W Keagan's piece in the Observer today seems to offer an ingenious connection between Labour Party leadership elections and his favourite rant -- Brexit.
The stuff on Labour is strangely supportive, saying that Labour economic policy (to borrow money for investment) is on the whole quite a normal way to redress the aftermath of the Great Crash, and is supported by a lot of orthodox economists. Then he sees a way forward. Labour can still be criticised for not opposing the Government sufficiently rigorously especially (wait for it) their decision to implement Brexit.
What's his beef this time? It wasn't a proper majority that voted Brexit. It was only 37% of those actually eligible to vote. And he is prepared to 'bet that a fair proportion of the 37% did not appreciate the implications of what they were doing', this means 'Our sovereign parliament must veto this absurd and self-destructive policy'.
This is special pleading of course. If we take those voting for something as a percentage of those eligible to vote, very few simple majorities survive. 'Scotland' did not vote to Remain, for example, if we include those eligible to vote as the total electorate (I reckon the Leavers and the non-voters together outweighed the Remainers --just) .
What about our sovereign Parliament? In the 2015 General Election, only 37% voted of those eligible. The Tory Government attracted only 25% of all potential voters, and, obviously, a smaller percentage of the total of those eligible to vote voted for Labour (30%). I wonder if Keegan would want to bet that a fair proportion of those percentages DID appreciate the implications of what they were doing.
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