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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Brexit Is a Victory for Democracy When elites govern for themselves—not the national interest—a populist backlash is a good thing. One adjective, more than any other, is used in Brussels to describe the Brexit vote. It was, we are told a hundred times a day, “populist.” “We have to fight against nationalism,” was how Jean-Claude Juncker responded to the British referendum result. “We have the duty not to follow populists but to block the avenue of populists.” Ah, populism. There is no more vicious word in a Eurocrat’s vocabulary. He spits it out in the manner of a teenager at a party who has mistakenly taken a swig from a beer can that was being used as an ashtray. Yet he is surprisingly vague about its meaning. The one thing that he unequivocally understands populism to signify is “something that other people like, but I don’t.” Plainly, in this sense, Britain’s vote to leave the EU was populist. But was it really, as so many TV reporters around the world assume, a vote for angry nativism? Was it a British version of the rise of Donald Trump? Or was it, rather, a legitimate reaction to an oligarchic system—a reaction informed by an ancient tradition of representative government? In Brussels, few are capable of drawing the distinction between democracy and populism. You cannot be a decent Eurosceptic. The only respectable position is to support political integration. Voting against ever-closer union, even if your motivation is an essentially liberal preference for decentralization, open government, and anti-corporatism, is ipso facto populist. My neighbor in the European Parliament chamber when I was first elected was a hefty Belgian Christian Democrat. He used the word “populist” frequently and ferociously, applying it with particular venom to supporters of Flemish independence. I once asked him whether the Flemish separatists weren’t simply representing their voters, just as he represented his. “As politicians we have a duty to lead, not just to do what people want!” he replied. Got it, I said. What you mean by “populism” is “having a legislature that broadly reflects public opinion.” In my country, we call that “democracy.” Perhaps I shouldn’t have been quite so snippy with him. After all, my Belgian colleague had a point that, in a representative democracy, legislators should follow their consciences. A healthy regard for public opinion doesn’t oblige us to contract out our convictions. All parliamentarians—trust me on this—go through moments when we think that the majority of our constituents are plumb wrong about something. At these moments, we like to recall Edmund Burke’s Address to the Electors of Bristol: Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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