It has to be asked. With a petition signed by over 3M Brits, is there a chance Cameron will do that one thing before he slinks off into the sunset?
I just read a website in which several people said they voted “leave” as a protest, not dreaming it would pass. There is even a new coinage: “Regrexit” to express their remorse.
Not sure if it will happen or not. But if it does, it will show the pro-EU crowd to be the high handed, antidemocratic force that some accuse them of being.
Let’s see, the people have voted and now, the rat-scum politicians are trying to find a way to reverse it, because apparently, the people don’t know what is good for them.
Gee! That sounds like some thing that’s going on here in America. This just proves what your vote means. . .nothing. They will find a way to change it or vote on it again until they get the result they want.
It was a non-binding resolution. The politicians could choose to just ignore it. Nothing undemocratic about that.
Except the part where they reject the majority opinion of those they are suppose to serve as expressed in a duly held referendum.
There was a petition started in late May requesting a re-vote if the winning side got less than 60% and there was less than 75% turnout. Before the results were announced, I believe it had less than 50 signatures; now it has 2.5 million. Once it got 100,000, parliament will consider it for debate.
Don’t think it’ll hold water, but there is a mad scramble underway to make it stop.
The petition was actually started by someone who was in favour of leaving.
And 70% of the people who have signed it live OUTSIDE the UK.
How can you do this retroactively?
Imagine if, *after *Obergefell v. Hodges, SSM opponents said, “Please do not allow SCOTUS to legalize SSM without 9-0 unanimity - oh, and this applies *retroactively *to Obergefell v. Hodges!”
What’s retroactive about a future referendum?
The part where a past referendum is disregarder simply because one side didn’t like the outcome.
The text of the petition reads like this:
“We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum.”
Which if implemented it would lead to an infinite loop of referendums no matter what the outcome or turnout.
Aaah, the importance of knowing your conjunctions and disjunctions!
But the referendum just had was the second in the UK on this subject. If it’s not undemocratic to allow the voters to change their minds after a generation, how does it become undemocratic to allow the voters to change their minds after, say, six months? Does democracy require that people only be allowed to express an opinion once, and then shut up and let their betters decide matters for them?
I agree, as it happens, that an immediate rerun of the referendum would be a bad idea. But there is a fundamental problem here, which is that the terms on which the UK is able to negotiate its exit from the EU may turn out to be quite different from the terms suggested by the “Leave” campaign. (Already a number of Brexiters are rushing to point out that any relationship some of the things they said in the campaign may bear to actual events as they unfold will be entirely coincidental.) So in a year or two years or whenever the exit negotiations are complete, Parliament may be faced with the dilemma of implementing an exit on terms which they think are not in the interests of the UK, and for which they feel the referendum does not amount to a satisfactory mandate.
That might amount to a political case for a second referendum to ratify the in-principle decision of the first referendum, so to speak, now that more is known about how it will play out.
The problem, though, is that once the UK has served its Art 50 notice and negotiated its exit, the exit will happen unless all EU member states agree to allow the UK to change its mind. And some of those state might just be tired of the UK playing chicken with its threats to leave and its long history of strident demands for rebates and special deals and whatever. So if a second referendum at that point were to vote to remain, there’s no guarantee that the UK would be able to persuade the other 27 member states to agree at that point. And I doubt whether it would be right or prudent to hold a referendum if it was not within the power of Parliament to deliver the outcome offered.
I think on this the UK has made its bed, for better or worse. Exit is now inevitable, and the sooner the better.
The vote was to exit the EU. If that doesn’t happen, then yes it’s undemocratic.
That’s not to say some future generation can’t hold a referendum to reenter the EU.
A duly help referendum was held, and the leave vote won. Many proponents on the leave side cited the undemocratic nature of the EU as one of the reasons they wanted out. To now go back on the referendum because the powers that be don’t like the outcome proves those people right.
The first vote was to remain in the EU. If that doesn’t happen, will it be undemocratic?
Why is only a future generation allowed to hold a vote about this? Why can’t the present generation hold another vote? I happen to think that holding another vote would be a bad idea and I doubt that the outcome would be different, but if there were to be another vote and if the outcome of that vote were to be respected, I struggle to see how that could be characterized as “undemocratic”. I don’t know of any principle of democracy that says that the people can only be consulted once on any matter, and if they subsequently have better information about that matter it would be undemocratic to consult them any further.
Well, no, since it would be the UK that was “going back on” the referendum outcome, not the EU. So if holding a second referendum could fairly be described as “going back on” the first, and if “going back on” the first was considered to be undemocratic, all you would show is that the UK is undemocratic.
The first vote was to remain. And the UK did remain. That’s democratic.
The second vote was to leave. If it doesn’t leave, that’s undemocratic.
They’re not. But practically, it’s not feasible to have a “should we stay or go” vote every six months.
I don’t see why the outcome of a future vote that may or may not occur should be respected, but the outcome of this vote that did happen shouldn’t be respected.
That’s not what I’m proposing. I’m saying that a vote happened. The majority reached a decision. If that isn’t respected, it is ipso facto undemocratic.
Fair point. I didn’t express it correctly before.
Part of the motivation behind the leave vote was that EU is undemocratic.
If the UK reneges on this vote, you’re right strictly speaking, it would be the UK that is undemocratic in this regard, not the EU. That would be cold comfort for those who won the referendum but still didn’t have their wishes respected.
Well, the UK is not remaining now, is it? So the wish expressed in the first referendum is not being honoured.
The democratic case for this, of course, is that a subsequent referendum has produced a majority in favour of leaving. The outcome of the second referendum supersedes the first.
But, once you concede that, if a hypothetical third referendum were to produce a majority in favour of remaining, then the democratic outcome would be for the UK to remain, and I don’t see how you could describe that as “undemocratic”.
My issue is that there’s no point in holding another referendum where nothing has changed. There is no reason to expect a different outcome, so it’s a massive waste of time and money.
It could be that, before the exit actually happens, circumstances will change, and it might then genuinely be that a majority of the voters would no longer favour an exit. That’s a hypothetical, obviously, and it doesn’t create a case for another referendum unless and until it actually happens.
But, by the time it does happen, it will likely be too late. By then it will no longer be within the power of the UK government to procure that the UK remains in the EU, and they should not offer that as an option in a referendum.
It was honored. But a following referendum reached a different verdict. It too should be honored.
Each referendum is a distinct event, it’s inaccurate to try to lump them all together.
All true except that Article 50 hasn’t been invoked and Cameron is now saying he’ll leave that to his successor in the fall. Which raises the possibility, as events unfold and the repercussions of this ill-advised vote become increasingly apparent, as they are already, that the invocation of Article 50 may become a political hot potato. An interesting hypothetical would be if Cameron’s successor or any other party won an election victory on the explicit promise not to invoke Article 50 and in effect ignore the referendum. The political winds seem to be shifting in that direction. I’m sure that a lot of people who didn’t know what they were doing are shocked by the global reaction, drastic drop in the pound sterling, dire predictions for the UK’s economic future, etc.
If you have referendums that produce conflicting outcomes, you can’t honour them all. The UK cannot both remain in the EU and leave it; it’s one or the other. Generally, we regard the most recent outcome as the one with the greatest legitimacy and democratic force which is why, right now, there is a democratic mandate for the UK to leave the EU. But seeking a fresh mandate from the people is never undemocratic.
And, no submitting a question to the people that they have already voted on is no more undemocratic than presenting a law to Parliament that has been considered and rejected on a previous occasion. Depending on the circumstances it may be pointless, but it’s not undemocratic.