Another Brexit referendum is indeed a terrible idea!

In the “careful what you wish for” stakes, few issues rank higher than the plan for a second referendum by those in the UK hoping for a reversal of the country’s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union (the “Remainers.”) If secured, the outcome could be a fast track to a phenomenon the UK has so far avoided — the creation of a large, angry populist party, probably of the right and perhaps also of the left.
That would be very bad news for the UK, for its politics, for Europe, and for the cause of democracy generally. It would be seen, with some justice, as “they” crushing the democratic vote of “we the people.” The second referendum plan is justified by arguing that the British people deserve to have a choice between the government’s Brexit proposal, agreed by Theresa May’s cabinet with difficulty last month and to be voted on by parliament on December 11, and that of scrapping Brexit altogether. The electorate, the Remainers argue, will make an
informed choice rather than a mere expression of frustration with the EU, as in 2016.
But of course, the organisers hope for a reversal of Brexit. They believe the electorate is frightened by the prospect of slower growth, or even an economic shock from crashing out without a plan — both warnings put out last week by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, supported by an official government analysis.
No country is an island, not even one that is, like Britain. The surge of often violent militancy in France, left and right united against the centrist and once popular President Emmanuel Macron and his République en Marche party, is the most vivid and frightening example of the confrontation between “us” and “them.” But the disaffection is deep and wide in the rest of Europe, and — as Yves Leterme, former prime minister of Belgium warned in June, the populists are united by “their refusal to play by the rules of conventional politics.”
In France, what began as a more or less conventional protest, mainly in the provinces, against a fuel price rise has now transformed itself into something like a revolution. The promise by the French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe last Tuesday to suspend the fuel tax increases for six months was followed by more rioting. Last Wednesday evening, the government surrendered completely, taking the rises out of the 2019 budget, with no threat of their renewal. This weekend will see how well that works.
This, from an administration which had appeared the most resolute and confident in Europe, with a president who only two weeks ago made a virtue of not following his predecessors in his office in backing down in face of protests, is a terrible warning to European governments — and perhaps more widely in the democratic world. — Reuters

John Lloyd