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vilmosi

>>> If they initially embraced the referendum they could have won

The UK government thought like you.

It allowed the people to vote for Brexit, thinking it would never pass.

And here we are today.

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The UK government did exactly that and got a no vote to the Scottish independence.

The Brexit vote was full-on farce, people literally had no idea what they were voting yes to. How could they, there was no plan.

The plan was laid out clearly. The question asked of the electorate was also clear.

February 2016

The process for withdrawing from the European Union Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs by Command of Her Majesty

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

2.1 The result of the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union will be final. The Government would have a democratic duty to give effect to the electorate’s decision. The Prime Minister made clear to the House of Commons that “if the British people vote to leave, there is only one way to bring that about, namely to trigger Article 50 of the Treaties and begin the process of exit, and the British people would rightly expect that to start straight away”.

The referendum question, June 2016 :

---

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

[ ] Remain a member of the European Union

[ ] Leave the European Union

---

Of the votes cast

51.9% Leave (17,410,742), 48.1% Remain (16,141,241)

Electorate 46,501,241

37.4% of the electorate voted to leave

34.7% of the electorate voted to remain

I don’t think it’s valid to claim the non voters in an aggregate 65%. Otherwise you could say 68% of the country didn’t vote to leave. Which presumably means it was a stronger position.

Edit - I see you removed that claim.

Yes, I was copy pasting my post from elsewhere which was in response to the opposite claim :)

68% also didn't vote to stay. It always gets silly when you try to make arguments about vote percentages based on the entire population because they always work completely in reverse as well.

Agree entirely, that was my point.

Notice that for all the Catalan low turnout has been hyped, they've actually got a higher proportion of the electorate than voted for Brexit:

43.03% * 91.96% = 39.57%

And they had uniformed thugs trying to prevent the vote outside many of the polling sites. A 40% turnout is remarkable.

21 pages, is not a plan. The Scottish independence plan was 500 pages or something.

Also, that "plan" merely states they will trigger article 50. Not what they will do after that. Which is the important part of the whole process. There was no talk of soft or hard brexit. No talk of how much it would cost, no talk about anything other than "We'll trigger article 50". Which it actually turned out, the plan was flawed because they legally couldn't do it and had to create a new law.

The UK public has historically been one of the most eurosceptic countries in europe and certainly the most eurosceptic in the EU. When given an actual chance to vote on the issue amazingly the British public followed through... who could possibly have seen that coming?

The farce is that people who should've known that were somehow shocked by it.

Only in recent history. Post-war through to the eighties, it was pro-Europe and influential in Europe (at least, the EC, etc.)

The British are not sceptic about Europe, they're sceptic about the EU. There is no farce. 67% voted to join the EC in 1975 and 52% voted to leave the EU in 2016.

We voted "in" to the common market.

We voted "out" of the common parliament.

Firstly Spain is in no better a condition now than it would have been had it allowed a vote and campaigned and lost.

Secondly, a more accurate UK comparison would probably be with the Scottish referendum, which was won by those who wanted to remain part of the UK and so Scotland did remain part of the UK.

I don’t think that’s true. The violence that occurred on the day of the vote and the uncompromising attitude of the Spanish govenrment likely caused things to escalate more quickly than it would have otherwise.

Yeah, what a disaster that was. Time to take a step back and reconsider this whole "democracy" sham for what it is. All it does is let the clowns run the circus. And once commoners are voting, who knows what else they'll be doing.

Or you know - attribute malice and responsibility to the people spreading fallacies and fanning the flames of discontent for political gain?

Matter of fact this should be read as a win for direct democracy and responsibility- you believe that you can get away with your rhetoric ? Well sucks to be you. People liked what you are selling.

I think this calls for stronger links between claims and actions. A stronger more automatic contract between the people voting and the people making the claims.

I think brexit was a monumentally sad moment, the cross roads between the old world and the new connected world. The resulting decisions based on emotions and a super biased media system results in brexit.

The media helps spread junk for political points and as revenue, and the new political class believes that they can get away with it. A belief bubble that requires treatment - via holding people to task for the words they used.

Bah. Who am I kidding. If it was so easy - it would have been done already

And that’s great. People have a right to self determination. Not just who they vote for, but who votes with them. Without it democracy is a sham.

I wonder what’s your take on Crimea and Russia in this case.

If an identifiable geographic region wants to secede, and there is sufficient support among the public, it should be able to do so. Crimea I think falls into that group: 93% voting in favor of joining Russia with 83% turnout.

I think there needs to be more than just a geographic region. A people have a right to self-determination. I'm not sure if any group of persons should. You need to look at history, ethnicity, language, culture, etc.

Fair point.

How does it fall in that group? That's a referendum taken out of the blue, just weeks after Russian military takeover of the region.

People also have the right to remain. It is not clear that a majority wants to secede, the percentages are close to 50% though. So want happens with the rest of the people. Besides the independent Catalunya movement does not apply that freedom to its regions and considers Catalunya indivisible (For instance they deny the right of Tarragona to secede an hypothetical Catalunya state https://youtu.be/3eS-j9Wx8lw?t=999).

But it's my understanding that most people didn't vote against seceding either, which does not mean that they want to stay.

> It allowed the people

Let's remember that it was not against the law of the EU or the UK...

So yes I think it should have.

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