Not if democracy in the UK is ever to mean anything in the future. In that area I do agree with our politicians. For right or wrong holding referendums until you get the result you want will result in anarchy.
Brexited | the worst threads live the longest
- Thread starter Silva
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Holding referendums at all will result in anarchy.
Referendums of themselves do not result in anarchy. We had one in respect of jointing the EEC. And another when proportional representation was on the agenda. Anarchy is only likely to happen when the will of the majority is ignored. Simple really or do you honestly not get it?
Democracy doesn't mean much when politicians manipulate voters' decision by lying.
I just think referendums are shit and making out they're the purest form of democracy is wrong. They give people black and white choices when in reality the world is shades of grey. For example, Leave or Remain, without any indication of what Leave would entail. We have been a democracy for a long time and hardly ever had referendums, we elect MPs to make decisions and hold them to account. I prefer that way of doing things.
Anarchy was always going to happen over a toss up of a 50-50 issue, there was no clear enough majority for Brexit to be classed as the "will of the people". You can argue it should happen because more people voted for it than didn't, however it's a slender majority and it barely represents the whole country.
Whilst i agree with the bolded bit, i dont think the Tories or Labour would have the courage to make that decision. We wont "Remain" unless there is anotrher referendum or a Politician wins an election on a clear Remain platform.
Actually Anarchy is the opposite. is the will of the majority without someone telling the others what to do. What you describe is the current politic system here and there
The organisation of it was abysmal. Richard Dawkins made a good point in the immediate aftermath, which was that in most countries when you are proposing making a significant, constitutional change that will have long term implications you need more than a simple majority, you usually need a 2/3 majority of something like that - you need a victory by a significant enough margin to justify making the change. If you have a something so close to 50/50 there isnt a sufficient mandate for the kind of sweeping changes it entails. You see that in a lot of written constitutions - and for good reason.
Oh dear what a pathetic argument. If I take this at face value then a result 51 to 49 in favour of remaining would have been invalid. Etc, Etc. Only when one side or the other achieved 66.67% of the votes could we have said that the vote to leave or remain would have been legitimate. Now what (in attempting to achieve that outcome) would that have done to the cause of democracy. And which side would ever have achieved it?
It doesn't make it invalid, the result is what it is - a slender majority on the day thought we should leave the EU. It doesn't mean it's this fantasy of a "will of the people". If the results were reversed, you couldn't say for example that the Leave arguments should just shut up and disappear since practically half the country believed in a different direction.
This one has.
The problem isn't necessarily a referendum in itself. The problem is when that referendum is so ill-defined, so unclear, that one side basically gets to make up certain ideas as they go along which sound nice but don't really have any practicality when it comes to application. Being able to 'take back control' in regards to reducing immigration may have sounded nice, but this was always going to be impractical with the Irish border issue, and it was also kind of lie considering we already have certain controls within the EU we'd chosen not to use and had the power to limit non-EU migration if he wished to do so.
Added to that is the £350m for the NHS thing; again, not only a barefaced lie, but not really practical as an assertion to make because the people proposing it weren't running the country but were (for the most part) merely figures within the ruling party.
If we wanted a referendum on Brexit it should've been with a specific type of Brexit in mind. Of course, Brexiters wouldn't have allowed that because they knew that the arbitrary nature of the question was open-ended and benefited them.
Added to that is the £350m for the NHS thing; again, not only a barefaced lie, but not really practical as an assertion to make because the people proposing it weren't running the country but were (for the most part) merely figures within the ruling party.
If we wanted a referendum on Brexit it should've been with a specific type of Brexit in mind. Of course, Brexiters wouldn't have allowed that because they knew that the arbitrary nature of the question was open-ended and benefited them.
Yesterday's argument. Shouldn't be and logically isn't, but we've had a year plus of absolutely nobody in politics of any note being at all bothered to point this out. Similar to how Labour under Miliband completely capitulated on the point that Brown caused the global financial crash of 2008. It wasn't true at all but after so long of the Tory narrative being unchallenged when promoting that myth, after a while it became impossible, futile to challenge it.
Brexit was a message that we wanted to leave the CU and SM despite nobody being asked simply because nobody of any significance has ever challenged that point. Including the Labour party.
No one specified that message, certainly not when some were floating the 'Norway option'. The only major coherent policy message to come from the Brexit argument was giving £350m a week to the NHS.
Absolutely. When one side gets to say whatever the hell it wants and there is no recourse because no party that can deliver on its promises exists.
I think they're pretty flawed by their nature. It's possible to have one that works OK I guess. But - I think I said this a few days ago - even when there's a poll on here with only two possible answers I usually find my actual feeling is somewhere between the two. How much more significant when being asked something like Brexit? It just doesn't lend itself to such a binary set of options.
I think they're pretty flawed by their nature. It's possible to have one that works OK I guess. But - I think I said this a few days ago - even when there's a poll on here with only two possible answers I usually find my actual feeling is somewhere between the two. How much more significant when being asked something like Brexit? It just doesn't lend itself to such a binary set of options.
We would have told Farage to shut up and go away having lost the argument. The best he and those like minded could have achieved would have been to ask Cameron to go back and try to negotiate a few more concessions in favour of the UK (almost impossible). No way would the electorate have tried to overthrow the result. All in MHO of course.
No the idea is that you need 2/3 to change the something not to continue the way things are.
Edit: I'm not saying that we have a redo. We have the result of the Referendum the way it was set up but I think that Cameron was naive when setting it up.
In that scenario Farage and UKIP would still be relevant since nearly half the country agreed with them. There would be no recourse on telling them to shut up and go away.
Does anyone think Farage would have shut up and gone away if Leave had lost?
He actively, openly said a narrow Remain win would mean that it wasn't over.
Are you sure? He seems like the kind of guy who's all about having a single, fair fight and then congratulating the winner on a hard fought victory and wishing them all the best, before being thoroughly supportive.
Farage shut up and go away.
Christ no wonder those of us in favour of remain lost the argument if this is the best we can do. On that basis then in the UK we should never have a change of government unless 2/3rds were in favour of a change from the status quo. For goodness sake I do despair. And with that I will leave the floor otherwise I will sadly get more insulting which I have no desire to do. Apologies to one and all if I have offended.
To be fair if Leave got 52% and "lost" in a 2/3rds referendum they wouldve gone mental. Wouldnt have heard the end of it for years (much like the current situation!)
To be fair, though, elections happen every few years; a decision like this is expected to last generations. I don't agree with 2/3rd referendums because I think if you need to impose that on a referendum it's inherently flawed in the first place, but it's quite clearly very different to an election which occurs on a regular cycle every few years.
You know that not what I was saying. Joining or leaving the EU is a once in a generation event not something that comes about every 5 years like a new Government.
By the way I don't think it would take long to get a 2/3 majority asking to change the music from the Status Quo.
It was/is.
In this case I'd say it was, yeah. Mainly because the terms of voting to leave were so ill-defined.
The fact that leave needed to be defined tells you that it wasn't a question compatible with a referendum. And that's without even taking into account the fact that when you actually define what leave means, you have to wonder if people are actually able to understand that meaning. For example who actually has a complete understanding of the difference between full single market, CETA and EFTA. Also I have seen an awful lot of people who think that the Human Right rules come from the EU when they come from the Council of Europe, which weirdly enough is completely ignored by the mass.
The reality is that the question is too complex for the vast majority even the people who knows a lot, don't know and understand everything, which is why this type of problems are supposed to be dealt by parliamentary commissions who are supposed to present their work to MPs who will base their vote on them.
That's true.
Not only that it was so ill-defined but that it had such a high probability to impact negatively on every aspect the UK and the wider European Union.
At the end of the day if you and your party calls a referendum for purely political purposes; don't be surprised if anarchy ensues.
Throughout this thread I'm afraid you've rarely come across as anything other than unpleasantly arrogant, narrow minded and condescending. A walking and sneering distillation of much that is wrong within the remain camp that most of us here are part of. Your post above is a perfect example but I doubt your frightening lack of self awareness will ever allow you to recognise just how toxic your views of other people can be.
True. But this insistence on pretending it's 1937 renders him alien like to the vast majority north of Watford. It's all a complete affectation and that is what will do for him and his party if he leads.
Thus according to you I should tolerate and believe liars, be content that people are being conned and be sympathetic to racists and xenophobes. Then you criticise my posts. Self-awareness, ok.
Edit: I remember you, just looked at a few of your posts, excellent self-awareness and well done on not being condescending. Remember not to sneer.
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You dont think the leave campaign was a con?
I don't really follow this Brexit malarky but I've been trying to find out what is going on from news articles for 10 mins and I can't figure it out.
Are we still leaving or what? Are we staying in the common market?
Are we still leaving or what? Are we staying in the common market?
How long you been voting Tory fella?