The meaningfully meaningless vote cuts both ways, if we're not careful

We are still no closer to understanding the end result of Brexit than we ever have been. At best, we're reaching the end of the beginning. Since the situation is as fluid as ever, I just want to comment on the general principles that Bercow's ruling highlights.

The non-binding question put to the people was whether we wanted to leave the EU or not. That's all it asked. It said nothing of any details whatsoever : whether we wanted a Norway-style model or a hard Brexit; whether we were unhappy with the economics of the EU, its underlying principles, current leadership, or what.

Since then, politicians across the spectrum have insisted that the vote must be respected, despite the margin of victory being a mere 4%. The Conservative government in particular has been voracious in its insistence that the result cannot be altered and that the deal they have (just barely) managed to negotiate is the only possible route forward. No choice has been allowed on any point. Only with the greatest reluctance did it concede that Parliament must be given a "meaningful vote" to ratify its proposal, on the grounds that only Parliament - not the government - gets to make law. To ignore this would have been to set a precedent for nothing less than tyranny by majority.

The government, however, completely failed to acknowledge that there was any prospect of its deal being rejected. It therefore did not even countenance the notion of entertaining alternatives, much less actually propose any. MPs across the board were certainly unwilling to choose (few had the courage to suggest revoking Article 50 or proposing another vote, though some sizeable number did try and push for a "managed" No Deal proposition) but more importantly they were unable to choose because nothing else was on offer. The government's utter refusal to believe that any alternatives were possible resulted in blatant hypocrisy : the idea that the people might want to change their minds was unthinkable, but asking Parliament to vote again (and possibly again and again !) after the most decisive defeat in history was done without any evident shame. It became clear that the "meaningful" vote was anything but.

Speaker John Bercow, however, is not pleased by this. His ruling is that according to long-established (1604) convention, a motion cannot be brought to the House repeatedly in the same Parliamentary period if its is essentially unchanged. This all but rules out the current deal.

The question we have to ask is how we should apply this more generally. Of course Parliamentary conventions need not be identical to those we use in other aspects of democracy, but one would hope they should be at least similar. So, for example, could we have a second referendum with an identical question, recognising that circumstances have changed ? If so, Parliamentary proceedings would have to have some similar governing principle. It is not unreasonable to ask for repeated votes if the situation is different and it appears that the majority opinion has changed even if the question has not - this is precisely why many of us feel a second referendum is justified. But if we then also forbid Parliament from voting again on the same issue, we are at risk of acting in bad faith.

Yet we also have to manage the government's tactics of running down the clock, whereby the only change of circumstance is the purely artificial pressure of time. We will need to insist not merely that time has passed but that an alternative is also available, perhaps from an opposition party. Alternatively, we might require that a repeated motion describe the changed circumstances in detail (I am speaking here only in general terms, not suggesting how we should proceed though the actual current situation).

In this case, a second referendum is unlikely to ask the same question. While there is no legal requirement that repeated referenda be substantially different from each other, those advocating a second vote argue that both circumstance has changed (e.g. we now know the terms and effects of leaving) and/or that the vote itself be altered. This basic procedure of offering a genuine and genuinely different choice is what Bercow is attempting, quite reasonably, to apply to Parliamentary procedures. There are many legitimate grounds for re-examining a motion that was apparently already settled : the principle that a repeated vote be significantly modified is a perfectly sensible check and balance on the system to prevent the ruling government from abusing the democratic process to subvert the will of Parliament.

I only want to point out that we should strive for consistency on this issue. An important loophole in the democratic process has been exposed : Bercow's ruling is an attempt to close this, but we should also be aware of the potential pitfalls. Without some clear guidelines, at the very least, as to the conditions under which a second vote may occur, it would seem ludicrous that either the public or Parliament could continue voting until they get the right answer.

BERCOW'S BREXIT BOMBSHELL: Mister Speaker BLOCKS Theresa May's third vote (full statement)

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow was today accused of sabotaging Theresa May's Brexit deal after telling MPs she cannot force them to vote on it again without changing it 'substantially'. The Commons Speaker cited a 400-year-old Commons precedent to inflict an extraordinary blow to Mrs May's hopes of getting her EU divorce through Parliament.