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Comment by colinramsay | Hacker News Reader

These petitions are almost always met with a boilerplate response. There was a recent one (which I can't find as the site's currently down) regarding Russian interference in the last UK election, with the government response being along the lines of "we don't know what you're talking about, move on". More on that here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/b2vmm0/gover...

While the huge number of signings on this petition obviously does reflect _something_, I'm not sure it's actually doing anything meaningful. Likewise the upcoming march this weekend for a Peoples Vote:

https://www.peoples-vote.uk/march

These are now simply ignored. The sheer stubbornness of Theresa May's position as evidenced by her statement last night means we're going to go to the wire on something that's been worked on for years. People calling it a national disgrace are absolutely correct.

I can only hope that the pressure exerted from various angles (petition, march, sane MPs) will result in Parliament revoking Article 50, but I don't see it happening. It would be too prudent for this parody of a political system.

edit: the site's back now. Apparently it runs on Rails with DelayedJob doing most of the grunt work in the background.

edit2: just found the most popular petition on there with over 4m votes and absolutely nothing came of that:

https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/131215

View on HN

I think mostly everyone signing this knows this. But it’s not as though we’ve been listened to in any way.

I like the summary of @bootstrapcool on Twitter: “God knows we've tried everything else.[...] A brief use of collective impotent fury and a tiny squeak into the black holes of our futures, but it's something.”

Absolutely. I'm not positive about the outcome but I wouldn't berate people for trying, hence my comment "I can only hope that the pressure exerted from various angles (petition, march, sane MPs) will result in Parliament revoking Article 50". I've signed it myself!

> But it’s not as though we’ve been listened to in any way.

I get the sentiment (as a pro-Euro Brit), but surely the original referendum counts as being listened to in some way?

The only reason the result wasn't chucked out due to fraud was that it was 'only' advisory. There are plenty of reasons to hold a second vote, beyond just I didn't like the first result.

> surely the original referendum counts as being listened to in some way?

Even ignoring all the illegality and fraud about the referendum, and ignoring that because it was advisory large portions of british citizens living abroad were prevented from having a say, and ignoring the arguments about 16-year-olds who it would be directly affecting because of the time lags, and ignoring the arguments around the fact that the process/success has been wildly, wildly different than promised,

Ever since the referendum 50% of the population of the UK has had no representation in Parliament and government, whilst being endlessly parroted at that it is the "will of the people" and simultaneously being blamed for everything going predictably wrong.

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

Why such an important decision wasn't required to be 60/40 to pass completely baffles me. Almost as much as how the referendum is treated as some iron-clad decision while passing at 51/49.

Classic Remainer logic. If Leave had won 61/39 it'd have become "for such an important decision it should have been 75/25 to pass".

The reason decisions like elections use a simple majority is that otherwise it'd be a small minority of people oppressing the will of the majority, which is unstable, and otherwise known as dictatorship.

Nothing good happens when you cancel election results. See all these African countries with elections canceled...you better make sure the vote is not frauded in the first place.

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.

Their fraud is well known amd documented. Here are some of the fines against the leave campaign for breaking the law.

Vote Leave fined for election fraud. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44856992 Leave.EU fined for election fraud. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44080096 Labour Leave fined for undeclared donations. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47623595 Vote Leave fined for unsolicited texts using football lottery to gather details. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47623413 Eldon Insurance and Leave.EU fined for data breaches when misusing company email data. https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-bl...

So whats the argument against a dictatorship? The people voted for the leader once, therefore they should legitimately have lifetime rule.

Or, re-calling a general election after 1.5 years. Didn’t ‘the people’ already decide?

How about if they were promised one thing, and voted for it, and it turned out to be impossible and based on lies and fraud?

There are lots of things to unpack here.

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.

Speaking solely for myself: I can't get to London for the march on Saturday (I live in Scotland) and even if I could, I'm middle-aged, with dodgy knees and a bad foot. Signing the petition is therefore a proxy for more direct activism.

(I note it has passed 750,000 signatures in well under 24 hours.)

I don't really understand how Paris has real protests almost every weekend, yet we're leaving the EU and we've just had a few marches. Marches do nothing, they're preplanned to cause minimal disruption, just make the people in them feel like they're doing something so that it doesn't go further than that. The march on Saturday needs to at least move off the preplanned route and actually cause some inconvenience.

You don't want french protest culture, IMO. There are some good things about it and specific protests can achieve good results, but it adds up to a very stasis oriented bureaucracy/policy ecosystem. It also gives populists a hand.

Yup I wouldn't want it every weekend. But the scale of Brexit is much bigger, its going to affect our country for decades. It just seems like there should be more protests rather than marches or at least civil disobedience

True, but I think the British (my brothers to the east and north) need to remember that Brexit was ultimately a popular movement. Parliamentary shenanigans played a role, and have been making a mockery of themselves since but...

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.

Popular movement sponsored by a weird coalition of lying press, controversy-driven TV, illegal use of personal data, and (seemingly) foreign intelligence services?

The inability to force a clear Leave manifesto is the root of the disaster. What "should" have happened is either a Leave PM, or the 2017 election should have been run on a clear Leave manifesto specifying a realistic deal to be sought against a Remain opposition.

Nothing in politics is ever clean, and all those things are problems. But, we have a tendency to notice these things more when we don't like the outcome. Treating Brexit as illegitimate is not a recipe for a good way forward, IMO. Democracy works better with respect

Ok here's an angle. I can completely understand you if you are concerned about wanting free trade, free migration; but abstracted representation? Foreign authoritative bureaucracies?

I don't mean to say you're wrong. I'm just saying there appears to be obvious, legitimate concerns here, and your suggesting otherwise seems possibly disingenuous.

> abstracted representation

Yes, the EU representation is quite distant. The UK has an unelected upper house.

> Foreign authoritative bureaucracies?

This isn't great, but at least the EU one is elected. The alternative in all the other trade deals is unelected. Hence all the opposition to things like TTIP, and earlier complaints about GATT etc.

Fundamentally, voting against the EU doesn't make it go away. Some sort of framework always needs to exist to make agreements with other European countries. If the EU didn't exist, it would probably be necessary to invent it.

Hence the Norway/Switzerland situation: not in the EU, has to follow EU rules without having a vote on them.

> legitimate concerns

Here's the thing: hardly anyone talks about those anymore. Brexit has been absolutely dominated by antipathy towards immigrants, both EU and non-EU (despite this not being anything to do with the EU). There's no way to "unwind" EU immigration without ripping families apart.

(I was a Euroskeptic about the treatment of Greece, for example. But ultimately Greece realised that however bad a situation it was in, crashing out would be worse. The same applies to the UK, with "Tory Syriza" running it)

I think it's important to recognise that about 3 million UK long-term settled residents were not allowed to vote, and they were the people most strongly affected by it. And some UK citizens abroad were also not allowed to vote. Perversely given the nature of the issue, non-EU citizens with exactly the same type of migration were allowed to vote.

There were about 3.4 million non-UK EU citizens, many of them settled adults of voting age. They would have voted if they had migrated to the UK and become citizens. But they were told all their lives, that EU citizens don't need to become UK citizens, they have equivalent full rights in almost every respect without doing so, so they lived here in a fully settled way akin to citizenship. Sometimes for decades, with children and grandchildren in the UK. Some of them had respected positions in government.

Any of them, of voting age, could have registered to vote in the referendum if they had known sufficiently far in advance. That is, they could have applied for UK citizenship to do it - though not in the timescale in which the referendum actually occurred.

But EU citizens were discouraged from adopting UK citizenship because there was no need. This led to the perverse situation where non-EU immigrants had the vote, and EU immigrants did not, through no fault of their own.

The UK citizens, of voting age, who were not allowed to vote were all abroad. I expect most of them in the EU.

I'm pretty sure both groups would be pro-EU, and that 3 million number is more than enough to change the result.

So I would not say the Brexit referendum result of 2016 was even the popular result, for any reasonable definition of democracy in my mind.

>I don't really understand

Ok I get your sentiment and I agree that peaceful protest is just woefully ignored in the UK - but someone with a job and a peaceful life typically doesn't want to risk getting arrested, and potentially convicted, trying to cause trouble on a march.

Things have to be much worse before people are going to start taking that risk, and sadly, while things do not look good, the average Londoner is not yet uncomfortable enough to start doing so.

>Paris has real protests

It may not be your intent but "It's not a real protest if something doesn't burn down" is a bit unfair. If things turn violent/destructive on this march public favour will not look kindly on it in the UK.

Remember the student protests for tuition fees? Those who occupied 30 Millbank were vilified as criminals by _both_ sides. Inconvenient and disruptive for sure - but to the press they are "rioters" and to others in the movement "anarchists who don't represent us".

People have been persuaded by the powers that be that any form of non-peaceful protesting is socially unacceptable and that we should chastise it. Convenient eh? Especially because "Without a path from protest to power"[0] there is never going to be any change or acknowledgement from the government.

Any form of protest that could actually get results is a) too risky for people who are currently comfortable enough and b) intentionally socially ostracised by those in power to discourage it.

Be the change you want to see in the world? But one person in a balaclava setting things on fire isn't going to make any difference to the outcome of the protest without a critical mass of others undertaking the same behaviour for a prolonged period of time.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/19/womens-march-w...

I remember the poll tax riots in 1990. That was the last time we made significant change through protest in this country.

https://imgur.com/4ShiHgb

Historically, the citizens of the UK and former British Empire have never managed to pull off a revolution. I don't know if complacency is ingrained in the culture (plenty of evidence for the opposite), but the French started beheading kings when they were not happy. The UK still supports a figurehead monarch. No evidence of correlation or causation, but just saying.

Maybe most of the few who weren't bootlickers left, and what remains of them are still in America.

What about the English Civil war which ended up with Charles I being executed?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England

Also the later, and peaceful, Glorious Revolution?

I don't think either of those count as popular revolutions; more the layer below the monarchy deciding to switch out the monarch for a more compliant one. Parliamentary, rather than popular, sovereignty. (This is partly why I'm fed up with all this pretending that "will of the people" was a thing in English politics - it wasn't until 2015. Different in Scotland with the Claim of Right.)

So what would count as a genuinely popular revolution? I'm always reminded of Orwell's view:

'Cyclically, the Middle deposed the High, by enlisting the Low. Upon assuming power, however, the Middle (the new High class) recast the Low into their usual servitude. In the event, the classes perpetually repeat the cycle, when the Middle class speaks to the Low class of "justice" and of "human brotherhood" in aid of becoming the High class rulers.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oli...

You’re not wrong – though history could have turned out differently.

After the First English Civil War, there were two broad factions within the New Model Army: the Grandees (aristocratic wing) and the Levellers (the more radical, egalitarian, democratic and progressive republicans). Unfortunately, Cromwell’s faction won that particular power struggle and the rest is history. Nevertheless, this period of revolution acted as inspiration for the colonists in America, which in turn inspired the French republicans, thus influencing countless other revolutionary movements.

His son was returned and those who had voted to execute his father were punished, so it didn't really work out for them.

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

I understand there are some blockades of motorways planned if Brexit is delayed. [1]

The fuel blockades of the early 2000's resulted in some significant political action, more than marches seem to have.

[1] https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/m4-m5-blocke...

Christ. Have they not realised that if Brexit does happen, most of the southeast around the M20 is going to be "blockaded" by Operation Stack?

I do think that Karen Bradley's explicit support a couple of weeks ago for the army murdering unarmed demonstrators on Bloody Sunday was not quite the coincidence or "mistake" it was made out to be. It was instead a warning.

> I don't really understand how Paris has real protests almost every weekend, yet we're leaving the EU and we've just had a few marches.

The French make themselves unrulable, while the British have been utterly subjugated by the state. Positive change has completely exited the British imagination, to the point where even progressives can't articulate a positive program, only a defence of whatever happens to exist at the moment.

That would do nothing good. At this point only illegal things (black mail, kidnapping, etc) can force the brexitiers in parliament to call for a new election.

Since it is illegal, I do not endorse it; instead I will just watch the UK burn itself.

I think you may be surprised by the outcome. The real question is, do the Tory party want to commit political suicide by administering a no deal brexit, and risk never getting re-elected until the subsequent turmoil subsides? I think not.

Farage and the rest are no where to be seen (he still collects his salary from the EU apparently though!).

The upshot of all this mess will probably be as unlikely as the referendum result itself. Personally, I'm expecting the unexpected, and can see a total revocation of article 50, resulting most probably from a people's vote (anything else would be undemocratic). I mean, what other realistic option is there that isn't utterly pie-in-the-sky stupid?!

> commit political suicide by administering a no deal Brexit

I don't know how this would be political suicide, it is currently the most popular option in polling, and it's not considered to have any greater economic costs than the other options (including reversing the referendum decision entirely!).

How can the potential breakup of the UK, increased economic uncertainty, increased political uncertainty, and a complete lack of plan yield any good outcomes for the Tories in the mid-to-long term? I mean, it may be popular, short term, but you have to remember that the people screaming their lungs out in favour of Brexit are probably the least informed about its potential consequences. And they are probably also the most affected by the potential consequences - they will turn as soon as the going gets tough.

Except that your statement on economic costs is baloney.

For example: https://www.ft.com/content/4849bf68-1b13-11e9-9e64-d150b3105...

1. It is not the most popular option in polling. Right now it is to remain in the EU.

2. The idea that it has no greater cost than the options is ridiculous. UK Treasury and economists from all around the world have all come to the conclusion that a hard brexit is significantly more harmful than a soft brexit. And it's common sense since it imposes trade friction on the UK's largest trading partner.

UK Treasury and economists from all around the world have all come to the conclusion that a hard brexit is significantly more harmful than a soft brexit

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.

There was also one about tv licenses, their response was basically "but this is how bbc gets funded!" and ignored the results of the petition.

I don't think anyone is expecting anything to come directly of this. However, it puts more pressure on MPs.

The Brexiteers had won when they successfully framed Brexit as "the will of the 17M". Remainers didn't counter-frame this with "50M didn't vote for Brexit".

Therefor all the marches, petitions etc. are always/can be ignored in the context of "but the will of the 17M".

"Don't Think of an Elephant!" is now such an old book, and still a lot of people haven't read it. Brexiteers have read it it seems.

I think the petition will need more than 17m (genuine) signatures before it'll have the effect it's aiming for.

Not saying the signatures so far aren't genuine, just that to have the desired effect it'll need to be reasonably free from doubt

Agreed. I thought the same while signing the original one right after the referendum result was announced — I wasn’t expecting to get what I wanted, but signed it in the hope of sending a “Of course I still love EU” message.

If someone does not vote, when there was ample opportunity to do so, then they implicitly are accepting the outcome - whichever way it goes.

This actually should read "Brexit - The will of the 17m + 50m who are okay with this"

This would have read the same if the result had gone the other way: "Remain - The will of the Xm + 50m who are okay with this"

At the end of the day, there was a vote and more people wanted Brexit, than Remain. A democratic process and result.

Yes I agree, if you don't vote (having voted in every election the last 30y and would never not vote) you're ok with the result and can't complain, but from a Remainer standpoint the framing would be "50M didn't vote for Brexit" - then I'd think their arguing would be easier.

Having watched many Commons discussions, it basically always ends with "but the 17M".

The trouble with your first point is that UK democracy feels like this:

* 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)

Yes. In many ways Brexit is one of those "cascade failures" we read about on COMP.RISKS; democracy has been malfunctioning for a long time, every effort to fix it has been blocked, and now we have the consequences.

Well, it's more like "The will of the 17.4M + 13M who were okay with it", with the other 21.5M unable to vote due to immigration status, age, failure to register, or other reasons.

If it had gone the other way, all these points would have been exactly the same - why would it be any more/less acceptable (from a democratic process point of view)?

Normally major constitutional changes require supermajorities to pass

Not in the UK. All constitutional referendums have used 50%+1 including the original remain/leave referendum that happened a few years after joining.

I'm talking generally across the world, and not just referenda.

> the original remain/leave referendum that happened a few years after joining

That wasn't constitutional change. Nor was it binding.

This referendum was also non-binding, it's right there in the act of parliament that authorized it.

Of course once Parliament agreed to invoke article 50 the referendum became irrelevant. Parliament - specifically the Tories, Labour, DUP, UUP and UKIP mps who decided to take us out of the EU with no deal, not the referendum.

320 MPs can change the UK constitution (although there are some protections with the House of Lords), which is the anomaly globally.

We are having a lot of elections this year, so one meme floats around on FB: "Bad government is that happens when good people do not vote".

I wish this is true, but I don't think it is. In my country we had incompetent and corrupted left-wing government for 13 years. Now we have corrupted and incompetent far right extremists. And voting is mandatory here.

>A democratic process and result.

Pull the other one. This isn't the BBC Have Your Say comments section. People won't just believe that because you've declared it so.

Illegal data theft: https://twitter.com/Nealb2010/status/1059068463933743104

Flagrant violations of electoral law: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/journalist/ele... - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/17/vote-leave-...

Blatant lies and disinformation on immigration: https://www.europeanlawmonitor.org/eu-referendum-topics/summ...

General lies: https://www.independent.co.uk/infact/brexit-second-referendu...

More lies: https://minutehack.com/opinions/lies-damn-lies-and-brexit

Further lies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBxWiRz6A9E

External interference and disinformation: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/17/why-is...

Seriously anyone who thinks the Brexit referendum was democratic or fair is either ignorant or naive.

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

>> "Seriously anyone who thinks the Brexit referendum was democratic or fair is either ignorant or naive."

You may have a point about the fairness - the Government did pump in 9.3 million GBP to push the Pro-Remain position, in the form of a Pro-Remain pamphlet to every household in the UK. This, arguably, was hardly fair as the Leave side could not hope to match that level of expenditure to air their position, yet the people still voted Leave - go figure.

+ 700000 British citizens living for 15+ years in EU countries who were not allowed to vote https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-second-referendu...

how many of the 50 M have not voted because they didn't understand what they were actually voting for? The hyperbole spread in campaign[1] was just surreal. You need informed discussions before calling for a referendum not the "feely hearts over minds" bullshit.

Putting the question to the people, in a representative democracy, is a terrible idea. they should have known this after Boaty McBoatface already.

In addition UK MSM has some of the most inflaming language in all the news in Europe (and even US). I have my news.google.com set to UK by default and I switch around to other region and languages to get a more complete picture. Every country has screamy headlines. But the UK tabloids (Express, Mirror and Daily) seem to be the absolute fucking worst. Even from just reading the headlines (and knowing that it's BS) fills me with more hate than any other country's news. And I wonder: if _I_ feel so incited by this, how do Brits feel who compared to me have actual skin in the game?

[1] actually on both sides. The leave camp was infiltrated by the radical right and the left was controlled by people who were so arrogant that they'd called anyone a racist who disagreed. Those minorities who are at the fringe and work 16 hrs days (while still on the brink of homelessness) were thrown into the same pot as white-supremacists.

At the end of the day, about 3 million people, fully settled in the UK, were not allowed to vote on the one thing which greatly affected them and for many is wrecking their lives.

That isn't due to apathy, and it isn't democracy either.

To avoid duplication, the rest of my comment is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19451579

Has any vote ever been won by a majority of the entire population, eligible to vote or not? If that’s the standard you’re after nothing would ever pass and no government would ever be formed. Seems an unreasonable bar to set, to me.

Sure the "50M didn't vote for Brexit" is BS as is the "but the 17M" with such a tiny margin of pro-Brexit votes.

Implicitly agreeing to the "but the 17M" frame, the Remainers lost the public discussion.

Not in the UK, indeed the largest voter turnout of any election/referendum in the UK was...the EU referendum. Making it the largest vote for a decision in the entire history of the UK.

So best described currently as `interesting times`.

I keep hearing this claim, but I don't think it's true.

"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...

Are you arguing relatively while others argue absolutely?

Turnout is normally given as a percentage, I think.

Either way, the 1992 general election had a turnout of 77.7% or 33,614,074, both of were larger than the EU referendum.

I have zero sympathy, or concern for the voices of those who chose not to exercise their right to vote.

The 50m (not that many - see Khol's reply) had their chance and blew it, and I say that as someone who voted remain and thinks this whole thing is a disaster, and leaving either with the May deal (bad) or the hard way (worse) would both be worse than staying. However, the people had their chance and they voted to leave. That's how democracy works. It's a serious business with real consequences.

If there is a new referendum it should be about the terms under which we will leave, and that's all. Yes the May deal is crap, but any deal we cut with the EU was going to be a horrible fudge. So much for 'cutting a deal with the EU will be the easiest in human history' because 'we hold all the cards'. I have nothing but sympathy for Theresa May. She's made mistakes, sure, but anyone else would have made their own mistakes.

The 50m is a slightly misleading point (it includes everyone too young to vote, whatever their viewpoint) but there's a much stronger case to take into account the perspective of the 16m people who voted against this car crash.

To declare that because a poorly defined proposition sold with untruth and misdirection won out in a vote means that we can't reflect on what is now known is absurd.

If every vote in which the outcome was swayed with misdirection and untruth was invalidated, we’d have to give up on democracy completely. Every view and opinion was expressed and the electorate had plenty of opportunity to make a decision. I certainly feel I had sufficient information to make an informed choice.

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.

> If every vote in which the outcome was swayed with misdirection and untruth was invalidated, we’d have to give up on democracy completely.

I would say the opposite: unless you do that, you have already given up on democracy.

> I certainly feel I had sufficient information to make an informed choice.

So do 93% of both leavers and remainers. Trouble is, these two groups disagree about which statements are true: is the EU democratic? Which is responsible for employment rights? For the level of immigration from Africa and the Middle East? How expensive is it? What benefits does it provide?

It is necessarily the case that around half the UK voters believe total nonsense. I know which side I believe, but that doesn’t really help.

>I would say the opposite: unless you do that, you have already given up on democracy.

As you say yourself, despite all that has happened, the vast majority of leavers and remainers still believe in the same choice. Most of the issues are matters of opinion, not fact. Even if leaving the EU is a disaster, many Brexiteers will believe it was only disaster because "it wasn't done properly".

My take on that is, this was a risk they chose to accept when voting for Brexit and which I chose not to accept when voting for remain. However they won the vote, so we all took that risk.

> Most of the issues are matters of opinion, not fact.

I don’t see how you can make this claim. Perhaps you have seen more mere-options than me?

The opinion that fewer immigrants will mean less crime. That our trade deal in the EU exposes our companies to unfair competition. That fewer immigrants will help preserve 'our' way of life. That we will be free to reach our own trade deals with other countries. Most of Brexit is about forward-looking hopes and expectations. I don't believe it, but it's hard to disprove because what do people even mean by 'our' culture, etc?

Hmm. I believe the two trade examples are testable (and as claims, the former false and the latter true).

The other two I will grant you, and I thank you for providing them.

It wasn't just the usual 'misdirection and untruth', the Leave campaigns were found guilty of multiple crimes (and there's still more to investigate). If it had been a binding vote, it would have been invalidated.

Glad to hear such a profound and sane reply. I feel this whole topic is just so heated up, I understand that, that it's hard to talk reasonable about it.

As a German I hope this will be some kind of a lesson for the whole EU and UK and we will hopefully have the UK back in the EU "soon" (don't know how long this might take).

But I think it's important to draw a line now and make a "Brexit". On the one hand to show the consequences to the UK and the other unsteady EU states who might think about using some kind of exit as a vague threat, but, more important, to show the people of the UK that their will and votes are respected. I think that's what's missing in lots of EU states (at least I feel this way for Germany), so this might really be a chance for all of us.

> Remainers didn't counter-frame this with "50M didn't vote for Brexit".

They did, however the response was "50M didn't vote for the status quo"

The difference between the leave and remain in the referendum was 3.8%. It's hard to picture how small is this difference, but one way to frame it could be this:

If you voted for Brexit, and you were born on any day of the year between the 14th of January and the 31st of December, your vote is matched by a vote for remain, a will opposite to yours and equally deserving of consideration.

> While the huge number of signings on this petition obviously does reflect _something_, I'm not sure it's actually doing anything meaningful. Likewise the upcoming march this weekend for a Peoples Vote:

Of course, they will keep voting until they get the answer you wanted.

Wouldn't it be meaningless, anyway, unless you compare it to the number of people who are opposed to the petition?

I made a progress bar against the NoDeal counter-petition: https://brexit-petitions-count.now.sh

(Pending API availability)

That's actually really cool. Who needs parliament to vote for a second referendum? We can run our own mini referendum using the two petitions :)

Brexit petitions in realtime:

710,563 signed for remain - 65.81% #RevokeArticle50 371,020 signed for no deal - 34.17% #NoDeal

https://twitter.com/paulmaunders/status/1108684812414533632

That's a really terrible way to run a statistical study.

nice! (minor nitpick: the numbers weren't visible in firefox and had to launch google-chrome to actually view the page).

Does your site cache the numbers? It could be really useful to take some of the load off the main petition's site, as people keep going there and refreshing the page which is overloading it.

It refreshes every 5 seconds, and uses the data from the petition JSON API (just add .json to a petition URL).

Do you store the results locally on your server so that it isn't making multiple requests for each visitor?

I've just been sharing your site URL around on Twitter quite a bit, but it seems to have broken it! If it doesn't have caching already, would be good to add it!

It relies on the JSON enpoints of the petition API to be up, and with all the load they are unstable at the moment.

It seems the NoDeal-petition is much older. It ends in April, and the Remain-petition ends in August. According to the web site, petitions run for 6 months. So it certainly isn't a counter-petition.

They were started with different context, and the remainer petition might only have traction atm because it is new.

Anyway - yeah, let's just decide everything with online petitions. Totally legit.

Not at all, the point is to have your voice heard.

> The sheer stubbornness of Theresa May's position

What do you mean? To me, it seems she's tried pretty much everything, but the parliament voted down most of the proposals...

Edit: I have nothing but respect for her. She's literally the only person in the wide political spectrum in the UK that's willing to actually deal with this like a sensible adult, and she's been eating a ton of shit for it, barely complaining at all. She sacrificed a lot, her political career is completely over, and for no real result, because she was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Which variety of options (in negotiations/terms of the deal) do you think that Theresa May has tried?

Perhaps if she hadn't called a pointless general election and then run one of the worst campaigns in living memory that ended up removing the Conservative majority requiring pandering to the DUP I might have some sympathy.

If she had thought strategically she might have held off on an election until closer to this moment and then she could have used the threat of an election, and the attendant annihilation at the polls, as a threat against the rebels to secure the key factor of party unity. Effective head-kicking is absolutely essential in these sorts of situations. May has ended up just making herself look weak again and again.

Her party was way ahead in the polks when she called the election. She is just incredibly bad at her job — literally, as in if you went back in time 5 years and described what she’d done[1], it would not be considered credible.

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

I'm sorry, this is emphatically not true.

May has made several easily predictable errors in her handling of this issue. She has steadfastly refused to shift her position in response to events, has miscalculated response to her interventions repeatedly, and has spent substantial time in the past several months publicly blaming everybody but herself for this outcome.

Her political career will be over not because she was "stuck between a rock and a hard place", but because she refused to acknowledge political and technical reality. I have literally no sympathy or respect for her behaviour or position, and I genuinely struggle to see a way in which this could have been handled less competently.

I think she has handled this dreadfully. She should have built a parliamentary cross-party consensus on what option to pursue well before now. Her only negotiating tactic with parliament is pushing things up to the deadline and saying my deal or no deal.

Read Matthew Parris' reports of her personality (e.g. [1]). He (a conservative journalist) says that almost everyone says she doesn't listen to anyone, speaks in soundbites, is cruel, stupid, unable to compromise and isolated.

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/theresa-may-s-bre...

> saying my deal or no deal

But consider it from a higher-level perspective. Had she done everything perfectly (for whatever definition of "perfect"), would anything be different? The EU is the "problem" here, not the UK parliament. The UK was never going to get what they wanted - free trade with no freedom of movement, nor no border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and no border between Norther Ireland and the main island. The only deal possible is something like Norway and Switzerland have.

And the reality is, that neither Tory nor Labour MPs want to remain (because of how the political system works in the UK), either fully (in the EU), or partially (outside of the EU and subject to EU rules). So they (predictably) vote against that (only possible) deal.

Edit: This was, of course, perfectly obvious to all politicians, which is why no one wanted to deal with it.

The deal is the only one possible with her red lines. She should have reached agreement on the red lines before starting the negotiation. She shouldn't have called Article 50 before getting an agreement across the parties. ~50% of the country voted to stay in and ~50% to stay out, so compromise is required. One solution would have been to have a followup referendum to ask the public what kind of Brexit they wanted - setting out the real options with their advantages and disadvantages.

> The only deal possible is something like Norway and Switzerland have

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 to leave.

- 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 ?

She's tried everything except actual leadership. The reason her political career is over is that's she's an ineffective leader.

These sorts of situations are the very definition of what leadership is for. The fact it's nigh an impossible situation is partly due to the path she has chosen and her relative incompetence in her job.

You can feel for her and that's fine, but at the end of the day responsibility to get the job done falls to her and she has not delivered. There are no excuses.

What would have been a better path (honest question)?

Building a deliverable, realistic consensus approach with cross-party support, reflecting the relatively close outcome of the initial referendum and the diversity of opinion within the "leave" movement.

But that's my question, what's a "realistic consensus"? Mind you, consensus within the UK isn't enough, you need consensus with the EU as well - and I don't think anything better than the current deal is even possible.

But that's my question, what's a "realistic consensus"?

It's really the prime minister's job to build this based on working cross-party, but an obvious example might be a relatively close Norway-style relationship, which would be much more likely to receive opposition support.

I don't think anything better than the current deal is even possible

This is again just absolutely false.

The EU are (or would have been) open to other models than the one TM settled on.

They have suggested they would be open to alternatives when Corbyn approached them earlier this year. If a general election or new referendum had taken place, I think the EU would have granted an extension to hear what new alternative would emerge.

They are saying TM's deal is the only deal now, but that's because it was negotiated exhaustively in private already, and TM told them, essentially, she would take it to the MPs to get it rubber-stamped.

The MPs said no, it's their job, not hers, to hash out the big important compromises for the country, she should have consulted them before getting to that point and they don't like the deal she made, and they rejected it with the strongest defeat in parliamentary history.

The problem is leaving consensus building so late, so the EU spent all their negotiating efforts on TM's version of things, and they don't want to negotiate twice (unless a really good reason shows up that lines up with their principles).

> They have suggested they would be open to alternatives when Corbyn approached them earlier this year.

Ah, that's news to me. Do you have any more info, like an article explaining the potential alternative models?

If there was ever to be a workable Brexit it should have been driven by a Leaver. Theresa May was not a Leave campaigner before the referendum, just an anti-immigrant Home Secretary.

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.

I think those three would have failed just as hard.

IMO, whoever was in charge, it should have been done like this: 1. Nationwide consultations about type of Brexit; 2. Determine best fit; 3. Work out negotiation objectives and fallback plans; 4. Then invoke A50.

> She's literally the only person in the wide political spectrum in the UK that's willing to actually deal with this like a sensible adult

She's been told by the rules of Parliament that she can't have another vote on the same deal. That remains to be her plan.

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