Wrong. The UK referendum to leave the EU was legally non-binding. The UK referendum to leave the EU didn’t provide a dress code for electoral officials. Both of those statements should have equal weight. Here’s the text of the bill for the EU Leave Referendum. You’ll notice it contains neither the words” binding” or “non-binding”. http://www.bailii.org/uk/legis/num_act/2015/ukpga_201536_en_1.html
Because the referendum wasn’t specified as binding or non-binding, it was non-binding by default. It’s a recognition of the sovereignty of Parliament. Here’s a fairly good discussion.
Against that, there were numerous promises that the referendum would be binding.
And the Labour Party itself accepted the referendum results in their 2017 manifesto.
Stating that the referendum was non-binding is the equivalent of saying “Yes, I promised, and you believed me, but it doesn’t count because I had my fingers crossed.”
One thing we’ve learned recently is that credible threats to resign can be enormously effective. That said, this arrangement still allows May to manoeuvre towards a cliff-edge, just at the end of June rather than end of March.
On the topic of credible threats to resign/actual resignations, it’s probably worth pointing out that Labour are now backing a second referendum to ratify (or not) Parliamentary backing of May’s deal. After a couple of duelling press conference between different senior figures, they seem to have settled on Remain being one of the options. Quite when they think this second vote is going to happen however is anyone’s guess.
I’m saying it’s preposterous to consider the referendum non-binding after there were several promises from government that it was a final decision that would be honoured and implemented. Parliament considered the referendum as binding. The opposition accepted the result as binding. But you’re proposing it was non-binding because the referendum didn’t contain that magical word “binding”. That’s ridiculous.
Several posters here have complained about Leave lies. The most controversial lie is probably the Brexit bus slogan that asserted £350 million/week would go to the NHS instead of the EU. I could dig up columns arguing that this wasn’t a lie. But I don’t because I believe that slogan was intentionally deceptive. But stating that the referendum was non-binding without using a limiting qualifier such as “technically” or “legally”? Such a statement is either an intentional deception or a signal that the person making it has been deceived.
Note that I’m not endorsing this viewpoint. I feel it’s an attempted justification for what I view as a deception.
Boris’s statement, as I recall, was that freed of the EU, the UK would be able to reform spending so effectively that the direct and indirect savings would amount to £350 million and therefore the bus slogan was true. I feel a bit unclean repeating that assertion.
Oh, that. I’ve seen it before. It’s massively disingenuous.
There’s nothing in the statement that implies the NHS is one of many options, for one thing.
But it’s still false, regardless. The fact is, Brexit cuts into the national coffers deep. We get more back economically from EU membership than that pitifully tiny membership fee costs us.
Brexit has already financially cost us far more than the membership fee.
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It’s not ridiculous at all. The legally non-binding nature of the referendum means that you can’t challenge it in the courts on the grounds of electoral malpractice, etc, as you can with an election or a binding referendum. Since the non-binding referendum has no legal effect, there is nothing for the courts to set aside. With an advisory referendum it’s for parliament, not the courts, to assess the nature and quality of the political mandate conferred, and act accordingly. Unqualified commitment to implement the result of the referendum, regardless of such factors, should not be given and, if it is given, the voters should regard it with due scepticism. And it certainly doesn’t excuse parliament from discharging its consitutional resposibilties after the referendum by making a decision and accepting responsibility for it.
It should be pointed out that the commitment to “honour” the referendum was not unqualified. While the referendum bill was going through parlaiment an amendment was tabled to the effect that the referendum should require a qualified majority - not just an overall majority of the electorate, but a majority in each country, or in a majority of the countries, making up the United Kingdom. The government opposed the amendment, pointing out that the referendumw was advisory only and Parliament could judge, after the event, whether the referendumr result created a sufficient mandate for any particular action, and in doing so it could make a judgment about whether, e.g., Scotland or Northern Ireland should be taken out of the EU if they had voted to remain.
Of cours3e, Scotland and Ireland did vote against Brexit, but they are being taken out anyway. And while the overall majority for Brexit was very narrow, the government has chosen to hew to a hard model of Brexit, rather that a soft model which might have better chance of commanding assent in a divided country. These are all decisions being made by politicians after the event, and they should have the guts to acknowledge and accept responsibility for their decisions, and not hide behind the entirely bogus argument that they are bound by the referendum result to make these decisions. They are not, and they know it.
The referendum was not legally binding, but is being taken as politically binding (meaning it’s political suicide move to oppose the result). The fact that the referendum’s sanctity has come into question in courts but not politics (to the same extent) shows that it’s easier to prove in a court of law that the election was meddled in than it is to prove to the general public.
Respecting the referendum result is like saying you respect the result of a doped up athlete winning a race. There’s no morally justifiable way to go about it.
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The way I see it, “respecting” the referendum result requires you to respect every aspect of the referendum result, including (a) that it is corrupted by dodgy and illegal practices, (b) that it is a very narrow margin of victory, and not one spread across the constituent parts of the UK, and (c) that it is an endorsement of a vaguely-articulated policy objective, not an actual legislative proposal. And respect for these aspects of the referendum result leads inexorably to the conclusion that it doesn’t necessarily confer an adequate mandate for every possible form of Brexit, no matter how ill-advised, how divisive, how destructive or how different from the visions of Brexit offered to the public during the refererendum campaign.
I actually agree with you. Parliament had a duty to thoroughly examine the referendum results and any reports from the Electoral Commission. I hope they did. And if Parliament determined that corrupt influences had so heavily impacted the result enough to invalidate it, they should have reported that to the public, and then debated what action to take. Obviously none of that happened.
My position is that the Government promised to respect the results of the referendum. They even sent a pamphlet to every household in the UK promising “The Government will implement what you decide.” My opinion is that the Government was obligated to uphold that promise. It wasn’t an unlimited obligation, but it was a substantial one. I believe the Government and Parliament met that obligation by passing the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 by a vote of 498-114. At that point, the Government was obligated to design what it believed would be the optimal Brexit plan, and then negotiate a withdrawal agreement with the EU that would be as close to that optimal Brexit plan as possible.
My opinion on Brexit beyond 16 March 2017 when the Withdrawal Act was passed is decidedly mixed. I think Theresa May has been terrible as a communicator and in getting her party behind her, and shot herself in the foot with the 2017 elections. Having two Brexit cabinet ministers resign certainly shows there are problems within Government. I don’t think the negotiated withdrawal agreement with the EU is great. However, I do think it is good enough, and probably not hugely far from the best agreement she could have gotten. At this point, I just wish Parliament would pass the damn thing and stop all the political infighting.
Because the government has resisted all such proposals for a formal parliamentary investigation to take place. Understand?
Wouldn’t we all. The problem is everyone assumes the solution is for Parliament to stop infighting by agreeing with them. Do you see the problem there?
Besides, passing the Agreement won’t end the Brexit crisis. We have decades of infighting over our future trade relationship with the EU and with the world to look forward to.
Don’t you think that if Brexiters aren’t able to agree a Brexit plan amongst themselves, even a month from the deadline, after forty years of moaning in general and two years of power in particular, then there’s something rather hollow about insistence on the referendum being obeyed?
Oh, give over. Name one thing of Leave’s campaign claims that has survived the past two years to be deliverable with Brexit.
You’ve already been given indications of serious murky goings on in Leave’s campaign finance, too.
Would you blindly support, like a lemming, if the country had had a vote on the existence of climate change and the deniers won?
Your problem is assuming this is all just a game and we’re only unhappy because we lost.
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The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017. Next?
I’m aware of the campaign finance violations. I agree it’s a concern. Start a petition for a parliamentary investigation. I’ll sign it. What I haven’t seen is competent detailed analysis that 634,751 people had their minds changed from Remain to Leave because the Leave side overspent on advertising. Care to provide that analysis?
Shouldn’t that be the other way around? Hypothetically, the Government wants to maintain the status quo on its energy policy. A section of the Government’s party disagrees with the status quo and wants energy policy reformed towards energy efficiency. It turns out that a majority of the country want energy policy reform towards energy efficiency. Wouldn’t you agree with energy policy reform towards energy efficiency?
I agree that the statement is technically true, but also made with the hope of deceiving some people. I agree that such a thing should not be done in politics, but those types of statements are made during U.S. elections all of the time, and I don’t think it should be classified as a “lie.”