Hacker News Reader

Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

I don't get how going back to the people is political suicide and creates distrust. I mean the first question was do you want to leave and the vote was yes. The second would be that now we know the facts were not entirely as advertised do you still want to go ahead? Not sure how that is betrayal, political suicide and the like - it seems fairly fair and sensible.

View on HN

Think about practically any political issue, in the US or elsewhere. "Fair" and "sensible" are rarely anywhere near the primary considerations, are they?

I do think what you suggest would be fair and sensible. I do not believe the voters will see it so reasonably.

I'm from Ireland, where we had something similar happen. People still talk about how the govt will just hold multiple referendums till they get the answer they want on an issue. This is in reference to referendums that happened 10 and 20 years ago. It doesn't matter that these decisions have proven positive for the country - there's still resentment and bitterness, and this was an issue with far less emotional weight than brexit.

I remember these referendums and in at least one case there was no explanation of the the referendum was the first time around. We were just expected to rubber stamp it. Also on one or other of them concessions were gained on the second time round. So it wasn’t just like the ”keep voting til you get the right result” thing that you hear people spouting ... does anyone actually believe we’re that soft?

Well that's what I'm saying - this is what you hear people spouting, it doesn't matter that there were good reasons for everything, you just have the distrust of the democratic process left at the end of the day.

Distrust not without good reason I’d say!

> it seems fairly fair and sensible

You must be new here :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com