Actually there was one. In 75.
Maybe, but Brexit was later approved by Parliament with the European Union Withdrawal Act of 2018, 324 votes versus 298, making it a Parliamentary decision.
Which was two-and-a-half years after the UK entered. That was a referendum about whether to remain or to leave. They entered on the basis of a parliamentary vote, without a prior referendum, advisory or otherwise.
Indeed. But it was a decision which certainly wouldn’t have been made but for the referendum.
I think the British have a problem with referendums. They’re something of a novelty in the British constitutional tradition, and they haven’t quite worked out conventions for when they should be used and what status they should have. A proposal, when Parliament was debating the holding of the Brexit referendum, that it should have a qualified majority requirement was knocked back on the basis that it was advisory only, and that after the referendum it would be up to Parliament to decide whether the vote conferred a sufficient mandate to leave. But since the referendum was held, it has been treated as conferring an irresistible political mandate to leave the EU, regardless of the consequences for the UK, despite the facts that the majority in favour of “Leave” was thin, two of the four nations in the UK voted to remain, and evidence has since emerged pointing to illegal and corrupt practices in the referendum campaign.
There’s not much point in having a concept of an advisory referendum unless Parliament is, in fact, free to treat the outcome as advisory only. It’s also probably a mistake for a government to hold a referendum inviting a mandate to implement a policy that it doesn’t want to implement, and has no clue how to implement. These are the kind of things the Brits need to sort out for themselves before they think about holding any more referendums.
But they were free to do so. The Conservatives thought it would be political suicide to vote against it, so they didn’t, but they were still free.
What might have been suicide last year could be acceptable this year.
[note: I’m another confused Yankee, looking in from afar, and pretty much ignorant of British politics.]
But am I right in sensing that the voters attitude has changed enormously since the referendum was held?
So it seems logical to hold a new referendum, thus letting the voters say “we screwed up, it was a terrible decision, so let’s cancel it.We’re sorry, but let’s just forget about it now, okay?”
Sure it would be embarrassing for a couple dozen outspoken and visible political leaders. But the other 600 MP’s could probably just sit quietly and let the uproar die down.
Now,yes, I’m an outsider, so I may be totally wrong–but it seems to me that the British public are sick and tired of hearing about Brexit and would prefer to go back to their old, familiar routine.
Most of the Leavers voted with their guts, not their brains. They had a gut-level feeling that there were too many immigrants from Eastern Europe, and and even deeper gut-churning fear that the Muslim refugees streaming into Germany would become an unstoppable flood.
But now that they realize that the old problems weren’t so bad, yet the new problems created by Leaving are very, very bad.
So why not hold a new referendum?
Sure, it would look bad for the next few months, and a few major politicians would be sent off to die in disgrace.
But a year or so later, Britain would be healthier and happier.
This seems pretty clear and simple to me----so tell me: am I missing something very basic?
I’d love to have my ignorance fought. But I’d also like to see England stay strong economically and stable socially.
England shouldn’t become a country where citizens begin hoarding food and medicine.
At this point, I feel things need to run their course.
To put it in an American perspective, imagine that after the 2016 elections to the American Presidency, somebody was like “Trump is a very divisive figure”, “There were irregularities and Russian intervention”, “Maybe instead of Hillary, the Democrats should have run literally anybody else”, so the elections are repeated shortly after.
Trump supporters would feel like their worst fear of some sort of elite governing over their democratic rights were correct. The idea of a Trump Presidency being some sort of mythical utopia that would have solved all of their problems if it wasn’t by some sort of evil Deep State intervening and trampling their rights would become prevalent.
It would become a gigantic thorn on the side of politics for a long, long time. It wouldn’t do any good to anybody.
Same with the UK… having millions of people feeling prisoners against their will would be hurtful to both the UK and the EU.
“If there was another referendum…” polling actually looks very static, with results pretty close to the 2016 result.
But that suffers from the same problem as the first referendum: One of the options doesn’t mean anything.
I know. But if if it’s “political suicide” to vote against the razor-thin and slightly dodgy result of an advisory refernendum, the theoretical freedom to do so doesn’t seem to have much real-world signficance. Which raises the question, is it a good idea to have advisory referendums at all? Why not proceed on the basis that referendums are binding, and therefore should be attended with the controls and constraints that go with binding votes?
If corrupt practices are proven in a parliamentary election, the member is unseated by an election court and the election rerun. As evidence of corrupt practices has emerged in relation to the Brexit referendum, people have asked whether the referendum should similarly be nullified by a court process. And the answer is no, it can’t be, because their is nothing to nullify, because the referendum had no legal effect that can be set aside. The result is that a formally binding referendum can be challenged for illegality, but a formally non-binding referendum can’t, even though the formally non-binding one is, for all practical purposes, binding. And I’m thinking that maybe this isn’t such a terribly well-thought-out system. Other countries which are more used to referendums and have an accepted place for them in their constitutional system tend not to get themselves into this kind of knot. Maybe the UK has something to learn from those other countries. If you’re going to go down the route of deciding questions by referendum, the question of when to do so and how to do so needs a little more systematic thought than the UK has given it so far.
You could say the same of any Parliamentary vote ever. Every vote is guided by how popular it seems to be among your electorate.
Couple of things, firstly, the polls don’t look very different from the original result (god only knows why but there you go). And secondly PLEASE don’t use England and the UK/Britain interchangeably - they aren’t the same place. Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish get, understandably, very upset about it, and the English get the blame for it.
Has the Brexit reached a point of no return where Remain now requires EU permission?
“Fair” is another of those ambiguous, emotion-charged, and relatively meaningless words which should be avoided.
In fact, allowing a simple majority to reverse the decision of a simple majority may be a recipe for vacillation and failure. Decision-making systems need to be designed with Hysteresis.
From my perspective, the Brexit seems to be one of the two worst democratic decisions made by a developed democracy during the 21st century to date. By coincidence(?) the other major blunder was also made in 2016, and also by an Anglophone country. In some ways Brexit was the stupider one: it was a “self-goal” — there didn’t need to be a referendum at all.
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The British government is assuring its citizens that a hard exit will (probably) not mean food shortages:
“We’ve Reached the “At Least There Will Still Be Enough Food for Everyone” Stage of Brexit”
It was a stupid decision to hold the referendum, but I think it is at least politically understandable. The 2010 UK general election resulted in a hung parliament and the Conservatives had to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives were worried about a threat from the right from the UK Independence Party, so they promised the referendum in their 2015 manifesto. The Conservatives won a small majority in Parliament during that election.
Where Cameron erred was rushing through the referendum and not giving enough time for a campaign. The recovery from the last recession has been slow, as recoveries often are from financial crisis induced recessions. However, if Cameron would have waited another year or two, then I think Remain would have won.
No one knows what the EU would say if the UK decided to remain since Article 50 has never been triggered. My guess is that the EU would allow the UK to remain and allow the UK to withdraw their Article 50 declaration. The EU may not feel the same way had it been Greece who triggered Article 50 during their financial mess.
As you note, it was a manifesto pledge. Stupid doesn’t apply.
I disagree: he learned from the Scottish referendum where a long campaign almost ended in failure.
I always thought Cameron’s mistake was not paying attention to the conservative populist rise in the uk …
He thought " lets end this nonsense and have it out in public since I know were not going anywhere since most good thinking people are for the eu "
He was wrong at that moment …….
The closest thing we would have like that here is : “lets put abortion to a public vote to settle it once and for all since more people are for it than not” and then finding out more people are against it than we thought and the social chaos that would ensue
That would be an awesome fourth plinth… just line all 3 up along it in one big pillory.
Lets assume that Cameron didn’t hold the referendum in 2016, but is now starting to think about it for 2019. There aren’t constant stories about migrants flooding into Europe. There aren’t the constant stories about criminal activity by recent migrants. The economy improved and there’s less resistance about immigration from Eastern Europe. I still think there’s a chance that UK would have imploded.
Remain wins easy and Cameron has fulfilled his manifesto promise and the Tories can start to plan the leadership challenge to succeed Cameron and will likely cruise to reelection in 2020.
Meanwhile, Labour would look like a clown show under Corbyn since he wouldn’t have the soft support of Remainers desperate for anyone to stand up against Brexit.
Of course it applies. It was stupid to put it into the manifesto.
That’s not entirely clear.
The UK has served notice of intention to withdraw under Article 50 of the EU Treaty, which sets a clock ticking that will end, after 2 years, with the termination of UK membership. This will happen on 29 March 2019.
The Treaty allows for the 2-year period to be extended, but only by unanimous agreement of the UK and all 27 other Member States.
The Treaty is silent about whether the UK can simply withdraw its notice at any time before 29 March 2019 and, if so, whether it can do this unilaterally or only by agreement with the EU-27. There’s an academic argument that the UK does have thes right to withdraw its notice unilaterally, but that argument has never been tested before the European Court of Justice (which is the body that would ultimately decide the question, if the UK sought to withdraw its notice, and the legal efficacy of this were challenged).
For this purpose, the EU is 27 different governments, each with their own interests, ambitions and domestic pressures,who have to agree unanimously. Even if those who see the UK as the perpetual whinger and opter-out are sidelined, and even if the heavyweights in Germany and France are OK with it, others are going to want something for their co-operation.
Note they don’t use the dread word “rationing”.