Brexit: the state capacity question

Most Leavers want to bring back the death penalty. This confirms Remainers’ prejudices that Leavers are a bunch of social conservatives who want to turn the clock back to 1955. I suspect, though, that there might also be a more interesting division here –  about attitudes towards the competence of the UK state.

What I mean is that I’m opposed to the death penalty not so much because of romantic notions of human rights but because I just don’t trust the state to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. I doubt its competence, whereas its advocates are less sceptical.

Similar doubts contribute to me being a Remainer. I’m not sure the Great Whitehall Power Grab – David Allan Green’s term for the “Great Repeal Bill” – will be conducted wisely. I’m not confident that the process of transferring EU law to UK law – which has been described as "a civil service legal exercise on a scale that has not been encountered at any other time in our recent legal history" – will go at all smoothly. I don’t believe the government can implement immigration controls humanely or efficiently. I doubt that complex trade negotiations can go well, or yield great returns even if they do. I agree with Ian Dunt (who is compulsory reading) that the government’s attitude to Article 50 has so far been “stupid.” And the attractions of returning sovereignty to the UK are for me diminished by the likelihood that it will be exercised by buffoons*.

Herein lies an under-appreciated divide between some of us Remainers and some Leavers. On the one hand, some of us are pessimistic about state capacity. On the other, there are Leavers like Dan Hannan who decry our pessimism.

Yes, I know that all of my doubts about state competence could apply as well to the EU itself. But whilst I am a Marxist, I also feel the force of Michael Oakeshott’s scepticism of change (pdf)**:

The conservative will have nothing to do with innovations designed to meet merely hypothetical situations; he will prefer to enforce a rule he has got rather than invent a new one; he will think it appropriate to delay a modification of the rules until it is clear that the change of circumstances it is designed to reflect has come to stay for a while; he will be suspicious of proposals for change in excess of what the situation calls for, of rulers who demand extra-ordinary powers in order to make great changes.

This raises two paradoxes. One is that many Remainers cannot comfortably use this argument. The statist left, for example, needs to believe in state competence. And it cannot hide behind the claim that we would be well-governed if only the right people were in change, as this is silly managerialism.

The other is that the case for Remain I’ve sketched here is a conservative one and yet it is antithetical to the position of very many Conservatives, some of whom look more like fanatical cultists than the melancholy sceptics of Oakeshottian conservatism. Which just reminds us that, as Jonathan says, the Conservative party no longer believes in conservatism.

* I'm not sure my misgivings will resolved beyond everybody's doubt. Everything succeeds by sufficiently low standards, and fails by sufficiently high ones. 

** Yes, there might be a contradiction here. But as Niels Bohr said, the opposite of a great truth is another great truth. We should all be capable of having two ideas in our head at the same time.

Comments

[Holder On]

Ian Dunt is a turd https://twitter.com/Kingkeir/status/847422760913477633

[Guano]

My feeling is that this kind of politician just doesn't think about things like state capacity. It's an issue that isn't on their radar.

[Keith]

Your ideas about conservatism are Romantic. I am afraid like many on "The Left" there is a strong tendency to take Tories /GOP politicians at face value and believe they have ideas or want to represent them or people. The modern right are just the representatives of corrupt banking and business interests who make up their ideology as they go along.

I am willing to accept that once there was a strain of social conscience or patriotic identity with the people among conservative types. Most obviously in the war time generation. But like traditional social democracy on the Labour side this all went away with the disappearance of the generation of the blitz and rationing. The Libertarian rhetoric is a front for neo feudalism where the state subsidises private profit and the corrupt like Osbourne get a share of the pie. Cheap at the price. The Tory party will ask the interests what they want, which they will get. And if lots of people are shafted then so be it. Any scandals like with welfare reform will be covered up. If they are lucky the victims will get an apology from a future PM when the victims are safely dead and cannot gain any useful recompense. We are all sorry about turing old boy so here is a saccharine eulogy.

Obviously most brexit type voters want hanging as they are ignorant backward people like the Trump voters in America. Not possesed of two ideas to rub together.

[nicholas]

Chris,
After Brexit the people in charge may well be buffoons. But they will be our buffoons.

[nicholas]

Is this corner of cyberspace a part of some sort of 20th century revolutionary re-enactment society? We have Chris pretending to be a Marxist, and now Keith is dressing up as some sort of PolPot-ist.

[Frank]

It seems inconsistent with your views on worker cooperatives to be neutral as regards the governance of the State between EU and UK. The EU has less strong democratic oversight than the UK government given that for example the Commission which is the executive branch of the EU is unelected and so much power vests in the Council of Europe. Therefore if one believes that better governance drives better outcomes and that greater participation drives better governance then one should expect the U.K. state to have more competence in the longer term.

This is surely pretty key to Leaver belief that we will do a better job of governing ourselves.

[TrumpisaJew]

Uh, Frank, the "old" UK was already "governing" themselves and did very poorly. The truth is, the EU buffered the UK from the "people of color" at the expense of Eurasian immigration. Now you will have a colored hoard like you have never seen before.

You represent the failure of modern dialectics. The Rothschild spun you like a sheep and will spit you out for dinner when Scotland and Northern Ireland break off. There will be nothing left but the looting.