdrawal agreement she signed in Brussels and a "no deal Brexit" and the chaos that this will produce, then the May-Barnier fix will reluctantly be agreed to. The trouble is that it is in Corbyn's interest to sow chaos and even in extremis he will not instruct his troops to support a Tory motion. On her own side, "no deal" has been euphemised as "on WTO terms", and too many members believe that this process will be painless. (An article by a former chief economist at the WTO is more realistic. For a less formal - but more frightening - vision, seek the video of Three Blokes in the Pub go to Geneva.)

When we have the vote, Members will need to reflect carefully on what is in the best interests of our country. I know that there are a range of very strongly held personal views on this issue across the House, and I respect all of them. But expressing our personal views is not what we are here to do. We asked the British people to take this decision; 472 current Members of this House voted for the referendum in June 2015, with just 32 voting against. The British people responded by instructing us to leave the European Union.
As Full Facts pointed out as early as November 2016, and the Supreme Court later confirmed, the decision to withdraw rested with politicians, not the public. Given that the referendum verdict was a narrow one, based on a misleading prospectus and boosted by interference from Russian and reactionary American interests, it is surprising that Mrs May and her cohorts continue to invest the referendum with so much authority.

She went on:
Another vote would do irreparable damage to the integrity of our politics, because it would say to millions who trusted in democracy that our democracy does not deliver. Another vote would likely leave us no further forward than the last, and another vote would further divide our country at the very moment we should be working to unite it.
This is an implicit admission that the 2016 referendum incited divisions in the British public. These divisions will continue whether there is a further referendum or not. There is genuine anger among those who passionately want to stay in the EU and who, if we leave, will continue to press the case to return, just as Brexiteers continued to agitate after the 1975 referendum which was supposed to put the matter to bed forever.

Given that a referendum vote, apart from the sharp practices referred to above, is usually influenced by factors other than the matter as stated on the ballot - in particular an anti-government element - it is not surprising that Mrs May does not want another one. It should be remembered that the government line in 2016 was to Remain, while today's Conservatives will be compelled to recommend Leaving on Mrs May's terms. The public will see the decline in economic activity since the referendum as the result of both impending Brexit and the Tories' continuing squeeze on the social security system, and will vote accordingly.

"But don't you want to bring back control to Westminster?"

If it is a choice between Michael Gove and Liam Fox or Vytenis Andriukaitis and Cecilia Malmström looking after my food safety and future trade deals, then there is no contest.

But the loss of control is much exaggerated. In particular, the Westminster government is able to stop any "benefits tourism" on the part of other EU citizens if it wishes to. Migration from outside the EU, over which member states still have full control, has caused more trouble from the Jamaican gangsters carelessly imported by the Met. police to the financial manipulators who abetted the 2007/8 credit crunch and the Russian oligarchs who are with us today.

"You keep banging on about the 1975 referendum and its two-thirds majority, but the EU is different now"

Yes, its workings are more transparent, there is more democratic control with increased powers for the directly elected parliament and free and preferential trade has vastly increased since the 1970s. Its membership is more diverse, and we have gained friends - if only we would recognise the fact - among the more recent accessions. The electorate was better informed by a healthier press in 1975 and of course there were no social media in which fake news could flourish.