I agree that voters at the time were stupid and/or misled, and if I wasn’t part of the 48% I’d probably feel some pleasure at the 52% getting what they voted for, but still, why can they not have the opportunity to change their minds. We shouldnt be making such a huge change, that could effectively ruin our economy for a decade, based on one flawed referendum with a deliberately misinformed populace.
Whilst it’s by no means certain, polls are showing that many Leavers would switch their vote if No Deal was the only option, and there’s already a shift to remain as the older generation die off and the younger generation reach voting age.
Also Article 50 itself is almost certainly reversible, whether unilaterally or with the EU’s consent. The guy who wrote article 50 believes it can be revoked unilaterally, the EU have said that they’d be happy to cancel it, and there’s a court case started this week asking the ECJ for a ruling on it. Of course our government tried to block this as they don’t want Remain to be an option, but the EU’s lawyers basically said they wouldn’t contest any revocation by the UK.
Remainers are not the only people demanding a new referendum: the SNP have been at it ever since they lost their last one. It’s just a case of “Wah, we lost.” The people voted to leave. Get over it. Respect it. The choice was simple: remain or leave. Not ‘Leave on X terms’. The people voted to leave. Get over it. Respect it.
Or is democracy only democracy when it gives the result you want?
If Brexit turns out to be a failure, as our politicians seem to be desperately trying to effect, the UK can apply to rejoin the EU.
This is my hope: all it takes is a leader with the courage to stand up and say, “this was the result of a badly-done referendum, but it is NOT the will of the people, and it is not in the interests of the people. We are cancelling it.”
If you’re ranking all three options, you’re not splitting any votes. If it’s true that a majority of the population would rather leave on any terms than remain then, when you eliminate the least popular option, one of the two leave options must win. If that doesn’t happen, then it’s not true that a majority of the population would rather leave on any terms than remain; the likely truth is that a majority of the population would like to leave, but only if that can be done on terms which they consider acceptable.
That certainly seems to be the position of people who oppose a further vote. They’re of the view that the previous vote, in 2016, has put this question beyond democratic review or reconsideration for an unspecified but lengthy period. They see referendums as a way of setting a boundary to the march of democracy.
Something similar: you could also try approval voting. There are actually lots of alternatives to first-past-the-post/plurality voting/winner take all.
“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”
– John Maynard Keynes
The situation has changed in 2½ years. It’s changed enough so that it’s worth holding another referendum.
More information has come to light about:
• The complexity and consequences of Brexit
• The likely economic effects
• The exceptionally poor quality of British government leadership
• Illegal funding and lies of the Brexit campaign
• Ayn Randian intent of the leading promoters of Brexit
• Russian interference in the referendum
• etc.
The SNP do have some justification though, don’t you think? The unionists warned independence hazarded EU membership, and here we find unionism hazarding EU membership.
If the polls were reflecting this deception by having a majority in favour of independence, I don’t doubt demands for a second vote would be irresistible, even if I hate the idea. But independence polls remain static right now with a solid margin for staying in the UK.
That’s not the case with Brexit.
As has been said, that’s what you’re trying to do.
There is no way it can’t be a failure. Why prolong it? If we’re forced to rejoin, we lose everything we’ve gained through membership - exception from the Euro, the opt-outs, the rebate…and we’ll be on the outside, so who knows what additional requirements will be added in the meantime.
The situation has not changed. We have yet to jump off this cliff without a parachute, despite being told there would be a parachute.
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But it’s impossible to ‘leave’. You have to leave on some terms or other. That’s not a weasely changing of the deal. It’s just a simple fact about what leaving entails. You do it one way, or another way, or a third way. But you can’t not have a way.
When we leave, we leave with no deal, or this deal, or that deal. There are big differences between these options, and at some point we have to actually pick one over the others. There are various ways of picking - some think it should be up to Parliament as constituted now, some want a general election first, some want a second referendum.
But whatever the decision method, a decision has to be made. And when that happens, all the people who voted to leave somehow should have the right to ask themselves if this particular version of Leave is what they were voting for. For some it will be - maybe a majority!
But not, if Leavers feel that the Brexit they’ve ultimately been given is worse than Remain, should they not have the chance to say so? What’s the democratic option here?
No, there is no lack of comprehension. There is a lack of coherence in your arguments.
this is the argument of the Soviets. One True Vote One Time. the People’s Republic democracy.
It is not an argument coming from actual democracy (otherwise there would not be regular elections, no, one election for life terms - people voted, get over it…).
You had a closely decided referendum that was not even one legally binding and had very different results in the different components of the overall State, and since then many terms not yet actually clear and subject to great obfuscation have become clear.
And like as in calling an election in a situation of a collapsed confidence in our parliamentary systems, there is nothing undemocratic about a 2nd vote, to the contrary it is more democratic.
But you clearly prefer the Soviet People’s Republic approach for the One Result.
Apparently for you, yes.
(but me I have no direct interest in your result - in fact my business trips to London keep getting cheaper thanks to the strange self-harming the UK is engaging in, and more of the high-paying jobs from London are moving back to the continent, so in fact there is a benefit. But the objective facts are the objective facts.)
of course it will be a failure, anyone with any understanding of the modern economic systems can see that.
The façade of Brexit doubtful you have tried to maintain is a very weak one. Recalling still immediate afterward you patted the decision on the back because the long-term economic costs did not appear in the first weeks afterward.
There is no doubt on the effects, the economics of these situations are very clear in the data. Of course for the various parties that fear and hate the outsiders, it may be worth impoverishment so that do not have to bear the burden of the polish plumbers’ voices and the great threat to your sovereign nation from the polish and the spanish hotel workers.
Yes.
Encore incoherence.
The situation has changed as the Article 50 was actually invoked, as the economic costs - both the immediate real ones that are feeding into your economy now and the longer-term ones ignored via the entirely magical thinking about economic exchanges and magical wishful thinking about technologies not yet even existing to hand-waive away the impacts of border trade frictions…
These are all situations changed from the moment of the vote.
“We must respect democracy by denying it”. Got it.
Like “Brexit means Brexit”, this is a pithy statement that falls apart at the slightest scrutiny. No deal IS a bad deal. It’s a *terrible *deal that will have abrupt and dire economic consequences for the country, a country that is literally planning to stockpile food due to the effects of Brexit. And it is not the deal that a large number of Leavers voted for.
Look, the Leave campaign promised us that everyone would get a unicorn and the people voted for that. Clearly it’s the fault of Remoaners that we don’t all have unicorns yet.
Indeed. If I were an estate agent and promised that I could sell your house for three times its market value plus getting the cost of moving thrown in, you might readily agree with that proposal. If I came back later and said “Actually, the best offer I can get for your house is twenty quid and a packet of crisps”, which would be the more sensible approach: a) to have a say on the actual final terms of the deal with the option not to accept it and to stay with the status quo for now; or b) to cross your arms and go “Nope - house sale means house sale”, claim that the fact that you’ve managed to get them to agree that the crisps were salt and vinegar rather than cheese and onion is a major negotiating victory, and then pop off to Waitrose to see if they have any cardboard boxes to use for packing? Because Quartz’s argument is firmly in the b) category.
If *argumentum ad petulance * is your preferred approach, I can likewise point out that the “No further vote must be allowed” approach translates to “The Leave campaign lied, cheated and was heavily supported by the concerted efforts of foreign agents, and the problem is that it can’t get away with that twice in a row.”
But on much less favourable terms than we have now. There is no “undo” button to this; even if we stopped the whole thing now and stayed in the EU a lot of irreversible damage has already been done.