Donald Tusk’s balls: Is there a mandate for a no deal Brexit?
Much of the right-wing press, and many of those supporting Boris Johnson proroguing Parliament say it is necessary. This is due to Parliament aiming to subvert the will of the people, the will that was expressed in the referendum (the mandate of the referendum). The proceeding discussion usually boils down into a shouting match, one side saying “Biggest democratic exercise in our lifetimes”, the other then saying “Overspending fraud and lies”, then back for “17.4 million people”, and on and on.
So, I did some thinking, is there a mandate for a no deal Brexit?
First I consider the two ways that people tend to look at the mandate from the referendum, either trying to look at the ballot paper in isolation (think: “leave means leave”), or those taking the referendum in the context of the leave and remain campaigns (think: “but they promised we’d leave with a deal”).
Let’s start with taking the ballot paper in isolation. Here it is:
It is pretty clear, if a majority chose the “Leave the European Union” option, then the UK should leave the European Union, hence the common argument “leave means leave”.
Ok, so, what is “leave”?
Well, based on the ballot paper “leave” is any route (deal or not) by which we leave the core institutions of the EU.
Ok, so what does that include?
Well, it would include:
- All the hypothetical deals (Canada, Norway, Swiss, Canada+, etc) mentioned by the official leave campaign
- Theresa May’s deal
- Leaving without a deal
But that isn’t all, it would also include many more deals. For example, let us imagine a deal that is like Theresa May’s deal, but with one key difference: The Northern Irish backstop that has caused so much anguish has been removed. But, unfortunately, in return every UK citizen must find time in the next 50 years to seek out the EU President Donald Tusk and lick his balls.
Does this deal involve leaving the core institutions of the EU? Yes.
Is it clearly ridiculous and not what all but an insignificant minority of voters would want (I’m looking at you…)? Yes.
But hang on a second you say, this is worse than Theresa May’s deal.
How is it worse? Is the backstop worse than licking Tusk’s balls? How do you determine what ‘worse’ means when you only take the ballot paper in isolation? You can’t.
So, what this all shows is that taking the ballot paper in isolation is a silly idea, as it is a mandate for almost any conceivable deal, no matter how ridiculous. And not just that, the mandate for “no deal” and the “Tusk’s ball deal” is more or less the same.
But this is not a new idea, nor is it my idea. There is a body that is part of the Council of Europe (not a body of the EU and unrelated to the European Council) called the Venice Commission. The Venice Commission’s membership includes democracies from all over the world — much of Europe, the US, Brazil, South Korea, etc.
They publish codes of best practice pertaining to many aspects of democracy, including referenda. David Cameron, in his naïve haste, ran a referendum that failed to meet many of the recommendations. Specifically, in this case we are interested in the text on p20–21 about referenda that are “a question of principle”.
“On the other hand, a “yes” vote on a question of principle or a generally-worded proposal is simply a stage, which will be followed by the drafting and subsequent enactment of a statute.”
Combined with what is stated elsewhere in the guidelines this basically says: Vague questions don’t give explicit mandates, and later another method needs to be used to determine an exact mandate.
This could be:
- A general election
- Another referendum
- Some other method
So, we need to have a second referendum?
Well, maybe, but fortunately the official Leave campaign was relatively clear what kind of ‘leave’ they wanted, so we can try to use that to determine a specific mandate instead.
Which brings us round to taking the referendum in the context of the leave campaign. They were relatively clear, campaigning for a variety of deals and ideas in between Canada and Norway — hopefully having smoother trade than Canada but being in fewer EU organisations than Norway. There is clearly a mandate for all of these.
What about “no deal”? Well, it gets a bit murky, but murky is fine. Vote Leave continually mentioned deals, and all but ruled out a no deal exit. However, they did not explicitly rule it out.
You know what else they didn’t explicitly rule out? Forcing every UK citizen to lick Donald Tusk’s balls as part of a deal. In fact, they didn’t even say a Canada deal would be preferable to the “Tusk’s balls” deal. Given they said a deal would be preferable to no deal, the order of mandates appears to go like this:
Deal > Tusk’s balls > No deal
And given it is pretty almost nobody wants to suck Donald Tusk’s balls as part of a deal that means that taking the referendum in the context of the official campaign results in no explicit mandate for a no deal Brexit.
“But I voted for Brexit at any cost, and no deal is the only way to get the EU to back down and call their bluff, and a clean break is the only way to properly take back control.”
Sure, and I’ve missed you out of the above two analyses. Not because your vote was worth less, but because the votes of everyone else who voted leave are worth the same as yours. Just because that was your personal reason for voting leave doesn’t mean it was everyone else’s. And unless you can show everyone else was on the same wavelength (A second referendum would be a good method), you don’t have a mandate.
“But the Donald Tusk’s balls deal is so ridiculous of course they didn’t rule it out, that is just common sense.”
Sure, and when someone says “Vote for A because A means B. Well, it might actually mean C, but we don’t really want that”, and then 6/10 vote for A, it is common sense to assume they wanted B and not C. In fact it would be dishonest to later suggest all 6 wanted C.
To conclude, by replacing “no deal” with “Deal where everyone has to lick Donald Tusk’s balls” it becomes clear (to me at least) why the referendum does not give a clear mandate for a no deal Brexit. As such proroguing Parliament mid-Parliament for over 10 times longer than ever before in recent history is an affront to our democracy.
That said, I welcome criticism, and if you think I’ve mis-stepped with any of my reasoning or left something out please leave a comment or email me (ollie@ollie299792458.co.uk).
Note: I glossed over the other issues with the referendum, but there are many, including overspending, lack of appeal, etc…
Side note: Theresa May was entrusted to negotiate a deal by a close general election, so her deal arguably has a bigger mandate than no deal or any other deal.
Venice Commission: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice_Commission
Venice Commission code of good practice for referendums: https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2007)008rev-cor-e
Vote Leave almost ruling out no deal : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/29/what-vote-leave-leaders-really-said-about-no-deal-brexit
How long is Parliament usually prorogued for: https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-8589
