This week on the NYR Daily: A solution to the Brexit crisis from Britain's Rust Belt

On the NYR Daily this week On Monday, as the British Parliament continued to debate Brexit and Prime Minister Theresa May announced a new January timetable for a vote on her deal, the Daily published an essay by Labour Party MP Lisa Nandy titled “[Let the People Take Back Control of Brexit](.” The argument of the piece, in a nutshell, is that with both main parties and Parliament itself impossibly divided on Brexit, the only answer that makes sense is to put voters in charge of the process to determine what outcome to pursue. Though Nandy would prefer that the UK to stay in the EU, she differs from those calling for a new referendum on Brexit. For her, holding second referendum would be a betrayal of the democratic decision-making embodied in the wishes of her Northern constituents who already voted once, overwhelmingly, for Brexit. As she told me this week: “They voted in good faith and deserve more respect than that.” But with the manner of Leaving radically unresolved, Nandy argues for handing over control to a Citizens’ Assembly, a system of deliberative democracy along the lines of the one Ireland used recently to discuss several vexing and divisive issues, including reform of the country’s constitutional commitment to denying abortion. If a convocation to fix Brexit perhaps seems pie-in-the-sky, then it’s worth remembering that British politics is so blocked, and the need for a solution so urgent, that the second referendum idea has gone from being a fringe enthusiasm to a mainstream plan within months. Indeed, three days after Nandy’s piece appeared, The Guardian newspaper [published]( an editorial favorable to the Citizens’ Assembly proposal. To the extent that I track British politics, I’ve followed Nandy for a while—mainly because of the interesting stuff she’s published with the [New Statesman]( on patriotism, for example, and with the Fabian Society on [immigration](. Being in large part an electoral machine, the Labour Party has historically been interested in ideas only intermittently, but Nandy comes from a background where thinkers were valued—her father, Dipak, is a former left-wing academic who later helped draft groundbreaking race- and gender-equality legislation; her maternal grandfather was a Liberal peer. I asked whether it was this family tradition that nudged her into politics. “It was more the frustration of seeing young people struggle against barriers set up before they were even born, realizing it was about power and that only politics could change it,” she said. “But my background is important to my politics. There are as many clues to the failures of British politics in Mill, Burke, Tocqueville, and Payne as there are in Marx.” You can see how she comes by her deft ability to weave in references to George Eliot and Abraham Lincoln in her essay for us. As a professional politician, she forms a vital bridge in Labour Party culture between its progressive metropolitan wing and its traditional and provincial working-class base. She entered Parliament, after several years’ working for homelessness and children’s charities, in 2010—the election that marked the decisive end of the Blair-Brown years. What, I wondered, was her assessment of the period of New Labour government. “It was strongest when it got ahead of public opinion, on issues like the minimum wage and LGBT rights, and changed Britain for good, but the economic model wasn’t sufficient,” she said. “Taking wealth from the top and handing it, with conditions, to people at the bottom left our power structures undisturbed and is a major reason why people are revolting against the system now.” That critique of neoliberal social democracy probably chimes with what many of us in the US feel about the Obama years. Something else that might resonate, I realized, is that Nandy comes from what could be considered Britain’s Rust Belt. But, for all that she is Northern, Nandy resists stereotyping of “the North”: “Like most people, the place and culture I’m from is part of my identity and matters to me, something we’ve traditionally underestimated in politics. But I really dislike the characterization of the North as left behind. It ignores the huge deprivation in the South and doesn’t do justice to the North. We have huge assets and potential. We just need the political power to make things happen.” Speaking of power, she was once talked up as a potential party leader, but declined to run against Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. She later served in a couple of roles in his Shadow Cabinet, but quit (along with others) during a major shakeup in 2016. With Labour today still behind in the polls, despite Theresa May’s problems with her own Tory Party, what prospect does she see for Labour to recover and win back power? “Our debate has been all about the leader,” she said, “but unless we can speak to a divided country and inspire them to believe things can change, we will not win. It isn’t easy. British politics has been an ideas free zone for some time. But it’s the only way through for us, so I’m in until that’s done—as long as the people of Wigan agree!” Ah, again with the ideas. I hope the good people of Wigan know their luck. For everything else we’ve been publishing, visit the [NYR Daily](. And let us know what you think: send your comments to Lucy McKeon and me at daily@nybooks.com; we do write back. Matt Seaton Editor, NYR Daily You are receiving this message because you signed up for email newsletters from The New York Review. [Update preferences]( The New York Review of Books 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014 [Unsubscribe](