Viewsnight is BBC Newsnight’s recently created, visually gimmicky, slot to present a wide range of opinions from individuals, often themselves mavericks or non-mainstream, to provoke debate about current topics. It’s a welcome initiative (apart from the gimmicks).
Thursday night’s slot was given to Richard Dawkins on the subject of “Brexit” – his word, not mine. In two minutes, Dawkins is able to demolish the whole EU referendum process and I agree strongly with everything he said. Er, except, perhaps one thing – see below. But first, see for yourself:
Dawkins makes a concise case about the dangers of referendums and the need for safeguards to be built into any well-designed constitution for a country. This is because of the long-lasting effect of constitutional change, compared to a normal election, where the decision can be reversed a few years later. Neither David Cameron nor the UK Parliament saw fit to build any such safeguards into the EU referendum process last summer. And to cap this, the British public were lied to on an unprecedented scale during the pre-vote campaign. Dawkins rightly condemns David Cameron’s stupidity in running scared of UKIP and the lies told in the run-up to the vote.
He similarly, and rightly, condemns the bullshit along the lines that “the British people have spoken” in the May government’s line ever since. The idea that a small majority of votes in a simple binary choice, in the absence of factual information, represents the enduring wisdom of a nation is palpable nonsense. Similarly, the outright bullying since by the usual rabid sections of the anti-EU press has no place in a modern liberal democracy.
Condemn the Act, Not the Person
But now I come to the one problem I have with Dawkins’ piece. About 20 seconds from the end, he refers to the “ignorant and misled public”. Whilst both epithets may be literally true, he loses sympathy with much of his audience at this point. Referring to the public as “ignorant” is politically unwise: playing the man, not the ball.
A reasonable analogy would be in the upbringing of children. Parents and professionals such as teachers are told, when a child is naughty, to criticise the act, not the child. Just because a child has done something bad doesn’t make that child a bad person.
The same is true for stupidity. We’ve all done things in our lives that we regret as being stupid. That doesn’t necessarily make us stupid people. David Cameron was stupid to cave in to his more rabid backbenchers by announcing an EU referendum after 40 years plus of lies and misrepresentations, by politicians and the media, about the EU. That stupid decision doesn’t mean I think that Cameron is stupid: weak, certainly, but not stupid.
Similarly, May’s desire to give parliament and the people no further say in whatever deal her government is able to negotiate does not appear to be the result of May’s stupidity. But it does reinforce my impression of May as someone with very strong authoritarian instincts and a determination to get her own way, come what may. That’s more sinister than stupid.
Meanwhile, back to Richard Dawkins and his video. The man has a reputation of getting up people’s noses – even of those who agree with him. It’s a shame he does this again in the Viewsnight video. Because on this topic, as on may others, he’s absolutely right.
