UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit

Your original claim was that the people had "[not been] listened to in any way". My singular claim was that in fact they had been listened to at least in some way.

> Even ignoring all the illegality and fraud about the referendum

Something is illegal if deemed so by law and potentially affirmed by courts. If this is indeed the case, there should be proceedings that show this to be so. Something doesn't become illegal just by declaring it as such.

> large portions of british citizens living abroad were prevented from having a say

This is merely an anecdote, but I am a Brit living in the US and I got the chance to submit my Remain postal vote.

> ignoring the arguments about 16-year-olds who it would be directly affecting because of the time lags

This is the nature of every election and every vote. e.g. the poll tax was introduced in 1990 which had widespread ramifications for years to come, and impacted many people that couldn't vote in the prior 1987 general elections. The referendum is no different. This is just the way of democracy.

> Democratic governments aren't supposed to have one vote then completely ignore the rest of the population.

The government actually held a second vote - the general election requested by May in 2017. In that vote, despite winning a smaller plurality, the Tories were still re-affirmed. If everything you say is true, then the popular will would have selected Labour as an overwhelming majority. While the Tory victory was marginal, they still beat Labour.

As far as I'm aware nobody got convicted(unlike in the U.S) so your fraud argument is weak even today. I can see a second referendum on no-deal vs May's deal though.

Brexit was a popular vote, with neither party actually supporting it. The interest in Brexit also grew against the wishes of major parties, industries and most centres of power. A reason parliament can't manage it decently is because parliament was and is mostly against it, including May.

This is not like ip laws, where interested lobbies co-opt the parliamentary systems with as little popular involvement (or knowledge) as possible. This was/is an actual division of opinions among the people. It wasn't imposed from above.

I hope you guys stay in, or at least close but I think it needs to be done in a way that respects the other side too.

As for the Glorious Revolution, what did it do, other than put a German on the throne?

The problem is that these same people all came to the conclusion that on voting Leave, during the negotiation period the UK would lose 500,000 - 800,000 jobs and enter a massive recession caused by "uncertainty".

The UK has since hit the lowest levels of unemployment on record and economic growth is outstripping Germany, France and Italy.

Economists have no credibility with regards to Brexit. None. They have less than zero credibility in fact: if they're saying something, it's a good sign the reality is the opposite.

Thus the idea that no deal would be bad for the UK is a deeply suspect one. There are many things the UK can do outside the EU that would accelerate growth even further still, according to conventional economics. But regardless of what you personally believe, at this point it's just guessing - your views have no more legitimacy than the views of people who think any sort of deal with the EU is bound to be harmful to the country and its prosperity.

And it's scandalous that the UK government hasn't properly invested everything that came out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

* Vote winner — your fault, don’t get to complain

* Vote loser/2nd party — you lost, suck it up, don’t get to complain

* Vote 3rd party/spoiled ballot — you wasted your vote, don’t get to complain

* Didn’t vote — you must be OK with any outcome, don’t get to complain

* Found new party — how interesting, let’s invite you on TV even if you got 249 votes total (Lord Buckethead), but anyone who voted for you still threw away their vote

* Left country — who cares, certainly not the council who is supposed to send you a postal vote (happened to a friend of mine in the EU referendum, would’ve voted remain)

I take a longer view. Democracy is a serious business and the fact the referendum decided on a specific outcome matters. Parliament agreed to hold the referendum and agreed to honour it. In the long term interests of the integrity of our nation and system of government, we should face up to and follow through on those commitments.

"The highest turnout recorded at a UK general election over the last 100 years was in 1950, 83.9%.", according to https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Sum...

And yet, that's not what she was negotiating. You're correct in the sense that there was never a perfect Brexit to be had but we're about a week away from the worst possible outcome. Those were never the only two options.

And a lot of the problems are of her own making. The execution of the 2017 GE was one of the worst in living memory. That was entirely her doing. She then fought against parliamentary scrutiny and lost. She then threw away most of her negotiating position.

At that point, any sensible person would realise that they're not going to get everything their own way and start preparing for getting consensus. But no, they negotiated a deal without any discussion outside of the Government (even key members of her own party) and are then surprised when it doesn't pass.

I take that back. The deal didn't just not pass. It was the worst ever Government loss in the history of one of the oldest parliaments in the world. So time to reset, take stock and change tack? No, let's keep barrelling on. Why? No idea. I mean, the fixed date, red lines etc are there to keep the harder Brexiters on side i.e. the folk that aren't even voting for the deal.

The whole strategy only made rationale sense if she had a landslide in 2017. When that didn't occur, the only sensible approach was to spend 2 years achieving a cross party consensus for something.

And just to be clear, I'm not only a natural Tory, I was delighted when she was chosen as PM as she appeared to be the sort of pragmatic technocrat that I believed the country needed at this time. Unfortunately, I now believe she is the worst PM we have had in my lifetime. And about to cause preventable harm to the country I call home. It is most saddening.

- May chose the date to leave.

- May chose the redlines.

- May chose how the Irish backstop would work.

- May chose not to work with Corbyn on leaving.

- May chose to capitulate to the ERG.

And yet somehow this is the EU's fault ?

[1] hand-waving the credibility of tine travel, of course

She therefore adopted the anti-free-movement position, which condemns the UK to being outside the free trade area, and completely blows up the Ireland situation.

What "should" have happened is one of Johnson, Davis, or Gove running it. Or, after the Tory Party elected a Remain leader, she should have stayed Remain and run a GE on that basis. If people wanted Leave they would have had to vote in UKIP.

Of course, that's always the other people...

> Well first off London only strives because of international financial businesses

London isn't the UK and "international" doesn't mean "about the EU-27".

> Since the vote Brexit cost the UK much more than what they contribute to the EU

Laughable nonsense.

> they export/import ~50% of their good to/from Europe

So does Iceland. Is it broke yet?

> Time will tell, what I'm convinced of is that Brexit was sold on lies

I rest my case about irrational voters... It's also quite pointless to turn every discussion into a superficial pro/con Brexit argument.

After all, a stupid decision taken by uninformed politicians isn't necessarily better than a stupid decision made by the people.

They don't have a say in any other long-term-implementation matter which was voted before they became eligible for vote, so why would this be an exception?

But in democracies the percentages who want this or that are counted through voting. So technically, it is correct.

This is why you do ranked choice voting, which covers any combination of such opinions.

This can be worrying.

I'm of the opinion you guys should get the Empire back together. The Canadians would love it.

If it's not codified, then it sounds like a failure of the government structure and charter

Just sad that that initiative has just never happened, actually it exacerbates me personally even though it has no effect upon me whatsoever; Just irks me as one of those great unfairness that could and should be fixed even if too late now for the current utilisation, but any future use. Though I'm wondering if the EU likes it as it stands so it will cause friction and allow that friction to be laid upon those who action article 50. Who knows, beyond it's a massive oversight upon peoples rights from a collective that trumpets, peoples rights.

Though we do live in strange times.

Even if Brexit doesn't destroy the UK economy[1], politicians everywhere in Europe (including the UK) would no longer be able to speak entirely in hypotheticals, which otherwise make it easy to string along the electorate as well as keep the electorate fickle. Brexit will finally realize the counterfactual that previously anybody and everybody could fabricate from whole cloth. Indeed, it'll also provide a much needed counterfactual in American political discourse and possibly elsewhere.

OTOH, I really like the suggestion in a comment to one of CGP Grey's Brexit videos: the UK and EU could simply ceremoniously reenact the Article 50 withdrawal notice and extension request every year on a new EU-wide holiday, Brexit Day. It provides substantially the same political catharsis, but in perpetuity. And it's perfectly consonant with English political culture more generally--anachronisms that not only bridge time but reconcile conservative and liberal political modalities.

Note: It's important that, at least theoretically, the ritual reenactment preserves the real threat of Brexit. Like with a roller coaster, the appetite for self-destruction cannot be sated without uncertainty.

[1] I mean, pro-Brexit activists were always dishonest and full of sh*t. Here's a mea culpa where an activist admits as much, even while continuing to lie to himself: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/why-brexiteers-forgot-abo... But, honestly, who knows what will happen post Brexit. Short term dislocation for sure, but beyond that it's a fool's game to make hard predictions.