Democratic Democracide – One year to Brexit?

With one year to go until Brexit (should it come to pass), the disingenuousness of Remainers – establishment figures such as Adonis, Cable, Blair, Grieve etc – calling for a second referendum is shocking even to embittered cynics. So fanatically intent are they on serving their fundamentalist Europhile religion they are manoeuvring for an anti-democratic coup. Their choice of weapon? Democracy itself.

Their entirely spurious and deceitful argument is to profess loudly: ‘What could be more democratic than another referendum on the European question, especially on whatever final deal is agreed?’ They conceal their oligarchic loyalties under the seemingly reasonable mantle of democratic concern. But what they are undertaking is a disgraceful attempt to by-pass and kill off the democratic process. It is a classic EU tactic; as in other EU referendums, the voters must keep returning to the poll booths until they vote the ‘correct’ way.

Health experts rightly tell us of the many benefits of drinking plenty of water. However, if we were to down a few gallons of the stuff in a day, it would likely kill us (through a process called hyperhydration or water intoxication). This is what Remainers are hoping to achieve by administering an excess of democracy.

Having studiously ignored the erosion of parliamentary sovereignty over four decades of EEC/EC/EU membership, establishment Remainers now shamelessly pretend to champion parliament in the hope that it will overturn the Referendum vote of 2016. When PM David Cameron called the referendum he declared that the government would implement the decision of the people.  Remainers are so conceited they intend to ignore this solemn pledge. Each time parliament has weighed in behind the referendum result, Remainers blithely ignore it (and their own arguments) and keep pressing for yet further votes until they get their way. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Parliament passed the referendum bill in 2015 by a majority of 10 to1. The referendum, the biggest democratic vote in British history, showed a clear majority for leaving the EU. Outraged Remainers, having undergone a convenient Damascene conversion to be born again in the grace of parliamentary sovereignty, pressed for MPs to vote (completely unnecessarily) on triggering Article 50. MPs did so in 2017 with a majority of over 4 to 1. In the UK’s general election of 2017, over 80% of the electorate voted for a party that promised to respect the wishes of the referendum and withdraw the country from the EU. And in June 2017, parliament voted down the Soft-Brexit amendment to stay in the single market and customs union by a majority over 3 to 1.

How many “meaningful votes” do Remainers need? As many as it takes until they finally get their way to put the brakes on Brexit. They know that the longer the process grinds on, the lower the pro-Brexit majority vote. This is why they are dragging out proceedings in a blatant attempt to overturn repeated democratic defeats.

I have nothing against another referendum in a generation’s time; after all, Cameron himself said that the 2016 referendum was a ‘once in a generation vote’. But one in the immediate future? Will it be the best of three? Or of five? Unlikely – one can be assured that if a second referendum voted to remain, that would be the last we hear from the Remainers on democracy.

The disgraceful hypocrisy of anti-democratic Remainers is also revealed in their ostensibly reasonable arguments for another referendum on the final UK-EU deal. After the referendum, with de haut en bas arrogance, they dismissed the voters as thick, uneducated plebs who didn’t understand the issues at hand. Now they want these same voters to have an opinion on the mind-numbing minutiae of international trade deals, legal agreements, diplomacy and geopolitics. Their contempt for democracy is matched by their contempt for the voters.

Our democracy is being waterboarded to death.