I wonder if any of you have ever seen the marvellous film, Hobson’s Choice? It stars the fantastic Charles Laughton as the eponymous shoe shop owner Henry Hobson and is directed by David Lean. It was originally a play by the Manchester playwright Harold Brighouse and illustrates perfectly the notion of ‘Hobson’s choice’.
It all began, it appears, with a chap called Thomas Hobson, a stable owner in seventeenth-century England. He offered customers a choice between the horse in the stable nearest the door, or no horse at all. The spurious circumstance of having a choice which was basically ‘take it or leave it’ became known as Hobson’s choice.
I will not outline the plot or storyline of the movie, but simply recommend that you watch it; it is a gem.
However, the idea of being put in a position where there is the appearance of a choice, but in fact there is no choice at all, or a selection of increasingly poor choices, is being played out in the corridors of power in Whitehall. It is also all over the news and is the hot topic in parliament, to judge by the quantity of vented spleen in Prime Minister’s questions.
I refer to Brexit, of course. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a much-respected research group, which is eighty years old, has modelled a variety of potential outcomes following the current discussions. The best option seems to be the one which has been parlayed by Theresa May and that is dreadful.
If Britain is to leave the European Union, and that is what the public voted for, guided by the likes of Boris and Nigel, then the research suggests that the best outcome is that people will be worse off by at least £1000 a year for each person by 2030. Theresa May is in a curious position: she voted remain, but has the moral high ground, in that she can maintain that she is carrying out the will of the people.
In her shoes, I would be arguing along these lines: I didn’t want this but negotiated the best deal I could get. It is not a great deal but is the best of a dreadful lot. The mistake, made by David Cameron, was to permit the referendum in the first place.
This was compounded by the lunatic irresponsibility of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage who managed to convince the public to vote for something that they clearly had no plan to implement and didn’t really think would happen.
Theresa May is sitting pretty. She has done what she was asked to do. If people don’t want it now, she gets what she wanted anyway.
The difficulty is the seductive appeal of the People’s Vote group. To have another referendum is to deny the democratic process which resulted from the first one, however misinformed it might have been.
Surely the most honourable route is for parliament, on the public’s behalf, to admit defeat. We had a jolly good go at it, but it just doesn’t work. Sorry, and all that, but we wish to forget it and revoke article 50.