Simon Stevens, chief executive of the NHS, is going to make a speech today alluding to the idea that the government should live up to its promise, one made during the referendum, of an extra 350 million pounds a week that is supposed to be spent on the National Health Service in the event of Brexit. There is a problem, however: the government never made that promise to divert money to the NHS. Vote Leave, an entity which no longer exists, made it. And that’s the main problem with referenda: anyone can promise anything because there is no political cost to making promises that won’t come good.
In a representative democracy, parties make promises based on what they will do should they form a government. The public can then judge how successfully (or not, as the case may be) the party that does form a government lived up to said promises and then on that basis decide to either re-elect them to govern again, or relegate them to opposition. There is a mechanism in place for avoidance of overpromising, in other words: fear of succession via the electorate.
With referenda, such a threat does not exist. This is particularly the case when the issue the referendum is being held on cuts between party lines, like the EU referendum did. Yes, Vote Leave had Boris Johnson and other current members of this government involved at a high level; it also had Labour MPs like Kate Hoey and Gisela Stuart involved at a similar level. Pretty much all of the messaging was created by people who work for no political party at present, including the 350 million a week “pledge”. Who is now to blame for that? Should the government be held to such a promise in light of the fact that they themselves never made it? If not, how do we stop people in future referenda making misleading and even completely spurious claims?
Some people will say that there are easy answers to all of those questions, but the truth is there really aren’t. How referenda intersect with representative democracy is really complicated and throws up complex dilemmas – I just wish we would have thought about all this a little more before diving headlong into an era filled with the things. For instance, the Electoral Commission rules around referenda are mostly just a cut and paste job from the rules surrounding political parties during a general election. But political parties are semi-permenent entities that will suffer inbuilt damage if they bullshit the public too often, as I’ve already said; fly by night operations like the companies setup to fight referenda are a very different kettle of fish. There needs to be a whole new structure built to deal with referenda if we’re going to keep having them all the time. Which it looks like we just might.
Good points, but I suspect we won’t see many referendums in the near future, a bit like how you didn’t see many presidential convertibles after November 1963.
What we need to do is educate our children to not be sheep and actually research claims/promises made before believing them. That claim was roundly debunked by many people, including the BBC, and the information was freely available, had you been open to the correct channels (or bothered to look for it). Critical thinking is a skill sadly lacking in the modern age.
It may not be the Government that said it but people who stood in front of it ARE in the Government Are you saying they did not agree with what they stood in front of?
‘Spurious claims’ are part and parcel of politics. Always have been, always will be. Let’s not get too prissy about this. It’s the job of the rival political campaigns and the media to discern fact from fiction for the benefit of the electorate. Nor should we underestimate the sceptical – even cynical – commonsense of the voters.