This vote is very damaging to the government's position, but as it stands there's been no move, assurance, or guarantees, to stop article 50.
If article 50 is activated it starts a two year countdown as the UK slowly moves out of the EU.
Even if the government loses the no confidence vote, there's still no implied action on article 50.
EU courts have, IIRC, ruled that Britain can unilaterally revoke article 50, so now it's all up to elected MPs to figure out a way forward. So the fate of the UK rests on the good judgment and sensibility of Jeremy Corbyn.
It seems absolutely unreasonable to me. It's hard to measure how certain tactics influenced the vote on either side. The voting process needs to be done with confidence and we should not so easily assume our peers are misinformed and/or so easily swayed. The efforts put forth by legitimate actors to campaign for their cause goes for not, as does confidence in the democratic process, when the outcome is just thrown away.
In the first vote Leave were referred to the police for illegality, and they still haven't provided a full account of their funding - at least some of which seems very likely to have come from foreign sources.
This is explicitly and very clearly not legal, because foreign money has no business trying to influence the vote in a sovereign British matter.
So a People's Vote would be the first honest vote.
The first question was, should we Remain exactly as we are, or should we Leave in some totally unspecified fashion? The second question will be, should we Remain exactly as we are, or should we Leave in a no-deal hard exit, since that's the only possibility still on the table? It's no longer an abstract Leave, to which everyone can ascribe all their dreams and wishes; it's now a very specific Leave, with all the faults thereof. That may change the voting somewhat.
And, down the road, if there's another concrete Leave on the table, should the people have another referendum? Sure, why not? There probably won't be a need to vote on the negotiated Leave, though - losing by 230 votes in Parliament is probably enough. And there won't be any need to vote on a hard Brexit a second time, either - if it's voted on in a referendum, it will lose 65-35 or 70-30. (Or so I suspect, but what do I know? I'm not in the UK.)
Kids learn at an early age that when you lose, you lose. They usually grow out of "best of 3" or "best of 5" before age 10.
Even a 5 year old knows that "best of 2" doesn't work.
Most democracies have regular periods where you vote. Are you suggesting that since there will be a new US Presidential election in 2020 that Trump is now no longer legitimate? How would that circumstance be any different that a referdendum?
Voting isn't wrong.
What is the implication of you trying to tie the institution of democracy to childhood antics? Are you suggesting that a vote is no different that chance? That the opinion's of people that change are no longer legitimate?
That's especially true when equally non-binding but current polling of your constituents on the same question shows that the opposite side quite likely leads now that the concrete options are known.
It's a well-established British Constitutional principal that a Parliament cannot bind a future Parliament. Why would one view the public will ant differently, even if it were fully informed?
Representative democracy means that they determine policy by choosing representatives. It's disingenuous for those representatives to turn around and blame their own policy choices on an explicitly non-binding referendum that they sent to the public. (Especially so for a leader of the party who choose to do that specifically as a means of minimizing the impact of the issue so referred on a general election so as to preserve their partisan majority.
Then it should have been a binding referendum.
Quite honestly, there is nothing stopping you from doing this anyways. This is the point of democracy. Nothing is ever final.
So the answer to why anything happened in the UK, including holding a referendum, is basically just: because Parliament decided to.
Parliament votes to have them
> We don't have such a thing in the US.
Well, Congress doesn't choose to have them (separation of powers helps here; the Brexit referendum was very much about electoral strategy in a system where voting for a district legislator is also voting for a particular executive administration.)
> Certain states do, but not the country.
What many US states regularly have is binding referenda with Constitutional force and process; while these may sometimes be of legislative origin, they could do Brexit-style referenda (because of their general powers) but, again, separation of powers kind of eliminates the political use of them, or at least that of Brexit specifically, and a non-binding referenda on a non-profit proposal isn't something that makes a lot of sense outside of very particular political circumstances.
The one they had in UK was a non-binding one, which can usually only be brought to a vote by the parliament.
It was a non-binding referendum, a glorified opinion poll and that was before we found out about the lying, the financial irregularities and external interference.
Shrugs, I'm resigned to whatever happens happening at this point.
Yvette Cooper (Lab) asked the Speaker about it - most likely as a way of tipping off the public - and the Speaker said that if a motion is tabled, he will allow a vote on it.
It's now very unlikely that the UK will be leaving the EU. Only a tiny minority of zealots in Parliament want No Deal. The most likely alternative is a People's Vote and a win for Remain.
I don't feel you clarified anything.
Do you mean if article 50 isn't revoked that the UK will leave the EU (true if nothing else happens) or that there are no circumstances under which the UK can remain in the EU?
There's currently no legislation, implied legislation, promises, or assurances from either the government or opposition to do so.
Essentially until Article 50 is withdrawn, the UK continues to march forward towards hard Brexit.
A successful vote today on Theresa May's deal would have assured a hard Brexit. The vote failing however hasn't resulted in "remain," it has simply placed the UK into an unknown state with automatic hard Brexit still lurking on the horizon.
If they don't revoke it, they have to leave on March 30th. This can happen through some kind of deal with EU (a potential one was negotiated but shot down by todays vote) or without any deal.