UK snap general election 14 October?

Politics & Elections
81

It was supposed to be a suggestion, not a mandate, because it was an “advisory referendum.”

It’s more complicated than that but it certainly isn’t as clear as we told you what to do, now do it.

Even Nigel Farage agreed it was advisory (from the cite above):

This might be the only time I’ve ever agreed with him. It would be too complicated to explain to everyone whether a referendum was advisory or binding, and people have the impression that they’re binding, so it would be better to make them binding from now on, and oblige the campaigns on either side to comply by really strict rules, because it’s binding and a big deal.

But the rules under which the Brexit referendum was conducted were advisory and very vague. It went ahead pretty quickly and there was still debate about what age to allow people to vote, because there’d been a referendum in Scotland not long before, and the age there was 16.

We don’t have a lot of referendums on the UK and almost all of them in the past 40 years have been related to devolution: https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/elections/referendums-held-in-the-uk/ I’m 43 and had one opportunity to vote in a referendum before the Brexit referendum. For most people in the UK, they’ll have voted in one or possibly two since the original EU referendum in 1975, they were old enough then, and if you live in England outside London you won’t have voted in any other referendums since then.

They’re not a common occurrence and the rules are different for almost all of them.

But the way it was phrased, it seemed like a mandate, which is why people are assuming it was. So Brexiters will feel rightly cheated if their choice is taken away from them even though, technically, they were only meant to try to advise MPs in the first place. Those voters were wrong on a technicality but it’s really quite an obscure technicality that it’s unreasonable to expect most people to know.

And most of the areas that voted most strongly in favour of Brexit lived in areas where the only referendum they’ve ever heard about prior to Brexit (a change to the first past the post system, put forward by the LibDems in 2011 as part of their coalition deal with the Tories) got bundled up in a lot of other stuff and was largely ignored.

TLDR: It was advisory, but there are reasons that many voters didn’t realise that.

82

Yeah, I think people are deliberately looking away from the fact that Brexit has the potential to both undo the United Kingdom as “United” by pushing Scotland to split off from England/Wales, and to turn Northern Ireland back into the powder keg it was until 1998 (just 20 years ago). It’s not just a risk of some people losing money, the country is at risk of splitting and part of the country is set to become effectively a continuing militarized zone again. This isn’t the kind of decision that should be made based off of a single 52% vote that didn’t even have concrete proposals for the two options.

83

I don’t think that was talked about much in the referendum. And it should have been.

It’s not really one country deciding to leave the EU, it’s four countries voting, two of whom did not vote to leave the EU, and both of those countries - NI and Scotland - have had major movements to leave the UK for quite a long time. I really can’t see how England and Wales can force NI and Scotland to leave the EU when they didn’t vote for it. I mean, I can, because it’s technically possible and might well happen, but it just doesn’t seem right.

Some Brexiters I know think losing Scotland and NI would be great, though. Not for any grand ideas about giving them independence, or any thoughts about the troubles, just getting rid of them because reasons.

84

Corbyn has the amazing ability to not be able to defeat the Conservatives despite the fact that the latter are seriously unpopular and also divided among themselves. But Labour has a long tradition of not getting its shit together and of being deeply split most of the time. Part of the problem is that a left-wing party has on board just about every shade of option from neo-Marxist to centrist, and divisions are to be expected. Since Corbyn appears to be the former, this puts off the centrist voters who would otherwise vote for the Lib Dems or the local nationalists.

A number of countries are run by coalitions, the best example that comes to my mind is Germany, which has had coalitions for over 15 years now. And that has showed two things; coalitions lead to government by paralysis, and they are often the kiss of death to the junior party because of their association with the senior party, which in Germany has been the conservative CDU/CSU, of which Merkel is the head. The UK has no obvious coalition, since the minority parties are too small to make any difference unless there is a hung parliament, or nearly so. Labour and the Conservatives will never get into bed with one another, and there is no other combination that could form a stable coalition. What makes it harder is that both Labour and the Conservatives cannot agree on a common policy over Brexit, both are more or less split down the middle and in each case the leader tried to skirt the issue by making noises but doing very little. Now BJ comes along, like a bull in a china shop, and tries to curt what he perceives as a Gordian knot. It is not as easy as that.

But since only the minority parties will commit themselves to Remain, the shuffling of feet will continue in the attempt to find a solution that is not totally unacceptable to all and will not cost the major parties too many votes in an election. I assume that BJ felt that strong leadership was called for, and felt he was the man of action to do the job. Others see him as a blundering amateur.

85

IMHO, the Brexiteers don’t think, they just react. I have seen it said that Remainers like myself use logical arguments, such as economics and the possibly of NI going ballistic, and the Brexiteers have emotional argument son the basis of "getting our sovereignty back, without being aware of what is involved, and with no clear idea of what they want. The ***advisory ***referendum did not specify how the UK would exit the EU, for obvious reasons, as such a referendum can only be a choice of two options. So the Leavers voted for an exit on unspecified terms. It now turns out that both the consequences and the terms are not what the Leavers thought.

The problem in NI is that a “hard” border will reignite the issue of the division of Ireland, as well as making life more difficult by having a border between an EU and a non-EU country. The Brexiteers, Little Englanders to a man (and woman), did not think of Ireland. Well, most English people don’t either, but they are there and the one thing they do not want is anything that could cause a resumption of the Troubles. The EU has financed efforts at reconciliation; will a post-Brexit British government step in and put up the cash? I’m not holding my breath.

NI does not have an independence movement as such; the IRA was (and still is) campaigning for a united Ireland, preferably a Marxist one run by them. The future of Ireland depends hugely on people finally getting over the Troubles and finding that they have more in common with one another than differences, but we are talking about a country that has holds a march every year celebrating a victory in 1690 and the parade takes great delight in going through areas inhabited by descendants of the losers. Not a recipe for harmony.

86

Exactly!

87

Hmm - I see a job opportunity as their Canadian consultant …

88

Here’s a blog by the English lawywer and commentator David Allen Green outlining various sanctions to which Johnson would be exposed if he chose to flout the law.

But to my mind the political penalty for this would probably kick in more quickly than even the quickest legal sanction. The rule of law is a fundamental condition without which democracy cannot survive; even the ranks of hard Brexiters include many people who would understand this, and would be appalled at an attempt to overthrow the rule of law in the UK. If the PM announces that he can pick and choose which laws to observe, and certainly if he acts on that basis, he will be lucky to be still in office by breakfast the next day, and he’ll certainly be gone by dinnertime.

Johnson has said that he won’t implement the law requiring him to seek an extension. People are interpreting that as an indication that he will resign rather than do so.

89

“Gladstone spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question…”

– 1066 and All That

90

Thanks, that was an interesting read.

91

Fair enough, More accurately I should have said that a no deal brexit was not an existential threat to the *countries *of the UK. Sure, if as a result of such a move the other countries decide on independence then fine. Were they all to leave the UK there’d technically be no UK left but each would survive just fine.

I think self-determination is probably the most important power that a nation has. I supported the Scottish Independence vote and would do so again. Same for Wales and Northern Ireland. Though I wanted to remain I also extend that same courtesy to the UK’s relationship with the E.U.

92

None of this high-flown language means anything until someone tells me how you’re going to pull off a no-deal Brexit without violating the Good Friday Agreement and without making the Orangemen and their pet terrorist groups as unhappy as they’d be if Northern Ireland were to be swallowed up by Ireland. Truly a question to vex Gladstone.

(I’m also somewhat amused you didn’t mention Cornwall. Or Sealand.)

93

And who will respect the ancient privileges of Kent?

94

We in the Essex Independence Party will soon throw off our English oppressors and reclaim sovereignty for our beloved homeland.

Dick Turpin on the back of the Twenty Geezer note, Smack My Bitch Up as the national anthem, Russell Brand as King…

It brings a tear of pride to my eye just imagining it.

95

Shouldn’t that be Joey Essex? I mean…the name alone ;).

96

Oh God, we were rather hoping that knowledge of Joey Essex had been safely confined to the borders of our benighted land…

97

About a year ago I somehow picked up the habit of watching a few UK panel shows on youtube. Essex certainly made an impression. Kinda like a good-natured black hole of thought :D. I do have to give him credit for being willing to poke fun at himself and his reputation for being vacuous.

98

So self-determination must take second place to the threat of violence? and High-flown language? it was a fairly standard statement that I’m sure most people would go along with. I try to avoid hypocrisy where I can, I can’t be in favour of allowing Scotland or Wales a vote on separation from the UK and not support the UK voting to leave Europe.

If the threat of terrorist violence makes you cringe so, then I’m sure you’d be flat against any referendum on the reunification of Ireland?

Why?

99

Self-determination sounds like a good idea, until you actually think about it. A nation should be able to decide whether it’s independent or part of another nation… except, what counts as a nation? Why shouldn’t the people of Essex be able to decide that they should be independent from England? Or the city of Essex independent of the rest of the county? Or one neighborhood in that city? Where do you draw the line?

And yes, formal agreements that ended wars, like the Good Friday Agreement, should absolutely take precedence over non-binding referenda. In fact, everything binding should take precedence over non-binding referenda. That’s what “non-binding” means.

100

So there should be no nation states, such as the USA, and instead a single World Government? I thought such Utopian ideas went out in the 1950s.

Every person could be their own sovereign, but it should be obvious that there are advantages in pooling sovereignty. The only question is to what degree we share it, and experience seems to suggest that something about the size of what we call countries is the optimal degree. Essex might work, to take you example, but what’s the point when it is part of a larger region that is also a viable nation?