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Comment by SlowRobotAhead | Hacker News Reader

Wasn’t there already an election? Can you explain why there is a second proxy referendum and what the two outcomes would be?

I assume it’s Wait for Deal Brexit or Doing It Now Brexit, ya?

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There are now a fairly large number of MPs who are no longer aligned to the policies of their party, or who have moved party. An election should shake all of that out.

This, combined with the speaker's constitutional innovations have led to a situation where we have a government which can't govern. Again, an election should sort this (and may allow the removal of an activist speaker as well).

And yes, it will be about voting for a party which matches your preferred strategy. Tory = no deal. Libs = remain. Labour = ??? + radical socialism.

I believe the idea here is that people would vote for MPs who are for/against Brexit rather than voting directly for/against Brexit themselves.

The recent election was an internal party election, similar to the Republican or Democratic National Congress. This is because in a general election in the UK, the Prime Minister is not directly elected by the people - they vote for a party, and the leader of that party can change at any time, which is what happened when Theresa May stepped down.

There was one over who should carry out the negotiations, the result of which was that the tories lost most of their advantage.

There hasn’t been any election that is close to being about the actual leave conditions, on account of the only concrete deal being written down in spring this year.

In parliamentary democracies there aren't any formal barriers to having elections as often as people feel like it. It's unusual but far from unheard of for countries to have several in a year during difficult times.

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