Steve Baker's and JRM's attack on the civil service and @CER_Grant shows us what Brexitism is really about. Clue: it's not about leaving the European Union.
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It's actually a radical movement determined to attack the basic principles of constitutional democracy as we've come to practice it in the West 2/
Over hundreds of years we built political institutions based on what used to be called "mixed government" 3/
It's now most clearly known by the combination of separation of powers, civil rights, the rule of law that we a bit inaccurately call democracy 4/
It's not supposed to answer the question who rules? The people and the king. But says, whoever is in charge, they're constrained by laws another people's power 5/
Another term for these constraints is "institutions" . And institutions have their problems: they can be slow, hard to understand, indifferent to the public mood, be captured by vested interests 6/
Brexitism is about another way to control the powerful. Vote people in, and if you don't like what they're doing, vote them out 7/
That way, the people (or at least a majority of them) are in control. It allows them to wield direct power over their governors (or cashier them, as Edmund Burke would say) 8/
But it has three fundamental problems. 9/
First, bluntness: policies and teams of ministers don't come in neat packages. Most of us like some of the things they do and some of the people doing them but not all. 10/
Second, diversity: not every issue divides into two sides - sometimes there are more, or shades of grey. (And if it's First Past The Post - Single Member Plurality, Americans - it's actually a the most cohesive big minority that holds the power) 11/
Third, longevity: if your instrument of controlling the government is chucking the bastards out: there's a problem: leave the bastards in too long and they could get out of control. Kick them out too quickly and the government's policy veers around like a shopping trolley 12/
Globalisation has sharpened the tension between these two ideas of democratic control - build institutions, or chuck them out. So much of what affects us now happens across borders, and it's harder to see how institutions can control them on our behalf. 13/
But if we can work out who "we" are -- at least we can clearly chuck the wrong people out. That's more than can be done for international institutions where we can't kick out the people in charge, because no single group of people really is. 14/
Kissinger's question about Europe "who do I call?" now applies everywhere. 15/
Brexitism (maybe just Exitism - chuck them out) pulls towards nationalism. There needs to be a "we" entitled to throw them out of office. 16/
And this sets up competition between all the different "we's". Fine for the big ones, but not so good for those unlucky enough to be especially numerous. 17/
The competition is unstable. And it's not only displomatic and economically destructive (through trade disputes or tit for tat tariffs) States have force at their disposal. Violence comes easily to them. 18/
The temptations to protectionism, intimidation and violence are too strong. Too much of our lives now depend on international cooperation to allow it to be governed by a collection of fully sovereign states. 19/
A lot of this is true about domestic policy as well. It takes decades to build a railway line or educate a child. Swings between one majority and another put the success of either at risk. 20/
That's why technical expertise is useful in almost all areas of policy, and why independent civil services are effective. It's even truer of the law. 21/
And all this is without even touching on abuse of power. Voting an all powerful group of people in, in the hope you can vote them out again if they go off the rails is a huge risk. 22/
Power over the state gives you power to corrupt the institutions or make them serve your partisan agenda, so that the next time the vote won't be fair. Don't like the inflation figures, ban their production (as happened under the previous government in Argentina) 23/
Object to the media - make it more "patriotic" as Andrea Leadsom asked for and the ruling parties in Hungary and Poland have achieved. 24/
Brexiters don't like the EU because its institutions get in the way of a national majority. They make radical changes of policy difficult, and government less responsive to the people's temporary will. 25/
That is in fact their intended purpose. To secure peace and wealth in Europe by tempering the people's desires through institutions. They were created after the alternative was tested to destruction. 26/
What matters in the long term is not whether the UK is in or outside the EU, but whether it can operate institutional government outside it. Everything we've seen so far from the Brexit movement suggests it can't. 27/
And just in case their destruction of institutions isn't enough. Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party stands ready to finish the job. 28/28
