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Comment by bArray | Hacker News Reader

> I feel the UK were wrong to leave [..]

Whether it was the correct decision or not, it was done via a democratic vote. Now the leaders of the UK look to entangle the UK into the EU structure that is evidently against their mandate.

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The current UK government was also elected by democratic vote, so they have a mandate that postdates the referendum.

You can argue their mandate is invalid due to the first-past-the-post system, but in that case the original decision to hold a referendum, and all subsequent governments that negotiated the terms of the EU exit are also invalid, since they all derived from first-past-the-post elections.

The current UK government have a mandate with regards to running the UK more generally, but leaving the EU was its own very clear message. There was a vote in 1975 to continue EU membership, and again in 2016 [1]. It very much feels likely something that should only be undone on another vote.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_the_United_King...

The vote was to leave or stay - there was no mandate for or against a specific relationship to the EU before even considering how drastically opinions have shifted since.

And there was considerable debate prior to the referendum within the Leave camp as to whether to go for a "soft Brexit" (close regulatory alignment) or "hard Brexit" (what the final deal ended up being).

Indeed parts of the leave movement explicitly used as an argument that a soft Brexit was possible, including explicitly airing the possibility of a Norway-style EEA membership. Given how close the result was, it's highly unlikely that there wouldn't have been greater support for a very soft option than for what we got.

> no mandate for or against a specific relationship to the EU

Then do you not support another vote that provides this option?

> how drastically opinions have shifted since

There is a way to conduct a poll that represents the engaged electorate - have another vote.

I'd fully support a vote if rejoining was one of the options. It's pretty clear from polls that support to rejoin is far stronger than the support for Brexit was (in June, it was 55% for vs. 34% against, vs. 59% in support of a closer relationship and 20% against, and 29% supporting the current relationship).

But in the meantime it is also entirely unambiguous that there is a clear mandate for a closer relationship - the gap is so huge (much larger than the support for the current status quo ever was) that there's no real need for another vote for that and voters can punish parties that support it at the next general election.

> I'd fully support a vote if rejoining was one of the options.

Of course it would be, but people would need some kind of understanding on what basis that would be on.

> It's pretty clear from polls [..]

I think there is only one way to know for sure.

> But in the meantime it is also entirely unambiguous that there is a clear mandate for a closer relationship [..]

People of the UK do not hate Europe, but there is evidence to suggest that people of the EU do not view the people of the UK favorably [1]. But I think the point of sovereignty and cost is a big one.

[1] https://uk.news.yahoo.com/yougov-survey-eu-crisis-uk-1209146...

That mandate has quite changed, even more when you look at the non-retired cohorts. Reintegration with the EU will take plenty of time.

Has it? It would take another vote to show it for sure, and the current government is simply not wanting to ask the people.

The vote wasn’t binding and had a low turnout. Not really a good example to point to for democratic voting

It wasn't binding so the normal procedure and checks around a referendum could be ignored. Like disenfranchising the British citizens living in the EU.

Democratic indeed...

It was just an exercise in testing the mood of the nation, don't you see? Just like a general election, if the electorate vote the wrong party, it is perfectly fine to just ignore the result.

The vote was non-binding due to the sovereignty of parliament [1]. It means that if a war broke out or the economy crashed, they would not be forced to continue at great detriment to the UK. But it doesn't mean that the vote was a mere suggestion - anybody who suggests such doesn't understand democracy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...

Fair enough, the "advisory" nature of referendum in the UK does have clear reasoning that i wasn't fully aware of. However the idea of it being "advisory" was itself exploited, and used to make people think that Brexit would't happen anyway, even if the vote was to leave.

My suggestion was not that the referendum shouldn't stand because it was "advisory", but that there should have been rules applied around a referendum that could affect peoples lives so much. But, there are no such rules it seems, the majority in the Commons gets to decide that.

Which is why (almost a million?) British citizens in the EU were not allowed to vote, which doesn't seem very democratic.

And Europeans who were born in the UK and lived their entire life here.

It was a referendum of the the right sort of British citizen.

> However the idea of it being "advisory" was itself exploited, and used to make people think that Brexit would't happen anyway, even if the vote was to leave.

It could be argued also the other way, maybe people didn't engage or chose to continue because they were led to believe it wasn't possible to leave the UK.

> My suggestion was not that the referendum shouldn't stand because it was "advisory", but that there should have been rules applied around a referendum that could affect peoples lives so much. But, there are no such rules it seems, the majority in the Commons gets to decide that.

I think it was fumbled because nobody involved in enacting it were actually supportive of it, and the semi-permanent state (i.e. civil servants) were largely not in support.

> It was a referendum of the the right sort of British citizen.

I have more general thoughts about this, I think a country should be very careful about who or who can't vote.

Does that mean when a government is elected by a low turnout, that it is also not democratic? The current UK government was elected on a 59.7% electorate turnout [1], whereas Brexit was decided based on a 72.2% electorate turnout [2].

[1] https://closer.ac.uk/contextual-data/turnout-uk-general-elec...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...

Democratic isn’t binary, it’s a spectrum. And I said it’s not a good example of a democratic vote, not that it is undemocratic. It’s closer to the undemocratic end of the spectrum. Though that turnout number is actually way higher than I remember, 70% is actually very high!

I don't know how it can be argued towards the undemocratic end of the spectrum, it was possibly one of the most democratic processes the UK has undergone in a long time?

The majority of UK inhabitans wants to rejoin the EU. It is indeed democratically legitime.

If only there was a type of nation-wide poll that could be conducted to make such claims so strongly. Maybe we pick a single day, each side makes their cases to the people, and then they cast their choices to be counted. But I guess it can't be done.

Democratic vote which has since then been proved to be heavily influenced by the Cambridge Analytica campaign, so which probably did not reflect the actual opinion of the population. It was a manipulated vote.

I remember the UK government at the time spent £9.3 million of taxpayer's money to push a pro-EU leaflet out [1], not to mention a concerted effort from the news media. It's not as if there was not strong campaigning happening on both sides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-EU_leaflet

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