Commentators have complained about this referendum — its ‘lies’, bad manners, bitterness. Without exactly disagreeing, I would nevertheless argue that it has performed at least one of the roles intended, which is to encourage people to consider the issue. If you are actively engaged in political debate, as candidate, activist, journalist etc, you believe (often erroneously) that you have thought through the big questions. If you are an unpolitical voter, you often haven’t. This is particularly true of the European question because, for 40 years, enormous efforts have been made by all the political parties to discourage you. David Cameron only finally conceded to us the right to have our say because, for internal party reasons, he was desperate. So, in the last few months, millions have been focusing seriously on something on which, since 1975, their opinion had not been sought. My impression is that most of them have caught up fast and have held better debates about it than those on television. Some snooty persons complain about ‘plebiscitary democracy’, but how else can a key constitutional issue be dealt with when the main parties do not represent the views of roughly half the country?
It wasn’t only the voters who were unused to dealing with the matter. It was also both sides of the campaign. The Remain people had given almost no thought to why they want us to be in the EU, other than the imagined horrors of leaving. If they did privately believe in the United States of Europe which most eurozone leaders crave, they felt it was more than their political life was worth to say so. Tory Remainers, in particular, had spent so many years moaning about the EU that they could scarcely find the right words to explain why it was suddenly essential to our national survival.
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