Um, no, the UK didn’t reject STV in a referendum - it rejected AV. Regardless, I don’t think STV would work, as it returns multiple favoured choices, not one - AV would be best.
Regardless, I don’t think it’s a good excuse to not use it in any context. Scotland uses STV for local elections, Northern Ireland for the Assembly and it and Scotland and Wales use AMS for their legislatures.
Where there’s a will there’s a way IMO. Either AV, which admittedly could be messy, or something like Second Ballot - one round of all three choices, then a runoff a week later between the top two.
Also, I don’t see having May’s deal and No deal as two choices as ‘splitting’ the Leave vote. They were never a bloc to begin with. It’s compounding them that got us into this mess.
Only if the terms are not at risk of seeing other members decide to go shopping.
You make the presumption that the calculation is just the UK. It is also the impact on the other trade relationships and the possibility that the only thing the UK will internally be able to agree to is to quote from a post here “Ones that suit the Brexiteers, I mean - basically, leave the EU but still reap all the benefits, and have none of the responsibilities” which is worse for the EU as like pouring acid on its cartiledge.
The English need to understand that the calculations are not just about you.
I think you overestimate the idea of the people being motivated to punish the English versus the other risks perceived as possibly extistential to the EU.
the emphasis added. This is the key hurdle - it is everyone’s fear that essentially the entire UK government is hostage to a group that will not take any reasonable offer and only this, which would be deeply destructive to the EU, more than Brexit.
So renegotiations do not seem like a fruitful thing because "Why?’ - the May government is too weak to be the counter party and there is no other solid center to negotiate with.
So that leaves the howling unreasonable fringe.
This is a purely English problem - it is not the fault of the EU or its negotiators or anyone but the English.
It seems obvious only a new election can have any chance of maybe resolving. Maybe.
A second referendum is bad faith at best. The Leave side fought for years to get a referendum and then won. The UKIP party all but disbanded after winning the referendum.
You cannot fairly say that we will Let The People Decide in a grand referendum!..oh, but only if the people get it “right.” If they don’t, we will keep having referenda until they do.
What if Remain wins in the second referendum? Should there be a third to break the tie?
Any further referendum at this point wouldn’t be a “do-over based on the same foundations as last time” any more than the recent Conservative leadership vote was a “do-over” of the previous one. Characterising it as such only serves to dismiss it as a “sore loser” strategy when in fact any new referendum would (or should) be on the basis of actual or proposed Brexit deals rather than the pie-in-the-sky, purely advisory first referendum.
We Let the People Decide. They decided they wanted Westminster to pursue a Brexit strategy. Westminster has duly pursued it and discovered that at the present time there is no way to implement it that will not have material negative consequences for the country, nor will it deliver the benefits promised during the run-up to the referendum. It is not unreasonable for Westminster to either simply say “This is not in the best interest of the country at the moment and we will not exit at the present time, but will continue to revisit options as things change” or to go to the populace and say “Here’s the reality of Brexit - do you still want it on these terms?”.
I disagree. The particular method of Brexit was known to be a difficult and as yet unknown proposition in June, 2016. Maybe a second referendum should be held as to the particular method of Brexit, but not on Leave itself.
You have done an excellent job of trying to paint it as otherwise, but you are in essence asking for a do-over.
Imagine a referendum on building a new State University. The opposition argues that there is no way to build a new university without deep cuts in healthcare. Notwithstanding the opposition argument, the people vote for it anyways.
Now, as construction is about to begin, the opposition argues that there needs to be a re-vote because we would have to make deep cuts in healthcare. That proposition was understood and is not a new circumstances that just gobsmacked everyone.
This is categorically not true. Leave leaders are on record making quite clear statements that Brexit would be simple, easy, with no downsides, Britain would get all it wants, the EU would cave.
It wasn’t understood. Remain made warnings, and what did Leave do? Did they say ‘yes, that’s true, but we should do it anyway’.
No, Ultra, they did not. If they did, you would have a point.
Leave in fact said ‘No, not a word of that’s true, trust us, they’re scaremongering, we’ll have no downsides and the EU will cave.’
That cannot in any fever dream be interpreted to mean the pubic gave a mandate for Brexit at any cost.
The proposition was not understood, was it? Not with mad Michael Gove and slimy Nigel Farage misrepresenting everything.
If you Leave, you will lose Scotland and Northern Ireland. You *will *go through an immediate economic contraction. You will *not *bring Canada, Australia, & America back into the fold. You won’t have an empire, you’ll just have Britain, and barely that, and you might well end up with a coup or a civil war for your trouble.
With that information, are you still voting Leave? Nah, son.
This is how bad PM May is at her present post. She pretends that Brexit is workable even though (unlike the mentally unfit Gove and Johnson) she knows it is not. She persists anyway. If I were PM May, I would be tempted to advise the Queen to sack me, dissolve Parliament, and just decide her-royal-self what to do. It might be a hot mess, but would it really be any worse?
Missed edit window: I agree that I find it an odd part of UK politics that such a large decision could be made by a one time vote with a simple majority. But that is exactly what it chose to do. And it took that gamble hoping that the people would vote Remain and shut up Nigel Farage and UKIP forever.
Well, it gambled and lost.
Now, I’m not one to say that once a mistake is made that you should follow your own mistake by making others and allow yourself to fall into the abyss, but to have another referendum, if I was a UK citizen, would signal to me that the Government lies to me in a very big way and that I should hesitate to trust anything it says.
And I’m not talking little white lies; I’m talking about: Here is the vote on the future relations of your country to the rest of the world. You get to decide…Oops, that was a practice. Let’s do it again.
Of course not. That would be like electing a Democratic president and negotiating the transfer of power and then after two years and the transition is becoming really hard, but we are almost there…holding another election to ask if we really, really want a Democratic president given how hard it is.
Democracy would be that after Brexit is complete, and the results of that are in, and a reasonable time has passed, asking if the UK wants to Re-Join.*
*Slogan trademarked by UltraVires
Fine, don’t hold another vote. Just say it was a daft idea from daft David C., who is gone now, and the government is just not following through for the good of the country.
Well, as I have said before, I am very ignorant when it comes to the ins and outs of UK politics. But I watched the news coverage of the lead up to the Brexit vote, and I watched the results as they came in on BBC America, and stayed up until the wee hours of the morning here and watched the interviews with the members of the public.
The sun rose over (my apologies) whatever part of the UK the sun first rises over and the commentators said that the day dawned on a “Free Britain” for the first time in a generation.
If that vote was meant to be “non-binding” then nobody on that newscast, including the interviewees, thought so.
The British people voted to join the EU by referendum. How was it fair that the Brexiteers were able to have a do-over. The people had already decided.
The answer is that in a democracy, people’s views can change. When more information comes out about a policy, they may change their minds. That’s why we have elections at set periods and parties that win last time can lose this time.
This is a huge decision. It’s like the constitutional amendment process in some countries and states, where a proposed amendment has to be passed twice, with an election in between.
Scenario #1: The people have a referendum. Their will is enacted into law (the UK joins the EU/EEC). FORTY YEARS later, the results have come in and the people want to vote again.
Scenario #2: The people have a referendum. Their will has not been fulfilled. Two years later, the very same people that lost want a re-do.