Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum | Hacker News Reader

Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum

hindustantimes.com

38 pointsnreece98 comments

That's not how democracy works. If there is a referendum, and you don't like the result, you don't just do a second referendum.

If you'd do that, you could achieve any result you want, just by doing it over and over until. Due to voter's fatigue and/or daily sentiment, results will vary, so you can pick a result by deciding when to stop.

It might make sense (though still be questionable) to repeat the vote if major facts changed, but I don't see that happening. The stock market shouldn't have been a big surprise, Cameron's resignation neither, nor the Leave faction retracting some of their promises.

As much as I don't like the outcome of the first referendum, I think it would be fundamentally undemocratic to do a second referendum.

Personally I think a (major) referendum should be voted twice even with just a week difference.

A lot of people most probably didn't vote because they assumed the result from the pre-vote pools and for other various reasons. Now everyone is alarm, they won't be leaving it up to chance.

If they didn't vote because they assumed some result, perhaps they are not as passionate about their position and should not get to vote a second time.

Quite a lot of the not voting were young people who had not figured the logistics of registering a month before and so on. The oldies who votted for brexit had mostly voted before and so were pre registered and know the procedure which slewed the results.

Maybe we should not lend a lot of weight to the opinions of adults who have not figured out how voting works

The same thing could be said to people that vote but don't understand what they are voting about. A lot of of the Exit votes were a way to express disappointed to the state of things of their lives.

Well, Nigel Farage immediately claimed after the vote was finished that he lied about one of the key statements made during the campaign (£350M/week to be spent on NHS instead of EU). Does that qualify as a major fact changing?

As an outsider, this didn't surprise me very much, so I wouldn't count it.

I mean, it's obvious that even though the UK may be paying more money to the EU than it receives, there are other ways in which the UK massively benefits from the EU, which will be gone after Brexit is done. So that money isn't all available.

It is also not very unusual for politicians to promise more than they can keep.

It was a huge lie, after immigration it was probably the biggest vote winner.

Personally I think the Leave voters just realised that what they thought was an irrelevant naming convention is going to have serious hardships in store.

Seriously: Johnson & Farage, the lead personalities of the Leave campaign have come out and said the £350 million doesn't exist. Others are saying, from the Leave campaign that we'll maintain the status quo with European trading. I'd love for us to take it back, but if they were going to do that they shouldn't have campaigned to leave.

The Bank of England had plans for handling the financial downturn, uncertainty, and avoiding panic. Seems that none of the politicians for Leave bothered to think beyond the vote itself.

Politicians campaigning on a specific point should face prison for fraud when they U-turn on this scale. I'm not happy just to shrug and say 'what scoundrels, eh'; it's bloody criminal, far worse than any of the normal criminal frauds.

> here are other ways in which the UK massively benefits from the EU,

See Cornwall, who voted leave but now want the money that they were getting from the EU to be protected.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-cornwa...

> It is also not very unusual for politicians to promise more than they can keep.

It's unusual for the lie to be so blatant, repeated so often, so obviously wrong, and retracted immediately after the polls close.

Here's a picture of Boris by a sign created for the Leave campaign. It says "Let's give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week"

https://twitter.com/mgtmccartney/status/746245181532418048

Here's a picture of their campaign bus. That says "We send the EU £350 million a week. Let's fund our NHS instead"

https://twitter.com/mgtmccartney/status/746245181532418048

There's a bunch of interviews with Leave campaigners saying this money would go to the NHS. (And also being challenged on it).

Here's Farage, on the morning of the results, explaining that saying it was a "mistake" to say the £350m per week would go to the NHS.

https://twitter.com/GMB/status/746218028195426305

If you want to have a re-vote after every referendum/election wherein one of the campaigning politicians lied, you might as well live in the polling station, as that's where you'll be spending all your time.

Also. It was a referendum, not an election. Farage wasn't officially representing "The NO Party" or making official policy statements. He's not even a member of parliament, never mind the government. So what he said or didn't say before the vote had about as much official standing as what your postman of milkman said —even if it did get airtime because of his notoriety.

Please try and think things through just a wee bit, before making such naïve suggestions.

That promise was not in any way made by Farage, it was made by Boris Johnson and co.[1] [2] I don't like Farage, and I hate the leave vote, but his criticism of it was honest given that he was definitely not the one who made the promise.

For what is worth, he was criticising them (though not sure about this specific point) from before.[3]

1. http://leftfootforward.org/2016/05/boris-johnsons-brexit-bus...

2. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3584627/The-Boris-bl...

3.http://www.politico.eu/article/nigel-farage-ukip-leader-vote...

Another referendum is unlikely, but the next elections might have the same role.

What if the next elected prime minister is elected on the promise of staying in the EU?

> What if the next elected PM is elected on the promise of staying in the EU?

They won't win the election on that promise alone, and having a full-fledged campaign alongside this kind of promise is a HUGE gambit. Many people would be unwilling to risk a good chance at winning the election over one campaign promise.

It's quite probable that the next general election will be after the UK leaves the EU. The next prime minister will probably be whoever wins the Tory leadership election this summer, since the Tories have an outright majority.

That's an option. I'm trying to check voter data against constituency data to see if it would be possible for remain voters to vote for a party with a remain stance and win a majority. Cameron was elected with 36?% of the vote so having 48% should be doable. You would only need to contest England and Wales as the SNP and Irish MPs would support the motion. It also keeps it all nicely democratic rather than overturning a majority vote we use the existing political system to have a mandate from the people to ignore the result.

Democracy works however the people subject to it decide it works. To the extent that's not true, it's not democracy at all.

That is true, but not very enlightening as such.

The petition is signed by fewer folks than those that voted to remain in the EU, so it could "just" be a fraction of those that already voted calling for a second referendum. That's not the same as the people collectively deciding something different than before.

The petition isn't specifically asking for a 2nd referendum. It asked for a rule to be added to the one that has now already taken place.

(Post edited after I was corrected about the petition's original creation date)

The petition was set up before the first brexit vote. It's just people are voting for it now.

What if after seeing the results, plunging markets, Farage admitting the £350m to the NHS thing was BS, Calais saying they'll move the refugee camps to the UK by refusing to allow the UK border control to operate in France, there is now a majority wanting to remain? Should they ram through the exit against the public wishes because they were successfully conned in the first referendum?

(removed inaccurate post)

Ah - you may be correct.

2016-05-23

That's a month before

Oh dear! Too focused on the LSBs. Thanks

I think a set number of multiple referendums, say best of 3, would be a more reliable way of judging the opinion of the population.

Well they could always do a recount.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

Or is 4% enough of a difference to eliminate errors?

It was well counted. That's not going to change things.

The funniest/most interesting part wasn't the call for a second referendum, but the second petition described at the end of the article:

  A map of the petition signatures showed that most came from England’s major
  cities, topped by London where there is a separate petition calling on
  Mayor Sadiq Khan to declare the capital independent from the United Kingdom,
  and apply to join the EU.

I'm not even sure how that could work, but it would certainly take a lot of the impact out of the Brexit and prevent much of the chaos that's caused the markets to react so strongly to the vote.

There's no way the independent London thing could happen in practice but a 2nd EU referendum is possible. The Irish repeated their one, the Scottish one looks like repeating. Go 2nd referendum!

There is already an independent London inside London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London

An Irish one ain't gonna happen. The majority Unionists' anti-anything-Irish hatred and desire to remain British is far stronger than their wanting to stay in the EU.

As an Irish Nationalist myself, the only outside chance for Irish unification that I can see would be if Scotland voted to leave the UK first.

The Unionists in N. Ireland tend to identify themselves as "Ulster Scots"[1], so the advent of a Britain without Scotland in it might just be enough to loosen their attachment a bit. There is no great affinity for Wales and their attitude towards England is not much warmer than the Scots have for the 'Auld Enemy'

[1](http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/what-is-ulster-scots)

I guess you've not been following Ian Paisley Jr on Twitter then...

Things are going completely through the looking glass right now...

Interesting, I'll grant you. But it still smacks more of opportunism [pragmatism, it you want to be charitable] than a Road to Damascus conversion, On Paisley Jr's part.

Still. If a few loyalists find they can carry an Irish passport, without it burning their skin, maybe that's something.

UPDATE: Having suffered for my art by actually reading through some of Paisley Jr's Twitter stream [which was as unreconstructedly "orange" as I expected], it seems what he actually said was that people should avail of a SECOND passport, if they're entitled to one. He never used the word IRISH. Another case of Chinese Internet Whispers

It is not that absurd when you think about it for a moment. It is not the time yet but major cities probably do better with less friction on movement of goods and people with other major cities. If that's true any hindrance is suboptimal.

I'm hopeful that England will join the EU as a full member (including common currency) within our lifetimes. It would preempt any credible calls for an independent London.

That would require them to go through some extreme hardships? And they'll probably be made to pinky promise not to leave again.

Otherwise why leave in the first place...

I’m fantasizing this scenario: successful independence referenda in Scotland and Northern Ireland, followed by negotiations for their reentry into the EU (and maybe, regarding Ireland, also a call for reunification?); and London’s self-proclamation as a free city-state, establishing free trade and qualified migration agreements with the EU.

But as a naïve foreigner, I can’t judge how plausible this is.

I don't think a second UK referendum is realistic and I'm personally pinning my hopes on a second Scottish Independence referendum, but there is no doubt that the close result is being incredibly divisive. I never thought I'd agree with Nigel Farage, but he did say:

"In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way"

Of course, he meant a 52-48 Remain win - but I think the same principle holds either way.

If exit negotiations take a few years, and the European wanted to offer the Brits a face-saving way to change their minds, they could adopt some internal reforms / offer Britain a better deal. Wouldn't have to be a perfect deal, just good enough to justify having another vote.

That's the last thing they will do because then it would encourage every EU country to hold a referendum and do the same thing, which would kill the EU easily.

[What I see as more likely is that the UK invokes Article 50, goes through a financial crisis, and then the EU offer to cancel our Article 50 invocation and let us stay in the EU if we join the Euro and Schengen.]

It's not obvious at this point that the EU will still be around a couple of years from now.

I think if one more country votes to leave between now and then a renegotiation and some core constitutional changes become more likely.

The basic problem is that the Leave side lied about the benefits of leaving, but they were absolutely correct that the core of the EU has become a neoliberal financial dictatorship with rather thin democratic wrapping.

If bigger cracks start appearing in the structure the leadership is going to have a choice between accepting more real democracy, or having the whole thing come crashing down.

Currently there are no bigger cracks visible, but the economic foundations in most of the EU are very shaky - so who knows where we'll be a couple of years from now?

Couple of years is a bit over the top. It will take a lot longer to really collapse. But sure it can happen; probably a lot depends on how the EU handles this blow.

What about the UK? Their prime minister has resigned, the lead of the opposition party is battling a motion of no confidence, the British pound crashed 10% against the US-Dollar and Scotland wants to stay in the European Union...

it's more like ~6.8% than 10% but this will stabilise after initial hiccup of course.

> It's not obvious at this point that the EU will still be around a couple of years from now

Why?

Other countries look at the UK precedent, Greece leaves, things disintegrate.

Greece might leave, but I don't know of any other country that would want to go back to the days of restricted travel and trade.

This seems to presume positive results in Britain which make it attractive to emulate. That seems, at best, a premature assumption at this point.

How long has the UK been around vs how long the EU has existed?

How is that even relevant to anything? The relative costs and benefits to the UK (or any nation that might think to follow it out of the EU) of staying in vs. leaving the EU is not measured by how long the UK had been around vs. how long the EU has been around.

> Other countries look at the UK precedent,

If it is positive, thing that it is highly dubious

> It's not obvious at this point that the EU will still be around a couple of years from now.

Two years! Pretty sure it will be around. Now if you'd said, say, 20 years then you might have a point.

Personally I very much hope the EU is around in 20 years, but massively reformed. I think it needs far more transparency and clarity (no more "<insert random city here> Agreement"). Also every policy which doesn't have a good reason to be decided centrally should be delegated down to local level, even to sub-national / city / county level.

And you're right about the shaky financial foundations. I think the Eurozone, assuming it doesn't collapse, should be a separate organization entirely.

> EU if we join the Euro and Schengen

They aren't going to join neither

Also this is certain to make people even more pissed

Schengen does not make sense for the UK. (They have their own deal with Ireland because of Northern Ireland called the Common Travel Area which might go down the drain as well)

> That's the last thing they will do because then it would encourage every EU country to hold a referendum and do the same thing, which would kill the EU easily.

If that would kill the EU then the EU probably deserves to die. Otherwise it suggests that it only persists through the inability of its consituent populations to challenge the status quo.

They won't, though. The EU elites want to discourage other countries from leaving. If they compromise then others will follow in the UK's path in order to extract concessions.

The main problem is that the British don't even know what to ask for. When examined closely, there really isn't anything actually that wrong about the EU. They could've gotten a lot more in the recent negotiations but nobody knows what that should be.

The only specific grievance is EU migration and that just happens to be one of the four fundamental principles.

Ask a poor Greek who dutifully paid their taxes now struggling on 80 euros a week who can't get medicines if there's anything wrong with the EU.

The EU's sheer brutality towards Greece is one of the reasons I abstained. They didn't have a democratic mandate to do that and the institution itself is being gradually changed in order to remove democratic oversight (that's one of the reasons they could be so fucking brutal). More real power exists in the ECB and EU commission now and the parliament is more and more toothless. That's wrong on multiple levels.

I'm pretty sure the British outside of the cities are rationally voting to reduce competition in the labour market. Just ask the "in" campaign:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/1218...

If the EU keeps preaching austerity, labor market suppression and other neoliberal ideas I expect it to dissolve in a decade or two.

Some of the brits may be rationally voting to reduce competition in the labour market but it's dubious that it'll work to raise wages. There is the counterforce of companies locating elsewhere to avoid tariff uncertainties. The main problem in Greece and the UK rural areas are the dumb austerity policies.

As someone living in greece, I'm really tired of the country being used as a toy example for EU failures.

Greece's failures are mainly self-inflicted and run far deeper than the handling economic crisis. It's a complex subject, not one you can cheapen by emotion crying out "Look at the poor greek who cannot afford medication".

Seriously...

Then look at all the greeks who didn't pay their taxes and the politicians who flat out lied to get the Euro, then pocketed billions while the country slowly went over the edge...

It's nothing like the UK.

Although maybe letting them out of the Euro would be a good thing, but apparently there's no mechanism for that.

"elites" - that word again. Can you define exactly what you mean by it?

The EU adopted a set of reforms conditioned on the Remain referendum already.

Class divide existed pretty much forever. Now it is just more obvious than ever.

Those 50 and a change results remind me of the quote about Versailles = "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years"

Nothing is solved. both remain and leave need 60+ to claim a mandate.

At first I thought that simple majority is unfair for decisions so important as this one. But I am not so sure now. Demanding a qualified majority introduces a bias towards the status quo. In fact, demanding >60 % is equal to granting just a >40 % outcome for the “Leave” option to win. And why should either, or especially the status quo, be favored in a case like this?

I am just stating that 51/49 settles nothing. UK is divided ... on multiple fault lines. That is a fact.

Funny how people don't understand how devicive a simple majority is. Also incredible silly how we have "this or that" solutions from government and politicians instead of fixing issues.

After France and the Netherlands rejected the original proposed European Constitution (basically confirming the EU as a socialist superstate), they came up with the Lisbon treaty. When Ireland rejected the Lisbon treaty, they were made to vote again one year later. I would say that some form of a second Brexit vote with slightly changed conditions would be a very EU-like thing to pull.

The EU didn't initiate this referendum though.

The Lisbon treaty was a result of complex negotiation, and Ireland was an outlier, requiring a constitutional change to implement the change. The change hadn't been effectively communicated, hence the negative initial vote. When it eventually passed, it was after a number of small concessions had been made to the terms of the negotiated treaty, and after a massive campaign to let the people understand what was at stake. The referendum also made it absolutely clear what the "next step" was for politicians, exactly what their mandate was, and exactly what the procedural effect would be.

Brexit, on the other hand, stated a simple (probably overly simple) question, with absolutely no details as to what the exit strategy would be (and actually no legal status either; parliament could legally choose to ignore the referendum results). There was no date attached to the question, no procedural detail, no mandate to perform the exit in any particular way, no bureaucratic clarity whatsoever. There were no "conditions" that could be "slightly changed" in a re-run. This was a blunt-force thwack with no nuance, no subtlety, and no room for renegotiation with the people.

In short, the Brexit referendum was about the least EU-like thing the UK could've pulled.

An online petition? Damn, they're bringing out the big guns!

The gov.uk petition site is one of the most popular and regularly gets a "pulse of the nation" issue brought to parliamentary and media attention. (I suppose that is in many ways the prOblem we just faced)

For example Turing was given a pardon after JGCumming of HN fame started a petition on there.

It's not perfect, it is "just" a voting site, but we have had a taste of direct democracy - we might just start to like it.

This one forces the government to respond, and if it gets over a certain number of votes it usually forces a debate.

this statement is idiotic:

"We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based (on) a turnout less than 75% there should be another referendum"

it would mean infinite loop of referendums without consensus.

What's wrong with that?

Link to petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/131215

And, as it says: "Government responds to all petitions that get more than 10,000 signatures."

But often the response is "LOL no."

Yeah they could ignore it quite easily. Although it's setting a record for the most signed gov.uk petition yet. Also Boris who was quite popular now seems to have a job going down the street without people booing and yelling at him which will be harder to ignore.

The other one was "Don't let Trump in, he's a dangerous idiot" which got over 5million votes. But they ignored that.

See also "EU Referendum Rules Triggering a 2nd EU Referendum (petition.parliament.uk)" at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11975680

Almost one million people decided the vote. This smacks of sour grapes to me.

Yeah this feels like the "oh shit I didn't bother to go vote because I didn't think it would matter" folks suddenly realizing they probably should have stepped up..

I'm pretty sure a small minority of the signatories of this petition weren't among the ~16 million who voted 'remain'.

It was very obvious in the weeks running up that this wasn't going to be a sure thing for either side.

There are also allegedly numerous people who voted leave just to troll the system and now regret it: http://www.vox.com/2016/6/24/12024634/brexit-supporters-regr...

A huge number of London commuters could not vote, being stuck in the trains thanks to Govia scumbags.

UK Government has brought in strict laws for union voting around strike action.

They need a majority of a certain size of a turnout of a certain size.

The referendum had a good turnout (and it's disappointing to call 75% good) but for such an important change 52% vs 48% is pretty close.

That's not good enough for my local bowls club or allotment society or WI.

Democracy doesn't work by voting until you get results you want.

"Democracy doesn't work by voting until you get results you want."

What are you talking about? That's exactly how it works! You vote for what you want and hope the majority votes the same and you keep doing it for the things you believe in.

"Democracy doesn't work by voting until you get results you want."

No, it works when people make informed choices they understand. That didn't happen in this case.

This exit was fueled by misinformation and misplaced excitement, I have no idea how Britain's allowed themselves in this hole.

And over 50M voted for Leave.

London throws it's toys out of the pram.

It's quite funny to see the commentators who never saw this result coming are now the ones with all of the explanations as to why it has happened. Watching them evolve a new narrative in real time is quite funny. Apparently 50% of the country are racists, or so stupid that they have been easily duped by the bad politicians. There couldn't possibly be any other explanations.

Perhaps one of the biggest geopolitical events of a decade shouldn't have been on HN. The irony of you talking about Londoners throwing out toys, then locking your account because one story got through that you think is incorrect... it's delicious.

A fair point - i have removed that part of the comment as it is not massively connected to my main point. Also, have an upvote

Just one more point.

I actually don't think that "one of the biggest geopolitical events of a decade" should be on HN if it is not directly connected to Tech.

Here is a more fitting article to be on HN: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/24...

There are plenty of other forums for talking about this subject.

In the past, i've found HN Comments about political issues to be of the least quality/value.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com