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Comment by GunboatDiplomat | Hacker News Reader

So... does anyone really think any democratic government would be so crazy as to totally discard the results of a referendum they called?

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Sweden ignored a referendum where 83% voted for keeping left-sided traffic.

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

Often decisions are better left to experts, something that representative democracy usually achieves. I also think that we should explain representative democracy as the population being able to hold the people in power accountable instead of the people deciding things. So democracy might even be a misnomer. This result is exactly what opponents of democracy meant when they identified it with tyranny of the masses.

Left sided traffic is the classic example of something that should be determined by bureaucrats. Whether to let French people vote on laws that directly bind British people is the perfect example of something that should not be determined by bureaucrats.

Sweden also ignored a referendum and it's own decision to diamantle nuclear power. The government decided that all nuclear power would be dismantled after 2010. (Can be seen in the Swedish article). The majority of those plants are still in operation and can be replaced according to a new decision by a majority of the government. Probably sensible considering the changing understanding about carbon emissions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_power_refere...

Sure, happens all the time.

Whether the next British government is prepared to discard the result of this referendum is another question. The answer is almost certainly no, absolutely not (considering that it'll presumably be a Conservative government led by pro-Leave politicians), but that's not the same thing as saying they'd be prepared to invoke Article 50 either. It's not impossible that they'll get so busy preparing to invoke Article 50 that they'll never actually get around to it before a new Remain government is formed.

(My bet is that Article 50 will be invoked, FWIW. A true Leave believer won't be worried about it, because they think the outcome will be strongly positive. Of course, I wouldn't be the first person to wonder if Johnson is a true Leave believer, or simply an opportunist who saw a lever.)

Europe has a strong tradition of ignoring EU referendum results.

The logic behind ignoring this one is pretty good too. Leaving the EU feels about the same scale as a constitutional ammendment in the US, and that requires 2/3rds gov't vote + 3/4ths state agreement.

Though this line of argument reeks both of moving the goalpost after the fact and "yeah the elite want to get what they want and ignore the voice of the people".

Strictly, an amendment to the US Constitution requires 50% +1 of the voting population, spread sufficiently widely.

What does it matter what the UK unilaterally decides to do, anymore? The rest of the EU has declared, in no uncertain terms and at the highest possible level that they want the UK out as soon as possible.

The president of the European Community has said so, the president of the European parliament has said so, the foreign ministers of the EU's six founding members have said so.

Their primary motivator btw is that the current state of uncertainty is bad for business and if it drags on it will mess up with everyone's still ongoing recovery from the last crisis. The UK may well go through a recession and everyone in the EU will be trying their damnedest to avoid following suit.

Because EU treaty is quite specific. It's not possible to expel a member. A member may choose to invoke Article 50 to start a process to leave at a timing of their choice. The UK has had a referendum which Parliament must now consider whether to offer up a bill giving the PM of the day authority to invoke Article 50, which in turn must gain royal ascent. This process is quite clear and EU politicians/diplomats opinion on the timeframe is frankly irrelevant.

Of course there is negotiating benefit for the UK to delay invoking Article 50; and it's no surprise the UK will delay the process given the difficulty the UK will face once the 2 year count down starts. The EU has the right to refuse negotiation prior to Article 50 - and that's the game of chicken we now find ourselves in.

Can't quite tell if you are being sarcastic..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_bailout_referendum,_20...

The government is fucked either way. There's no way they can give voters the things they promised to get that result, and they know it. The likely end result is that a whole bunch of the losing side's "fearmongering" turns out to be unfortunately accurate, and they probably knew that too.

Remember what happened to the Greek referendum lead by the Syriza government in 2015? People voted something and the government did the exact opposite. No wonder people are voting more and more with extreme right parties.

Im really afraid that we might have revolutions in western europ during my life.

Many senior politicians are now suggesting it. I truly believe that if this vote is ignored and the peoples will discarded, there will be severe violence towards those in charge.

Happens all the time. The very union the British voted to Brexit lacks a ratified constitution, due to the rejection of referenda to ratify it in France and The Netherlands. Yet, the project continues!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Consti...

Speaking of which, isn't it about damn time UK got its own Constitution?

The Uk has a constitution, it is just unwritten.

Well, it's called that, but it might be more accurate to say that it is written in the form of hundreds of years of legislation, treaties, and judicial decisions, just not compiled into a single document. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin....

I get the feeling the Brits like to not have too many written rules. Including s constitution. Personally I think it is detrimental to them.

Detrimental to whom? The upper classes love it: just make up stuff as you go along, depending on your needs.

By that criteria all the countries in the world have had constitutions from the beginning of time :)

We do have this (I know it's not the same thing exactly): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

You don't have to totally discard the results, just muddle things up enough that it sort of seems like you listened, except you didn't really. Confusion wins over honesty every time.

There are any number of excuses for revisiting the decision, especially considering it was so close.

Greece has been there, done that.

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