Why there should not be a people's vote

Of all people I should be the last one to side with Farage and the like in all matters of Brexit. As a German without a British passport I will lose most of my civil rights on 19th March 2019. However, recently I found myself increasingly frustrated and worried about the calls for a second referendum or people's vote on Brexit. There may be many things wrong with the first Brexit vote, not least our lack of understanding of how social media may or may not have been used (unduly) to influence the outcome of the vote. However, I do not find the various reasons for a second vote convincing. Here is why.

Argument 1: They did not know what they voted on

This is a bad argument to put forward. Not only does it reak of patronising voters it also cuts both ways. If people had really been ignorant of what the referendum question was about (or what a decision either way entailed) then re-running the referendum assumes that voters can only genuinely cast their vote under conditions of absolute knowledge. This strikes me as a ludicrous condition for voting in a democratic society. Whether we like it or not, frivolous voting is a right everyone has in a free country. And so is voting on grounds of self-declared ignorance.

The outcome of the negotiations need to be endorsed by the voters

Well, it does indeed. That's what parliament is for. Referenda are a poor mechanism to discriminate between policy options. And if I remember correctly that was also an argument against the first referendum. I still agree with this and hence a second referendum would solve little that cannot be decided by elected MPs.

We should stop Brexit 

That's probably the most annoying argument and one that is most likely to backfire. There is no guarantee that a second referendum would yield a substantial majority for remaining in the EU. Just think about the difficulty of drafting the referendum question. Would it be a three way choice between 'the deal', 'no deal' and remaining in EU? That would split the 'remain camp' and likely deliver a supporting vote for 'the deal', whatever that may be. So, remainers would not get from such a referendum what they wanted (to preserve EU membership). And why would people 'know' more about 'the deal' or 'no deal' options if they, allegedly, were in a state of fateful ignorance about the benefits of EU membership? Are the ramifications of 'the deal' any simpler to grasp? 

So, why are we talking about a second referendum or people's vote? It may be worthwhile to have a look at who is advocating it. John Harris's podcasts are little windows into our divided soul. And it seems to me that the dividing line between us runs somewhere between London/South of England and the rest of England and Wales. I think it's no surprise that this is also roughly the line that divides the well off from the deprived areas in England, those that have benefitted from, and have accommodated themselves with immigration and a global economy and those that have not.

I accept that Brexit will not rectify the injustices and imbalances between London and the rest of the country. But, living in the North West of England, I also understand those who feel left behind and may now look on with some schadenfreude as London house prices fall and multinational companies start to relocate to other European cities. The movement for the people's vote is born out of a recognition that with Brexit, London and the South of England would suffer (though the rest of England would disproportionately suffer even more). Yet for Londoners who have treated the rest of the country with imperial disdain and contempt for decades, many Northerners thought this was pay back time. And I can't blame them.

In this context, campaigning for a people's vote appears to be counterproductive. It ties up energies that are really needed to argue for a sensible, smooth exit from the EU. It would make more sense to work out how we can get to an EFTA or Norway solution and how to get this through parliament rather than wasting political capital on preventing something that has democratic legitimacy: leaving the European Union.

The curious case of Glenn Greenwald

As the story about Edward Snowden and government snooping struggles to capture the imagination of ordinary people, the chattering classes are getting more agitated by the day. One person at the centre of the NSA scandal is Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist living in Rio.

Greenwald has been instrumental in ferrying some of the stolen material from Edward Snowden to media outlets in the West. He is on the payroll of the Guardian but does not live in the UK (he once remarked cryptically he is lucky not to have been to England).

Greenwald's pieces in the Guardian are published with some regularity which is probably due to the fact that he has a contract stipulating regular contributions, yet his writing bears little resemblance to balanced journalism or the search for truth. He is reported to easily take personal offense, to be quite thin-skinned and not very tolerant of opinions other than his own. Of late, his pieces have offered little data or information on the NSA programme, perhaps a result that the latest trawl of data was intercepted by the British border agency at Heathrow, an event which triggered a furious outburst from Greenwald saying that 'they [England] will be sorry for what they did [intercept and seize the stolen material]'.

His interview on Newsnight showed an highly opinionated person, who sometimes shoots down even compatriots in the cause with friendly fire.

Yet, apart from these character traits, what makes Greenwald a curious case in the journalistic landscape is his writing. For a journalist, his pieces are remarkably low in information and high in polemic. For his most recent piece in the Guardian, he extracted a single line from a colleague who wrote in the Independent, twisted the meaning of this line and tried to sully his colleague's reputation by calling him a 'career journalist' and member of the 'establishment' (you can read Blackhurst's piece here and Greenwald's recent piece here).

What emerges is a strange picture of an American journalist writing for a UK reputable daily newspaper in a tone that befits American ideological trench warfare rather than the intelligent, nuanced debate that is characteristic of much of the UK media landscape. In a sense, Greenwald's pieces are instances of advocacy or campaign journalism rather than journalism proper. The sad result of this is that the debate on the NSA is becoming ever more polarised with the moderate and reasonable voices being crowded out by those who prefer to shout.

On good writing

There is a scene in The Wire (Series 5) that stuck in my mind ever since I've seen it. The editor of the local paper, the Baltimore Sun, calls one of his reporters to the main desk. 'You say in your piece that 12 families were evacuated from the building' he says. 'You cant evacuate people, you evacuate buildings. To evacuate people is to give them an enema!'

He is right of course and the little joke reveals the pitfalls of the English language. For me as a foreigner, writing in English has always been a struggle, though an enjoyable one. Learning a language from scratch in your adult years usually means to learn it systematically from the vocabulary and grammar up. And so you try to immerse yourself in rules and regulations of a distant linguistic universe until you realise that, actually, the real learning process is based on phrases and the individual memories of the context in which they are used, rather than putting words together according to grammatical rules.

Perhaps it is the sheer time and effort I had to invest into learning the English language that I now often regret seeing examples of poor linguistic skills. There is of course a close link between cultures and spoken language and I am aware that communities fashion their own dialects that may significantly diverge from 'High English'. However, I do believe that newspapers and journals should be held to the highest linguistic standard. The 'New Yorker' is an excellent example of journalism at its best: short sentences, clear meanings, and a rich vocabulary. It is simply a joy to read.

A Guardian 'blooper'...

In Britain however the picture is mixed. The Guardian, of all journalistic products, is becoming sloppier in the care it takes to eliminate typos and slippery meanings. The main reason may be its slow but steady shift from news to opinion. Over the last decade the paper's columns are increasingly filled with opinion pieces rather than news. What's the difference?

I strongly believe that news items are subjected to a more rigorous method of eliminating ambiguities and unclear language. Libel laws and the commitment of journalists to truth and impartial news production ensure that copy editors and proof readers finecomb every sentence in news items. This also goes for the BBC, where apparently lengthy discussion can ensue about the use of a single term or a word amongst newsroom staff.

Yet, opinion pieces are largely exempt from the strictures of newsreporting. And I suspect communicating personal views and opinions frees writers from what they may feel undue linguistic rigour. But as news outlets increase their reliance on opinion pieces rather than newsreports, the accuracy of our language suffers.

If this line of argument was not clear enough, then I can only apologise and evacuate myself to the next blog entry.