I’ve always respected Alistair Darling and cannot imagine him saying anything ill-considered. But listening to him interviewed last Monday on the Today programme I heard him offer, as though it were obvious, an assumption so much less obvious than he appeared to recognise, that it set me thinking: not about the admirable former chancellor but about a real divide among civilised people that our age is perhaps insufficiently aware of.
The presenter, Nick Robinson, had asked Mr Darling if he supported a second (or ‘people’s’) referendum on Brexit. No, said Darling: ‘You ask people what they think and clearly you’ve got to live with it.’
Seconds later, still speaking about Brexit, he said: ‘We’ve made a profound mistake.’
Something about the conjunction of those two statements electrified me. A non-binding plebiscite has recently been held on a constitutional change that, if made, is likely to prove irreversible. An individual of great standing and experience believes the change would be a profound mistake. So do we now think his opinion that ‘clearly you’ve got to live with it’ is anything less than a bold and contestable claim?
Don’t suppose this is just Parris on his hobby-horse again, beginning a train of reasoning whose conclusion is that we should ignore the results of the Brexit referendum because Parris doesn’t like them. I have in fact reached no conclusion. But as we proceed you may sense, with me, that here is a vast question about democracy upon whose answer it’s doubtful avowed democrats agree.
If you think the electorate have made a mistake, which if it is carried through is irreversible and will harm them greatly, can you — should you — as a democrat try to head them off before the damage is done?
As a staunch Remainer, I can’t get out of my head a cartoon picture of lemmings stampeding towards a cliff’s edge, with one lemming saying to another: ‘Oh quit moaning: it’s the will of the people.’
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