The Times Companion to 2017: The best writing from The Times. Ian Brunskill

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СКАЧАТЬ four years of negotiation with Farc guerrillas, a peace deal was unveiled to the accompaniment of a choir singing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. After half a century of debilitating war, how could anyone vote against peace in the subsequent referendum? In the end, though, he set himself up. It was a bit like the US civil war general whose last words, glancing at the enemy lines, were: “They couldn’t hit an elephant from that dista …”

      It wasn’t just the Colombian referendum that went awry. There is a quiet revolt under way across the globe. In vote after vote, people have been rejecting the guidance of political establishments, baffling elites and adding to the sum of anger in the world. In the age of rage, direct democracy is a risk. Referendums are infallible only for dictators — think of Napoleon, master of the strategic plebiscite — when instructions are handed down to voters, when ballot boxes are stuffed and there’s a secret police snitch living next door.

      The fact is that in free societies a government should not abdicate its responsibility to govern by using a single-issue vote to demand guidance from ordinary punters. Clearly if you want to avert a populist avalanche you should keep capital punishment or mosque-building off the ballot paper. And by now leaders should have learnt too that referendums are not a suitable vehicle for deciding on war, peace or immigration. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, has just asked his citizens the impossibly loaded question: “Do you agree that the European Union should have the power to impose the compulsory settlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary without the consent of the National Assembly of Hungary?” Of those who voted, 98 per cent rejected the idea, as was intended. But most voters stayed at home, perhaps sensing that the vote wasn’t about migrant quotas at all (since they are more or less off the table anyway) but rather propelling Orban to a new level in his gladiatorial contest with Brussels. Many Hungarians are quite comfortable inside the EU.

      The problem with referendums is that they become a receptacle for grievances and bear little relationship to the question posed. Take Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, who earlier this year was saddled with a referendum on the ratification of an economic deal between the EU and Ukraine. The treaty had been agreed by the government, ratified by all other EU states and was 2,135 pages long. The Dutch rejected it, not because they had done their homework but because they were railing against weak government, against EU dogma and against the possibile eastward expansion of the union. Rutte was ambushed and called the No vote “disastrous”. Vladimir Putin rubbed his hands with glee and called it a truly democratic act.

      The fact is that voting in a referendum can, without knowledge and preparation, become an almost random transaction between leaders and led. The political philosopher Jason Brennan calculates that the probability of your individual vote changing policy is about as low as winning the lottery. You could of course win hundreds of millions but it is still irrational to buy a ticket. And so it is with direct democracy. Voters, he says, “have no incentive to be well informed. They might as well indulge in their worst prejudices — democracy is the rule of the people but entices people to be their worst.”

      Most democratic governments that deploy referendums do so out of weakness. In doing so they fool themselves that the wisdom of the people must inevitably support their world view. That’s how Juan Manuel Santos and David Cameron ended up in the same leaky canoe without a paddle. The Brexit referendum was a way of pacifying the Conservative Party. Cameron failed to grasp the potency of a national vote that fused mild dissatisfaction with the EU and the seeming inability of the government to get a grip on immigration or shield British jobs from a global slowdown.

      By the end of this year there will have been eight major referendums — the next crucial one is Matteo Renzi’s attempt to secure backing for his constitutional reforms in Italy. It’s too late for the Italian premier to call it off now. If he loses in December, he could also lose office. If the Five Star movement and the Northern League take power in the resulting election they are promising a referendum on Italy’s membership of the euro. Few analysts would now rule out an Italian No vote. But whatever the verdict, the uncertainty of a referendum campaign would bring chaos to Italy, where the banks are already wobbly, and speed the unravelling of the eurozone.

      The watchword has to be: listen to the people at your peril. Referendums can act as the safety valves of democracy but never as their engine. If legislators run away from their responsibility to consider and scrutinise complex questions, then power will seep away from the centre. The biggest risk posed by Donald Trump is surely that he could undermine or circumvent instititutions that keep America on an even keel. James Madison, the fourth American president, identified the problem: democracies endanger the right of minorities and must therefore devise solid institutions to protect those rights, civil liberties and free trade. Referendums, over-used and cynically steered, can end up subverting rather than enhancing democracy.

      It is too late for the Colombian president and for David Cameron, but let’s declare a five-year moratorium on referendums. And yes, that means you too, Scotland.

BURNT AND TORTURED MIGRANTS FILLED DECKS AS WE RUSHED TO HELP

       Bel Trew

      OCTOBER 8 2016

      Saturday, October 1

      “Dignity is a dancer,” jokes Captain Louis Ferres when the floor lurches sideways as we drop off a 2.5m wave. The battered ship that can hold up to 450 people is one of three that Médecins Sans Frontières uses to patrol the Mediterranean, searching for migrants in distress. Everyone on board, including Carla the cook, works on the rescues. Dignity pirouettes her way to the search and rescue zone 20 nautical miles off the Libyan coast where most migrant boats run into trouble. Huge waves wash over the deck. Half the non-sailors aboard are in their bunks throwing up.

      We are told we may not see a rescue as even the most ruthless smugglers don’t force migrants into the sea in bad weather. But we still spend the afternoon putting together 450 emergency care packages — socks, nutritional biscuits, water and a towel. There is a strict cleaning schedule to prevent disease spreading through the ship. On Saturday night it’s my turn to scrub the inner decks, which I manage without vomiting.

      Sunday, October 2

      We are woken by news that there will be a rescue at 9am. More than 100 migrants in a rubber dinghy called the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Rome by satellite phone at dawn but it takes Dignity four hours to reach the position. By the time we arrive the dinghy is nowhere to be seen. Courtney, the ship’s nurse, begins to worry. They would have been at sea now for at least ten hours.

      Likely weakened by months of starvation and ill-treatment in Libya, many don’t last a couple of hours exposed to the blistering heat of the sun. A co-ordinated effort with helicopters and nearby warships finds the dinghy. I jump aboard the rescue speedboat, which cuts through choppy waves to the dinghy. The terrified faces of women and children peer up from the bottom of the waterlogged tub, where they are crouched in lines as if on a slave ship.

      This is the dangerous part. Desperate and delirious, people may try to jump aboard and risk turning the boat over. “Try to stay calm, we will rescue all of you,” urges MSF’s Nicholas over a megaphone while we hand out life jackets. The sickest — including an emaciated Ethiopian boy of 16 — are hauled aboard in the first round. When everyone is on deck and registered, people open up about the hell they escaped in Libya: floggings, rape and kidnappings for ransom. They are transferred to a Save the Children vessel returning to Italy.

      Monday, October 3

      The shriek of the rescue alarm wakes us. It’s 6.30am and a drifting boat has bumped the Dignity. The rescue goes well but the MSF team is told of a second, СКАЧАТЬ