It is, from time to time. Like 2016. Like 2014. Like 1972.
I don’t think it’s those who are calling for another referendum with all options open who are denying democracy.
Should there not be another general election either, because people voted a couple of years ago, and they are not allowed to change their minds and vote for a different party?
People calling for a referendum are not calling for the results of the previous referendum to be ignored. Nor are they denying democracy. On the contrary, it’s people who oppose a referendum who are denying democracy, and they seem to conceive of the previous referendum as a device for surrendering democratic rights and terminating democracy.
For the record, I actually voted Remain, though I didn’t do so with any great enthusiasm. My position is that, for the time being, it would probably be prudent to stay in the EU. However, the fact remains that when the decision was put to a vote, Leave won by about a million votes. We now have to face the consequences of that, whatever they may be.
By way of analogy, imagine we were talking about a general election. Imagine that Brexit had never happened, but Corbyn had won a GE in a landslide. Corbyn is an economic dinosaur and his ideas about how to run the economy are almost uniformly terrible. If he had free rein to implement his ideas, jobs would be lost and the economy would stagnate. Would that give the Tories the right to just refuse to accept the results and demand a second general election? If not, why not?
As I understand it, winning a vote of no-confidence would exactly give them that right. Why are you so adamant that Parliament can’t have what would effectively be a vote of no-confidence in Brexit?
The consequences have been faced for 3 years. Now we have a better idea of what it entails. If you vote to walk along a path, then later see that it goes off a cliff, you don’t have any obligation to keep on walking.
I don’t see what you’re getting at. The opposition always has the right to call a vote of no confidence.
If after a year or two Corbyn was clearly a disaster, the Tories could demand an early general election and hope that enough Labour MPs would agree and vote for it. It may be more difficult since they changed the rules, but no one called the 2017 election undemocratic because we hadn’t yet ‘faced the consequences’ of all the Tory policies.
I can’t think of a single instance of Parliament calling for, let alone winning, a vote of no confidence before a new government has had a chance to enact its agenda. In my opinion, Parliament shouldn’t be allowed to have ‘effectively a vote of no confidence in Brexit’ because the UK hasn’t actually Brexited yet. If we leave the EU and, after a couple of years or whatever, it turns out to be a disaster and a new government wins a GE on the promise to get us back in the EU then fine. But calling for a second referendum before the first has even been actioned is simply not fair to the 17.4 million people who voted leave.
What strong evidence is there to indicate the electorate was particularly uninformed in 2016? The risks were very widely publicised in the months running up to the election.
IIRC May called that election herself. If the Brexiteers were also calling for a second referendum I’d have no problem with it. As the winners of the first one they have more moral right to do that.
No government can form without the confidence of the house. It’s highly unlikely they’d let it get to the point of a formal vote in that situation, but there have been cases when the government was forced to hold a new general election because they knew they’d lose a vote if one was called.
But anyway, that’s not the situation we’re in. This government has had 3 years and 2 extensions to enact their agenda and they have failed. The one issue that has proven insurmountable was not widely discussed before the referendum and no one has any workable ideas on how to solve it. Plenty good enough reason for another vote.
Corbyn has also been demanding another election almost none-stop, and the opposition always has the right to call for a confidence motion. If the situation has changed, or there’s good reason to think attitudes are different, it’s much more democratic to go back to the people than to forge ahead regardless.
There is a case to be made that a hard, no-deal Brexit is the most popular single option out of all the possibilities on offer. The EU elections seem to back that up.
I have a hard time seeing the democratic logic of allowing remain to be on a referendum paper without also having “no-deal” as an option well. Yet, it has somehow become accepted that any second referendum must be between remain and some form of deal.
As someone concerned with people being able to vote as they wish would you recommend that “no deal” is on the referendum ballot paper?
The EU elections don’t back that up at all. Remain and hard Brexit are neck and neck, with Remain slightly ahead.
Analysis:
Remain v hard Brexit: what the UK’s EU election results tell us
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I wouldn’t be at all confident that those people voting for ostensibly “remain” parties are necessarily in favour of remain. I personally know three people that voted Green but would also choose to leave the EU. Others, wanting to leave, can’t bring themselves to vote for Farage or the two main parties that have “dragged their heels” and their votes are somewhere in there as well.
However, I’d be far more confident that the hard Brexit numbers are pretty representative.
Also, those numbers make no assumptions about the remaining no-deal/deal/remain proportions within the Labour and Conservative votes and that’s a huge grey area
So yes, I still think there is a case to be made that, given a choice between Deal/No Deal/Remain the “No Deal” vote could well be the highest. That’s not the what I’d like to admit but it would be idiotic to dismiss the possibility.
I think it’s time to face facts and for everyone to admit that there isn’t going to be any deal apart from what’s already on the table (or, at least, not substantially different) before the end of October. And that deal has no traction either politically or publicly.
The only conceivable choices for the question on a second referendum are ‘No deal’ and ‘Remain’. Having it be ‘Stay in the EU until we can negotiate a deal everyone’s happy with’ and either ‘No deal’ or ‘Remain’ just hands the win to either the brexiteers or the remainers. And having that as a third option on a referendum is just pointless IMHO.
OB
If there were a deal or deals that had already been agreed to by the EU, at least informally, then I could see a ranked-choice referendum. However, if it is not a rock-solid definitive exit plan, then it runs into the same issue of the original referendum of people having to read stuff into Brexit that isn’t there.
It may well be worse than that: there are very few months left before the second extension runs out and the next PM may well decide that it’s too late, that there will be a no-deal Brexit and just tell the Foreign Office to get out there and negotiate trade deals. Now, no deal is better than a bad deal, but I don’t know if May’s deal is good or bad.
“No deal is better than a bad deal” has the ring of a proverb, but I don’t think it’s actually true as regards Brexit. For one thing, there is no way to actually not make a deal, because the default WTO is already a deal. A “No deal” Brexit means starting from scratch (well, reverting to WTO), and that is in fact also a bad deal. The question is really, which deal is worse. WTO is clearly worse than May’s deal, and both are (in my opinion) much worse than the status quo. The quite reasonable desire for something better than the status quo is one driver of frustration with May’s deal.
The phrase should be, “No change is better than a bad change,” i.e. “Remain is better than fucking up the country’s economy and international status for the next generation.”
But is it? Remember that we need to look at the long term and not just the short term.
It might be an understandable desire (who wouldn’t want the moon on a stick?) but I think it’s far from reasonable. Why would anyone think the EU would give us a better deal on leaving the club than we’ve already got being members? That’s just delusional.
OB
The Foreign Office no longer negotiates trade deals: May set up a new department–Department of International Trade headed by Liam Fox which does this [this is for trade deals for other countries than the European Union–handled by Brexit Department]:
The Department was supposed to have all kinds of trade deals set up by the time Brexit arrived but has made little progress.
I’ll accept that as a friendly edit and withdraw “reasonable”: “understandable” is indeed a much better word choice there.
And Quartz, I have read all of your posts in all of these threads, and I really do not understand your perspective. You are clearly invested enough in this process to have done some basic reading, and yet from what you write, you do not seem to understand some of the basics. I wonder if it’s just a psychological defence mechanism when faced with the looming threat of living in the UK that 2020 will bring.