It's disappointing, but not surprising, that the focus seems to be entirely on the "wrong" side of the "desired" outcome.
At this point it amounts to fighting very hard to find any reason to undo a democratically determined result.
At this point it amounts to fighting very hard to find any reason to undo a democratically determined result.
Invoking the "democratically determined result" is begging the question, since we don't really know whether the result would have been the same if the Leave campaign hadn't broken the rules:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/04/vote-l...
When someone wins a sporting competition, and is found to have cheated by using banned substances, they don't get to keep their title by claiming "Well I still would have won even if I didn't cheat".
It is the politicians who made the REAL decision to trigger brexit.
There is nothing to reverse. You can't cancel a non binding resolution.
Complain to the politicians who made the decision if you don't like what they did. And the politicians were very much voted in democratically.
People can vote them out if they don't like their decisions.
That's democracy for you. If you don't like it then people should vote for someone else.
The fact that these major parties are committed to enforcing brexit IS the democracy.
At the 1983 general election, the SDP won 25.4% of the popular vote, giving them 23 seats in parliament. Labour won 27.6% of the popular vote, giving them 209 seats. We are a de-facto two-party state, because the design of our electoral system is drastically biased in favour of the established major parties.
We did consider switching to a fairer electoral system in 2011, but ironically enough we decided against it by referendum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_electio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vot...
On the other hand, the countries with the most stable democracies (measured in centuries) (US and UK) have two-party systems. So maybe the choice was less obvious than you allude to.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to that argument, but it places a far greater onus of responsibility on our dominant parties. If our electoral system prevents a diverse range of parties in parliament, then those parties have a duty to represent the diversity of the electorate.
In the case of the EU referendum, they have a duty to represent the interests of both the 52% and the 48%. Totally ignoring almost-but-not-quite half of the electorate is just mob rule dressed up as democracy.
Both major parties in the UK are commited to a policy that has around 50% support from the electorate. Because there are long-term issues that make the massive sudden support for an alternative party unlikely, this means that roughly half of the population is left without an effective democratic method of expressing opposition to that policy.
Since when in the UK has your ability to voice dissent been denied? Doesn't the UK have freedom of protest? Can't you just protest your government and speak against its policies without fear of repercussion?
There is an intersting criticism of the format in the below link from Chris Patten
“I think referendums are awful. The late and great Julian Critchley used to say that, not very surprisingly, they were the favourite form of plebiscitary democracy of Mussolini and Hitler. They undermine Westminster. What they ensure, as we saw in the last election, is that if you have a referendum on an issue, politicians during an election campaign say: "Oh, we're not going to talk about that, we don't need to talk about that, that's all for the referendum." So during the last election campaign, the euro was hardly debated. I think referendums are fundamentally anti-democratic in our system, and I wouldn't have anything to do with them. On the whole, governments only concede them when governments are weak.”
Personally I think the CBI and Directors Institute lost the plot and let a few "bad apples" fuck the economy up - should have done what the TUC did in the 50's
Referenda are the only mechanism of plebiscitary democracy (which is democracy by plebiscite, which is a synonym for referendum), so calling them someone's favorite form of plebiscitary democracy is vacuous and tautology true.
But neither Hitler nor Mussolini is particularly known as a supporter of democracy, whether plebiscitary or otherwise, so aside from the nullity of the literal reading, the clearly intended implication is false.
That's an argument against referenda?!
Which position would you consider the "default"? Slavery? Prohibition on gay marriage? Ban on abortion? (All of these were "changed" through history, some very recently.)
None of those were referendums where I live, were any of them referendums where you live?
http://uk.businessinsider.com/theresa-may-russia-putin-fake-...
Ultimately it is the job of the British people to decide which claims (in political advertising bought transparently by British people) are misleading. To do this, I think it would be helpful if political campaigns had to also publish in a centralised register, up front, all the political messages they paid for.
There may even be a case for preventing political campaigns from targeting people based on individual psychological profiles, as opposed to geographically focused campaigns, or based on the demographics of a specific newspaper or television channel.
This is like say ruling out any votes in a presidential election from expats and or military.
Important note however - they didn’t have a referendum to join the EU but maybe that’s covered by the one on joining the European Communities?
The UK fwiw has only had three referendums in its history. Precisely because they have a habit of leading to the current fucking stupid situation we now find ourselves in.
So you'd rather have a slim minority decide?
That concept is a hard one to define and precisely why it’s a bad idea to have simple majority referendums on complex technical matters.
“Fairness” in a democratic system is a pretty messy concept. A “fair” vote might require rules (like controlling spending, foreign influence, and truthfulness), it might require clear criteria and outcomes, or it might require a well-informed population.
The UK’s Brexit referendum was a perfect example of how not to run a referendum:
- Billed as advisory but clearly not
- Electoral laws broken
- Shady foreign influence
- No definition of what the outcome of one result would be
- No success criteria beyond a simple majority (like requiring consent from all constituent countries)
- A vote on an extremely technical issue poorly understood by most of the population
I imagine this will be used as a textbook example of a terrible political event for decades.
I voted Remain. I would have reluctantly accepted the result if in the last two years the Brexit proponents had executed any reasonable plan with any degree of competence. They haven't, so I don't.
Two years on, the Brexiteers are still full of lies, misrepresentations and stupid bluster. Just like the premise behind the targeted FB ads that are the subject of this post.