EU Referendum Rules Triggering a 2nd EU Referendum
petition.parliament.uk
petition.parliament.uk
[Update:] Aside from the fact that it's incredibly arrogant and disrespectful to have people vote until you like the result. I suspect this line of thinking is partly why people wanted to leave.
But.. 62.5% of British voters did not vote for leaving the EU.
When it is such a massive thing and the vote is 52% vs 48% with a 71% turnout.. it is too close to be definitive as it stands...
Also, this petition was created back in May.. So it isn't as if this was created as a response to the result.
Um no...48% of voters did not vote for leaving the EU. People who were eligible to vote and didn't turn out are not voters.
Therefore, for that referendum - eligible voters that did not vote, still contributed to the vote by inaction, and weighted towards the remain camp.
This is a much more reasonable way to hold a referendum of this sort, as the burden of change is weighted on those trying to break status quo.
Wish we did something similar for this referendum.
And 100% of British voters did not vote for joining the EU.
Ideally the EU would require member states to hold a membership referendum every 15 or 20 years. That would be an honest and democratic way of self-checking the state of the union. As it is, many of the older former-EEC nations have never actually asked their populace whether they want to be in a political union.
I can't comment on the merits of this petition, but I'd guess that another referendum held today would have a different result.
Pure conjecture, anecdotal evidence and more than a little bit of wishful thinking of course :)
This petition was started on May 25th, well before the referendum occurred. The original intent was that these rules would apply before voting started (the deadline is November 25th and all petitions run for 6 months, therefore the petition started on May 25th).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/27/petition-calling-...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-petitio...
"Wait, people actually voted to leave? Oh, no no no, that's not good. We need a re-vote so people can vote the right way."
So let's assume the government (still run by the Tories) allows this to happen. Why the farce of a referendum in the first place, if they're going to re-do the vote a week later because they don't like what the people chose? Why start this discussion in the first place, or why not say that "we'd never allow this referendum to happen" if Remain is what they wanted all along?
He's something of a moderniser of the Conservative party, but this leaves him open to attacks from the more traditional parts of the party. One of the ongoing issues across this divide is the UK's membership of the EU – the traditionalist faction arguing that the UK was better off outside, and that it's now hobbled by regulation/immigration etc.
In addition, there was a growing threat posed by UKIP – the 'UK Independence Party' — an essentially single-issue anti-EU party, who were siphoning off votes from both the anti-EU Conservative base but increasingly the anti-immigration parts of other voter groups.
With these factors in play, there was some pressure during the last UK general election to hold a referendum on EU membership. Cameron's political calculation was that holding this referendum would essentially allow the eurosceptic faction of his own party to be silenced, and for the issue to be put to bed for the next couple of decades. This was basically a short-term political play to help ensure re-election.
Unfortunately this has all gone pear-shaped, as there was a much stronger backing for the 'Leave' campaign that was perhaps expected – I imagine that Cameron assumed the argument could be obviously won on merit. The vast majority of politicians, economists, civil servants and so on – something of a metropolitan elite – are fully aware that leaving the EU will be a fucking disaster for the UK. Now many of those same people are desperately trying to figure out how we un-fuck the situation.
Unfortunately the former United Kingdom has shown it is irrevocably divided, so should get on with trying to make the best of a bad situation, e.g. (in my view) by setting up an independent Scotland and independent London[1].
[0] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-backers-urge-...
[1] https://www.change.org/p/sadiq-khan-declare-london-independe...
The UK leaving the EU would most likely make a second Scottish independence vote succeed, which would make me sad.
However, suppose the UK and the EU agree on terms for leaving – could there be another referendum to approve those specific terms? Obviously many of those who supported Remain will demand that; but, it's concievable even some Leave supporters might, if they don't like those terms. For example, what if the agreed terms include keeping freedom of movement between the EU and the UK, so the UK still has to accept unlimited immigration from the EU? In that case, it's plausible that anti-immigration Leave supporters might join the calls for a second referendum. There's no legal requirement for such a second referendum, but it might be politically appealling if the future post-Cameron UK Government starts to have doubts about the whole thing, or if public opinion on Brexit begins to sour. Now, the UK has voted "Yes" to a Brexit in principle, and obviously if such a second referendum got a "Yes" the UK would be out for sure. But what if the vote was "No" to the specific terms for leaving? If you want to leave but can't reach agreement on terms to do so, do you stay in by default?
Just like the Ireland few years ago.
Having said this ignoring this vote would be very foolish.
+ interestingly the EU referendum was technically only advisory - but parliament would be mad to ignore it.
For a very small value of "meaningful", I signed a petition when the government made suggestions they would be moving businesses to submitting tax returns four times a year. The response was not actually a change in policy but a pretty good explanation of the miscommunication over what they were actually planning to do and why it wasn't worth getting worried about. So at least as a way to get the government to explain their intentions more clearly, it worked.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/11/pm-apology-to-...
A complete list that were debated is at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions?state=debated
Wah, no fair, do over. It just comes across as intensely childish.
Also kind of irks me that most of the social media whining at the moment originates from people who probably didn't even have an opinion on the EU this time last year. Others amongst us have harboured a lingering resentment towards the institution having followed its activities for years, listened to debates from the floor of the EU parliament, read books on its history and philosophy, and yet are labelled socially deprived unintelligent knee-jerk racists. Mostly labelled by the loud but ignorant people who couldn't tell you the difference between a Directive and a Regulation, or the difference between the European Council and the Council of the European Union [sigh - yes, Twitter pests, go look those up and pretend you knew all along]
Good riddance. Here's to the Netherlands or France following suit sooner rather than later. I want everyone to leave the EU. It's doomed politically and stagnant economically with far more crisis to come in the pipeline. In time, this exit will look like a much better call than many would have us believe in the current moment.
First, I agree that a referendum is a referendum – that's pretty much the end of it. Case closed. I suspect that current confusing and objection is rather a lot of people who hadn't previously been that invested have suddenly realised what the decision means, and are trying to figure out how to take the steps that should have been taken in the first place (e.g. a turnout threshold, a vote share threshold, a requirement for all four constitution counties to vote, that sort of thing.) It's too late for that, and it's a total fuck-up on behalf of everyone involved.
I think the complaints about 'social media whining' are a bit unfair. What you're seeing is a whole bunch of people who generally would support the EU, and whose social groups all generally feel the same. They are, understandably, quite annoyed at the outcome, even if they perhaps weren't as well-informed as they should be. I imagine that the majority of them didn't vote 'Remain' to 'prove a point' or anything like that, so much as they didn't have any particular objection to the EU.
On the flip side… I am sure that there are people like yourself who have a coherent, informed understanding of the EU and the associated institutions, and who have come to the conclusion that they don't agree the goals or methods of the project. Or maybe others who think that the economic benefits of escaping the single market are worth it. But I do not think that the majority of support for the 'Leave' campaign was aligned with this.
I would feel less annoyed about this outcome if what we had seen in the UK was a rational, informed debate about the future of the European project and if we wanted to be a member of that. I would have felt better if there had been a comprehensive blueprint for an independent UK – like the one that the Scottish government published prior to the independence referendum – that could be argued over. But we didn't have that, and instead got what I think Dimbleby described as 'post-truth politics'. We had people shouting lies at each other about economics and immigration, with research and numbers not really getting a look in. And, more than anything, the outcome seems like a protest vote caused by long-term political disengagement, rather then specifically a genuine anti-EU sentiment.
Contrasting this with the Scottish indyref – after that one, I felt much happier. I was still on the losing side of the argument, but it felt like the arguments has been made and the decision had been taken fairly; even though I didn't agree with the outcome, I didn't feel like it was unfair. I don't have that feeling today.
There was no similar blueprint for the UK outside of the EU due to the government being essentially pro-EU, any blueprint wouldn't have been credible and easily accused of bias.
But yes, when you've studied both sides and decided that Leave is the rational choice, a lot of Remain supporters appear incredibly haughty and arrogant.