The "best" solution to this problem is to cancel Brexit. Even that solution would cause a massive political blowback and only deepen the current divides that exist today.
The "fantasy" solution is that the government can somehow negotiate a better deal for Brexit. But this is pure fantasy. For starters, there is severe disagreement as to what kind of deal ought to be pursued among the people who dislike May's deal. Most of the Brexiteers want a "hard" Brexit, which means in practice that they want all the goodies of being in the EU without any pain whatsoever (this is kind of like expecting the Pope to appoint a Muslim imam to the College of Cardinals). This also runs into the problem that it is very risky to reopen strife in Northern Ireland, which was cooled in large part by the effective removal of a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
The "crazy" solution is to bail out with no deal. Very few people actually want this--taken literally, it means things like "you can't fly between UK and Europe;" the hope is that by playing brinksmanship, none of the horribles actually happen.
So yes, it is a slow motion train wreck. There's no easy way out.
There's a serious chance that life will not go on for some in Northern Ireland. People might die there as a direct result of this. Jo Cox already died in England. This is not scaremongering.
> Most brexiters I know admit that a hard brexit would be bad economically.
They are doing it now, because they can't contradict obvious truth. Before they were hyping how good it would be, to brainwash the masses, knowing full well it won't be good.
Yes, but there was no chance of article 50 being revoked while May's deal was still on the table. Now it's a choice between revoking it and a hard Brexit. Which is the only way we'd ever get to a state where it might be revoked.
EU courts have, IIRC, ruled that Britain can unilaterally revoke article 50, so now it's all up to elected MPs to figure out a way forward. So the fate of the UK rests on the good judgment and sensibility of Jeremy Corbyn.
I'm just hoping Jeremy Corbyn is playing the long game of claiming to be one way but then acting another to fake out the prime minister. Same as he did with stating that he was not going to be appearing on the televised debates like may, until changing his mind at the last second, showing up anyway and showing her up.
What I don't understand (and I am very ignorant!) is why the initial vote can't just be looked at as a stage in the decision process. Time has gone on, and the public has become more educated as to what the true effects of Brexit will be. Even leaving aside the question of how dishonest the pro-Brexit arguments were. It just seems reasonable to have another vote.
It seems absolutely unreasonable to me. It's hard to measure how certain tactics influenced the vote on either side. The voting process needs to be done with confidence and we should not so easily assume our peers are misinformed and/or so easily swayed. The efforts put forth by legitimate actors to campaign for their cause goes for not, as does confidence in the democratic process, when the outcome is just thrown away.
The voting process does need to be done with confidence.
In the first vote Leave were referred to the police for illegality, and they still haven't provided a full account of their funding - at least some of which seems very likely to have come from foreign sources.
This is explicitly and very clearly not legal, because foreign money has no business trying to influence the vote in a sovereign British matter.
So a People's Vote would be the first honest vote.
And then, if this second voting yields a different result, shouldn't they hold a third referendum afterwards? And maybe a few more, as you can always say the last one was not the genuine one.
You speak as if the two questions being voted on are identical. They're not.
The first question was, should we Remain exactly as we are, or should we Leave in some totally unspecified fashion? The second question will be, should we Remain exactly as we are, or should we Leave in a no-deal hard exit, since that's the only possibility still on the table? It's no longer an abstract Leave, to which everyone can ascribe all their dreams and wishes; it's now a very specific Leave, with all the faults thereof. That may change the voting somewhat.
And, down the road, if there's another concrete Leave on the table, should the people have another referendum? Sure, why not? There probably won't be a need to vote on the negotiated Leave, though - losing by 230 votes in Parliament is probably enough. And there won't be any need to vote on a hard Brexit a second time, either - if it's voted on in a referendum, it will lose 65-35 or 70-30. (Or so I suspect, but what do I know? I'm not in the UK.)
If you can think of a good reason to do so, maybe. Two and a half years passing, having far more information about the process, and questions about the legality of the leave campaigns seem like perfectly legitimate reasons to hold a second vote before committing to such sweeping, largely-irreversible, constitutional change.
It's not best of 2 - it's a new vote. It supersedes the old one, and when you lose, you don't lose _permanently_ - in any functioning democracy, there's _always_ another vote.
> If there's always another vote, no vote needs to be implemented. What's the point of voting then?
Most democracies have regular periods where you vote. Are you suggesting that since there will be a new US Presidential election in 2020 that Trump is now no longer legitimate? How would that circumstance be any different that a referdendum?
Voting isn't wrong.
What is the implication of you trying to tie the institution of democracy to childhood antics? Are you suggesting that a vote is no different that chance? That the opinion's of people that change are no longer legitimate?
It's double jeopardy, there is a case for a fresh vote because new facts (May's deal/No Deal) are present. If there are new facts after this vote (for example a new A50 or similar) then there is the case for another one.
I think the issue is that once you have had a referendum with outright dishonest arguments and likely manipulated by foreign states and one side wins by a couple of perentage points, the outcome is ironclad will of the people and even if these dishonest arguments turn out to be to many people's surprise wrong, it will not change what is the will of the people. Vice versa, any notion of asking people what they like about the actual outcome is considered pretty much hostile against democracy. Or something like that. I really can't claim to understand the argument properly.
It was a non-binding referendum - they could have “carefully examined” the result for a week and then tossed it in the trash, politely declining the “advice” of the populace.
Assuming that a narrow result on a yes/no vote on a general concept means that the “will of your constituents” falls on one side of a complex policy issue irrespective of details of the concrete policies embedded in the available concrete realization of the broad concept that were not known at the time of the vote is quite ludicrous, even without the side that ultimately won using specific concrete descriptions as a sales pitch that conflict with that reality.
That's especially true when equally non-binding but current polling of your constituents on the same question shows that the opposite side quite likely leads now that the concrete options are known.
It's a well-established British Constitutional principal that a Parliament cannot bind a future Parliament. Why would one view the public will ant differently, even if it were fully informed?
Having a "do over" referendum and finding opinions have changed is entirely different than what the OP suggested which was ignoring the results of the referendum entirely.
> Democracy means accepting that the voting public has no idea what makes good policy, but that they should determine policy anyway.
Representative democracy means that they determine policy by choosing representatives. It's disingenuous for those representatives to turn around and blame their own policy choices on an explicitly non-binding referendum that they sent to the public. (Especially so for a leader of the party who choose to do that specifically as a means of minimizing the impact of the issue so referred on a general election so as to preserve their partisan majority.
Absolutely, I didn't mean to imply it's not possible, it just hurts your public image. They're looking for a solution that also lets them keep their jobs.
So presumbly if you keep trying to pass another referundum people will vote against it just out of spite. There is already pressure to not repeatedly do that, so its not a concern to argue slippery slope.
The British Parliament can do basically whatever it wants. The concepts of separation of powers and Constitutionally-mandated red tape are much less developed than in the United States.
So the answer to why anything happened in the UK, including holding a referendum, is basically just: because Parliament decided to.
Well, Congress doesn't choose to have them (separation of powers helps here; the Brexit referendum was very much about electoral strategy in a system where voting for a district legislator is also voting for a particular executive administration.)
> Certain states do, but not the country.
What many US states regularly have is binding referenda with Constitutional force and process; while these may sometimes be of legislative origin, they could do Brexit-style referenda (because of their general powers) but, again, separation of powers kind of eliminates the political use of them, or at least that of Brexit specifically, and a non-binding referenda on a non-profit proposal isn't something that makes a lot of sense outside of very particular political circumstances.
Depends on the country. In Slovenia you have to collect 40k supporter signatures or have ~1/3 of the parliament support it. And a referendum can only cancel already passed laws, it cannot pass a new law.
The one they had in UK was a non-binding one, which can usually only be brought to a vote by the parliament.
It can but no politician wants the right wing press to go all "WILL OF THE PEOPLE" on them.
It was a non-binding referendum, a glorified opinion poll and that was before we found out about the lying, the financial irregularities and external interference.
Shrugs, I'm resigned to whatever happens happening at this point.
A motion to suspend A50 will be tabled in the next week or so.
Yvette Cooper (Lab) asked the Speaker about it - most likely as a way of tipping off the public - and the Speaker said that if a motion is tabled, he will allow a vote on it.
It's now very unlikely that the UK will be leaving the EU. Only a tiny minority of zealots in Parliament want No Deal. The most likely alternative is a People's Vote and a win for Remain.
bookies odds are at 83% for the uk to remain in the EU past march, and the pound is up following the annoucement. Add to this the fact that the SNP and most remain voting MPs voted against this deal, and I reckon theres a significant likelihood of at least something happening
> Just to be clear, article 50 hasn't been revoked, the UK will still leave the EU with no deal on March 30th.
I don't feel you clarified anything.
Do you mean if article 50 isn't revoked that the UK will leave the EU (true if nothing else happens) or that there are no circumstances under which the UK can remain in the EU?
The House of Commons need to vote to rescind Article 50 before March 30th otherwise the UK will automatically leave the EU with no deal.
There's currently no legislation, implied legislation, promises, or assurances from either the government or opposition to do so.
Essentially until Article 50 is withdrawn, the UK continues to march forward towards hard Brexit.
A successful vote today on Theresa May's deal would have assured a hard Brexit. The vote failing however hasn't resulted in "remain," it has simply placed the UK into an unknown state with automatic hard Brexit still lurking on the horizon.
Revoking article 50 means canceling brexit. They can still do it, but no major party currently supports it.
If they don't revoke it, they have to leave on March 30th. This can happen through some kind of deal with EU (a potential one was negotiated but shot down by todays vote) or without any deal.
Yes, the deal was likely scrapped for the retarded reason that half of its proponents figured the deal wasn’t brexit enough, and saw the opportunity to shoot it down with no care for what to do with the resulting mess.
