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Jonathan Brown's avatar

A bleak piece, but I think this was always one of the biggest dangers and biggest disasters of Brexit - that it would be so disruptive that it would be difficult to reverse, despite being so obviously the wrong thing for the country and something that was opposed by a higher and higher proportion of the electorate the younger you get.

But at risk of making you feel worse, I think you should re-consider Proportional Representation. I personally think it's vital to the country on its own terms, nothing to do with Brexit, but put that to one side. I think it's actually almost a pre-condition for rejoining the EU.

For one thing, the EU will be far more resistant to (re)admitting a country that could leave again with only minority support. That remains a real danger, and despite the obvious disaster that is Brexit, it's probably now a bigger danger than before. Trump's possible return to power shows that bad ideas can be proven bad and make a comeback in the right circumstances. PR makes it much less likely that a minority can hijack our political institutions.

Secondly, the logic of First Past the Post forces political parties to focus their efforts on a relatively small number of constituencies AND to remove or downplay policies that might upset voters everywhere else. The Lib Dems (my party) are instructive. A PR election in 2019 gave the party an opportunity to go all out on its pro-Europeanism, and it was politically rewarded for doing so. There are many reasons why the party did badly in the following general election, and you might argue that the party learned the wrong lessons, but regardless the party is back to targeting a small number of 'winnable' constituencies rather than seeking a broader mandate for its pro-European policies. FPTP makes pro-European campaigning look politically suicidal for any party that has aspirations to win more than a handful of seats. It's a vicious circle.

And thirdly, this country has a lot of problems, at least some of which are caused by political short-termism. PR is no panacea and no guarantee of better government. But I don't think supporters of FPTP can any longer credibly say that it provides stable or predictable government - at a local or national level. The EU does not require aspiring member states to use any particular form of democracy, but it does require them to meet various criteria. Arguably we don't need to change as much as post-Communist Estonia, Poland or Romania... But I think it would be complacent to assume that our road to becoming a state that meets the accession criteria will be a short one. Our problems mostly pre-date, though have been exacerbated by, Brexit. And they are serious, and are likely to make the journey to rejoining longer and harder than many of us are perhaps prepared for.

If you're against PR, I understand why you'd see this as a distraction (although I don't think you need to worry about Labour introducing it). But I think there's a strong case to be made that PR is one of the steps back to rejoining.

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Nick Wray's avatar

Back in the day I was quite active in the NO2ID campaign. One of the most interesting aspects of that was for me, a former Labour footsoldier who had quit that party over Iraq and then joined the Greens, was working with the local Tories. Some of them I found a bit arrogant, whilst others were quite funny and personable, but the point was that it was a bit of an eye-opened for me to have to see what the view from another side was. And again, Rejoin needs to work with views across the political spectrum. Over and over again I pick up people on sites like the 48% for conflating being pro-Europe with being anti-Tory. To carry on with NT's argument, this conflation is one of the Brexies' secret weapons - whilst the Rejoin Movement of Judea and the Judean Rejoin Movement slug it out the Brexies are laughing up their well-tailored sleeves. I have never backed the Tories in any way, but frankly i feel that I have more in common with the likes of Dominic Grieve or even Michael Heseltine, whom I despised back in my CND days, than I do with Lexies like Corbyn or Mick Lynch.

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