“The Brexiteers are the dog that caught the bus: they hadn’t thought what to do next”

A former Canadian High Commissioner to Malta and to the UK, who was also Canada’s ambassador to the European Union, Jeremy Kinsman, has written an excellent piece for Open Canada, in which he addresses David Cameron directly.

It takes the form of 17 points, the first two of which are:

1. Referenda are the nuclear weapons of democracy. In parliamentary systems they are redundant. Seeking a simplistic binary yes/no answer to complex questions, they succumb to emotion and run amok. Their destructive aftermath lasts for generations.

2. Never call a referendum without being sure of the outcome. You called this one primarily for reasons of tactical political positioning, mainly to appease anxiety in the English Conservative Party (and I mean “English”) that the United Kingdom Independence Party was gaining strength with your party’s voters. The pledge to hold a referendum helped win you an unexpected majority. It also ended your career and seriously compromised your country’s interests.

Some of my readers became highly antagonistic or were sceptical when I wrote (several times) that referendums have no place in a system of representative democracy, and that far from being the highest form of democracy they are actually anti-democratic. Perhaps they will take Kinsman more seriously than they took me (woman, Maltese, not a senior career diplomat of a serious country and noted democracy & c & c).

If you have the time for a quick break, make yourself a cup of coffee and read the other 15 points too. I find that in moments of stress after one too many close encounters with people who have a cock-eyed view of life and irrational thought processes, reading something sensible written by somebody normal is soothing and consoling.

Jeremy Kinsman