Ed Luce: recommendation

Transcript context

…Yes. Here is an example of illiberalism. When people say, “Look, could we have a second referendum?” As three judges said ‑‑ well, they didn’t quite say that. As three judges suggested that Parliament should have a say in this. After all, Britain is based on the sovereignty of Parliament. That is, “If we’re going to take back our sovereignty, Parliament should have a say.” Enemies of the people. The three judges faces were put on the front of not just tabloids, but what we call broad sheets in Britain ‑‑ supposedly more serious newspapers ‑‑ “Enemies of the People.” The kind of demagoguery that has gone on for anybody who’s raised that debate has chilled the whole ability to have a rational discussion about what the trade‑offs are here. Granted, if there were a second referendum and the remainers lost it, that would be a high risk to call such a referendum, it might well be the case the British people get really annoyed at being asked twice, and the pro‑Brexit margin goes up. I think people should be given a chance to think, to cool off and think about what’s at stake here, because all the evidence shows that there was a really poor debate leading up to last summer’s Brexit. The electorate, as famously googled EU, on a scale never seen before the following day, “What is the EU?” We have a pretty good idea of what liberalism looks like for agricultural societies, also for manufacturing societies, but say the big political issues of the future or maybe the present were something like the environment, the Internet, intellectual property law, privacy, immigration, terrorism, and dementia. Not so implausible. With those as the major issues, do we even know what liberalism looks like, just to say people back in even the 1930s probably hardly ever debated gay marriage, if at all.…

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