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Comment by schintan | Hacker News Reader

because if Parliament overturns the people's vote it sets a dangerous precedent.

It was a non-binding referendum. It wouldn't be "overturning" anything.

A delay plus a new vote (now that people are more educated on things) seems like the most democratic way to handle this.

"people didnt vote the way I wanted them to vote, so they must either be uneducated or the process is undemocratic!"

That does seem to happen sometimes in connection with the EU, doesn't it?

But I don't think it quite fits here. The people of the UK voted for an abstract Brexit - one in which everyone could pin their dreams for what it would be. When there is a concrete Brexit plan - the best negotiated deal, hard Brexit, or whatever - when it's no longer something amorphous that you can imagine is whatever you want, but is instead something specific that you can't change, the people do in fact know more. They know what the deal actually is. Letting them ratify the actual deal rather than an abstract one seems quite reasonable to me.

> now that people are more educated on things

What do you mean by this?

Most of the articles I've read and people I've talked with from England have said that immigration and keeping England English was the main concern behind Brexit...have views on non-English immigrants changed?

While these were some of the claims made in favour of Brexit, there were also many wild claims regarding how much money the NHS would get now that the UK didn't need to send money to the EU and similar lies regarding trade deals and how everything would be better once Johnny Foreigner was kicked out. Now people are discovering unpleasant truths like how much of the NHS depended on foreign nurses and doctors and the amount of EU money that was propping up these small Leave-voting villages.

If you want a good laugh you should take a look at some of the claims made by Johnson, Farage, and Gove during the campaign.

"educated" is not the word I would say, I think people are just given the immediate effect and fear without any understanding what it means for long term effects for the country.

1. I have no issue with a Parliament overturning a non-binding referrendum.

2. Why do you expect that the vote will turn out any different? One third of the country wants a hard brexit, one third wants a soft brexit, and one third wants no brexit. There is no way to make even a majority happy. Having another vote will put you right back where you were two years ago.

Well, nobody can be made happy, I agree. Maybe they should go for "least unhappy". Put three options on the ballot - remain, hard Brexit, and May's best deal. None of the three will get a majority. (Brexit might get a majority if you lump May's best deal and hard Brexit together, but as you point out, those aren't really the same thing.)

What do you do when nothing gets a majority? You could go with whatever gets the most votes, but as you said, that leaves the majority unhappy. Instead, on the same ballot, ask everyone what their second choice is. If nothing gets a majority of first place votes, then go with whatever got the most first and second place votes.

I'm not sure where you're getting the numbers that 2/3s of people want Brexit to happen, as I can't find any that do.

Here's some more realistic numbers-

> The survey by polling firm YouGov showed that if a referendum were held immediately, 46 percent would vote to remain, 39 percent would vote to leave, and the rest either did not know, would not vote, or refused to answer the question.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/06/britons-would-now-vote-to-st...

Here's an aggregate of polls that show much stronger support for "stay" than "leave":

https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/if-a-second-eu-referen...

If voting should happen twice, can we vote again on our politicians before they cancel our previous vote on leaving the EU? (Who all promised to deliver the result of the vote in the election manifestos)

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