I FELT a moment of true horror yesterday. I realised that what stretches before me and every other poor soul trapped in this broken country is an endless vista of referendum after referendum – of continual constitutional strife; of ceaseless division over Europe, and over Scotland.
Politically, it’s like being trapped in the Hall of Mirrors of a demented Fun House run by evil clowns – everywhere you look the same ghastly reflection stares back at you, and in the reflection there’s you and a snaking line of humans, vanishing into the horizon, queuing, grey-faced and defeated, to vote in a poll we all know is just a staging post towards yet another damaging X on the ballot paper. And so it goes on … and on … until Judgement Day.
The sprawl of referenda facing us makes the map of New York’s subway system seem understandable. Labour members want a second referendum, a People’s Vote, on the Brexit deal, which may, or may not, include a question about staying in the EU. However, Labour won’t allow Scotland to have a second independence referendum. How does that work? A second referendum on the EU is okay, but not a second referendum on independence? That’s a straight-up fail in logic class.
Then we come to the SNP – there’s a big push for the First Minister to back a second People’s Vote, but she’s not committing. That’s probably because the party is committed to a second Scottish independence referendum – although, when that might be, we don’t know – and some worry a People’s Vote will set the precedent that a future independence referendum can be overturned.
But that doesn’t make sense either. If pro-independence folk push for a second independence referendum, then why shouldn’t Unionists push for a third in the event the No side loses, or push for a People’s Vote on any independence “deal”? If you want a second indyref, then why not back a second EU vote? Why not a third vote on Brexit called by the Brexiters if they lose a People’s Vote – why not just keep going until I have grandchildren in middle age? Why not just keep going until we are all driven stark staring mad?
We’re now playing referendum Jenga – piling up phoney choice on phoney choice in a rickety tower that cannot stay stable, and it’s democracy which is at risk of tumbling down.
I spit my curse on referenda not because of sour grapes – my side got beaten in two votes. I support Scottish independence, and I support remaining in Europe. I spit my curse on referenda because I see more of them coming in the future, and if we think we’re divided and unhappy now, wait and see how we feel when we’ve been through one or two or three more.
Let’s stick with losers like me for a moment. We got beaten 45-55 over independence and 48-52 over Europe. Look at those margins. In Scotland, 45 per cent of the population were left with their dreams crushed. In the UK, 48 per cent had their world pulled from under them. Should 55 per cent of the population have the right to leave 45 per cent sitting in the corner crying? Should 52 per cent have the power to trash the house of the other 48 per cent?
This is the tyranny of the majority – and I’ve long been thinking about what it would have been like if the shoe was on the other foot. I hope I would have felt empathy for a defeated Unionist or a Brexiter. Their political positions are not wicked – both are legitimate, decent opinions to hold – but the binary black and white of referenda puts the boot well and truly into the face of empathy. No-one walks in another person’s shoes when it comes to a referendum, you steal their shoes, tie their laces together and fling them over a telegraph pole in spite.
It may sound crazy given the public mood, it may even sound anti-democratic, for which I ask forgiveness, but perhaps this whole clunking winner-takes-all referenda path we’re on is deeply damaging to democracy. No matter what side of the fence you sit on – pro-independence, pro-Union; pro-Europe, anti-Europe – you cannot say that the choices we’ve made and the way those choices have been acted upon has been beneficial to the common good. It’s a bitter mess from Caithness to Cornwall.
Would it be better if referenda were settled with a 60-40 win? At least then the utter crushing of the losing side would not be so deadly and divisive. If 60 per cent of the population told me I was wrong over independence and Europe, then perhaps it would have been more palatable. When Yes lost I felt as if a dream had evaporated because I was looking to the future – I’d lost what I never had. When the Brexiters won I was bereft as I felt part of my identity had been stolen – I’d lost something very tangible. Pull a switcheroo, and imagine that Yes won, or Brexiters lost, and you can see the same unhappiness across the divide: Unionists robbed of identity, anti-European dreams dashed.
But the ghost is out of the bottle. We can’t stop this chain reaction of referendum leading to referendum, nor can we tweak the rules – once we’ve started down this path the road must remain level. So, on we will go, vote after vote, a slim minority of people hurt and thrust into the cold, a slim majority gloating in victory … until calls for new votes start again.
This is a Naked Lunch moment – a frozen moment when everyone sees exactly what is on the end of their fork. What I see is that we’ve embraced endless division, that we’re happy to hurt the other side on an existential level, that we cannot empathise with those who hold differing political views – and that is because we brought in the blind god of referenda to stand in place of the slow grind of discussion. Change happens, it always does, but over these last years we wanted to light a fire under change, to turbo-charge its engine – all we’ve really done is blow the bloody doors off the car.
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