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shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#16New Post! Sep 04, 2019 @ 16:38:21
@nooneinparticular Said

and that was one of it's many flaws as a survey.


survey: an examination of opinions, behaviour, etc., made by asking people questions.

referendum: a vote in which all eligible people in a country or an area are asked to give their opinion about or decide an important political or social question.

There are important differences btw a survey and a referendum. On June 23, 2016 eligible voters in the UK took part in a referendum, it wasn't a survey (even if that's how many pollies, and remainers in general, are treating it).
nooneinparticular On March 16, 2023




, Hawaii
#17New Post! Sep 04, 2019 @ 19:24:24
@shadowen Said

survey: an examination of opinions, behaviour, etc., made by asking people questions.

referendum: a vote in which all eligible people in a country or an area are asked to give their opinion about or decide an important political or social question.

There are important differences btw a survey and a referendum. On June 23, 2016 eligible voters in the UK took part in a referendum, it wasn't a survey (even if that's how many pollies, and remainers in general, are treating it).


Whatever you wish to call it, it doesn't change the fact that the question was worded poorly.
nooneinparticular On March 16, 2023




, Hawaii
#18New Post! Sep 04, 2019 @ 19:44:31
@shadowen Said

The electorate were asked "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union? ". There were NO conditions mentioned on the ballot paper, therefore the electorate voted to leave UNCONDITIONALLY.


Is that how referendums work in Australia and the UK? That if no provisos not specifically mentioned on the ballot are given, then the course of action voted on must be pursued, to complete fruition based on the interpretation of a select group of people? Because May's deal, as s***ty as you and others think it is, did actually technically fulfill it. Under her plan they would leave the Union. But that was unacceptable and so here the UK is now.

Quote:

The fact is that many on the remain campaign (including the PM and pollies such as Hammond and Osborne) stated publicly on a number of occasions that IF the remain campaign was successful the Government would trigger article 50. They said that doing so would see the UK head down a one way street to exiting the EU with or WITHOUT a deal. Indeed the remain campaign used the prospect of the UK possibly leaving WITHOUT a deal to try and scare people into not voting leave.

Furthermore, Parliament overwhelmingly voted to give the PM the authority to trigger article 50 knowing that the effective default position would then be that the UK would leave WITHOUT a deal (unless one could be agreed upon within 2 years).


Which doesn't at all change the facts of the matter. If politicians could will reality into existence as they see fit with just their words, this world would be a very different place. Politicians cannot will the laws to change just based on their words alone. They cannot make it so that the false things they say become true things. That is called lying and I shouldn't have to explain the concept that politicians lie and should not be trusted blindly on their word.
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#19New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 13:55:00
@nooneinparticular Said

Is that how referendums work in Australia and the UK? That if no provisos not specifically mentioned on the ballot are given, then the course of action voted on must be pursued, to complete fruition based on the interpretation of a select group of people?


The way referendums are meant to work is that Parliament ask the people what action the voters would like them to take. The electorate then vote and the Parliament then honour the wishes of the voters. At the end of the day politicians are supposed to serve the people.

Specific to Brexit the referendum question was very clear and unambiguous. Voters were asked "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?". The is no need, nor even room, for interpretation. The question asked is very simple, very clear, and Parliament should do as they stated they would and honour the wishes of the people..
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#20New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 14:09:17
@nooneinparticular Said

Whatever you wish to call it, it doesn't change the fact that the question was worded poorly.


Why was it poorly worded? The wording was necessarily simple and unambiguous. People were asked "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?". That is an entirely appropriate question. You couldn't add should the UK only leave with a deal as people had absolutely no way of knowing what any deal might look like. Plus voting to leave with a deal commits you to accepting any deal regardless of how bad it might be. Now of course the best chances of getting an acceptable deal is to be prepared to leave without one. When you go into negotiations with the EU and you tell them you won't leave without a deal you end up with the sort of rubbish that May came back with. You also can't ask should the country leave without a deal as this would rule out any attempt to strike a deal.

The issue was the UK's relationship with the EU. The question succinctly addresses this issue. Indeed, the only people I have heard who have a problem with the wording of the referendum are remainers who can't accept the result of the vote.
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#21New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 14:31:23
And so for yonks Jeremy Corbyn has been calling for a snap election. Now, when given the opportunity to have one, he opposes it. I can't actually think of a time when the opposition party have acted to stop an election being called.
mrmhead On about 16 hours ago




NE, Ohio
#22New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 16:08:10
@shadowen Said

And so for yonks Jeremy Corbyn has been calling for a snap election. Now, when given the opportunity to have one, he opposes it. I can't actually think of a time when the opposition party have acted to stop an election being called.


So would a "Snap Election" possibly change the party in power, and also possibly result in Boris losing his job as PM?
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#23New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 16:23:23
@mrmhead Said

So would a "Snap Election" possibly change the party in power, and also possibly result in Boris losing his job as PM?

It could. The way things stand at the moment though Parliament is completely dysfunctional. The 'rebel alliance' hold the power whilst the Government has been effectively neutered. The Parliament should have respected the wishes of the people but they havent and wont. The PM is a lame duck and can't now negotiate with the EU who must be feeling like the cat that got the cream.

There is now a very clear choice btw the Tories and Brexit party on the one hand and Labour and remaining parties on the other. So Parliament should agree to a snap election immediately and let the people decide once again. Labour however is talking about delaying any election until after the Rebel No Deal bill has been passed.
nooneinparticular On March 16, 2023




, Hawaii
#24New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 17:46:08
@shadowen Said

It could. The way things stand at the moment though Parliament is completely dysfunctional. The 'rebel alliance' hold the power whilst the Government has been effectively neutered. The Parliament should have respected the wishes of the people but they havent and wont. The PM is a lame duck and can't now negotiate with the EU who must be feeling like the cat that got the cream.

There is now a very clear choice btw the Tories and Brexit party on the one hand and Labour and remaining parties on the other. So Parliament should agree to a snap election immediately and let the people decide once again. Labour however is talking about delaying any election until after the Rebel No Deal bill has been passed.


From what I could tell, it looked like Labors stated reason for opposing was that they were afraid that a snap election would be held either very close or even after the UK is automatically going to hit their 'no deal' time limit of October 31. According to this , since the Prime Minister (in practice) sets the date for the snap election, then conceivably Johnson could in theory set or change the date of the election to very close or after the 31st of October, in which case the issue of Brexit itself becomes a non-starter.

According to my previous link, Parliament has basically one option at this point if they want to actually call an early election and this isn't simply a political way to refuse one. They must pass a law, in less than a month, that states when the hypothetical snap election would be held.

Either way though, I feel like Johnson should have called a snap election earlier than this, if he himself was serious about 'giving the people a choice' to begin with and this isn't itself a calculation by Johnson to waste the time and energy of Parliament. As it stands, even if you were to call a snap election today, there are only 2 months left until the UK automatically falls out of the EU.
nooneinparticular On March 16, 2023




, Hawaii
#25New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 17:56:07
@shadowen Said

The way referendums are meant to work is that Parliament ask the people what action the voters would like them to take. The electorate then vote and the Parliament then honour the wishes of the voters. At the end of the day politicians are supposed to serve the people.

Specific to Brexit the referendum question was very clear and unambiguous. Voters were asked "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?". The is no need, nor even room, for interpretation. The question asked is very simple, very clear, and Parliament should do as they stated they would and honour the wishes of the people..


I wasn't aware that "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?" automatically meant 'should the UK leave the single marketplace and crash out of the EU?' Like I said earlier, May's deal fulfilled the question asked in the referendum. The fact that it was hated does not change that.
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#26New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 18:40:05
@nooneinparticular Said

I wasn't aware that "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?" automatically meant 'should the UK leave the single marketplace and crash out of the EU?'


It was always made very clear that to vote Leave meant that the UK would leave the single market. Leave meant leave. And the UK will not crash out of the EU. "Crashing out" is emotive remainer speak. If the UK left without a deal they would leave the EU and trade under WTO terms.
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#27New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 18:49:41
@nooneinparticular Said

I feel like Johnson should have called a snap election earlier than this, if he himself was serious about 'giving the people a choice' to begin with


The people had already been given a choice in 2016.

He shouldn't have had to call for a snap election. The people were told in 2016 that the referendum result would be respected. It hasn't been. Politicians voted to trigger article 50 that effectively states that the UK would leave 2 years after the date it was triggered with or WITHOUT a deal. So BOTH the people and Parliament (who are meant to serve the people) had voted for the UK to leave the EU with or without a deal. Why therefore did he have to go to the polls when he already had a mandate to take the UK out of the EU...with or without a deal.
nooneinparticular On March 16, 2023




, Hawaii
#28New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 18:56:18
@shadowen Said

Why was it poorly worded? The wording was necessarily simple and unambiguous. People were asked "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?". That is an entirely appropriate question. You couldn't add should the UK only leave with a deal as people had absolutely no way of knowing what any deal might look like. Plus voting to leave with a deal commits you to accepting any deal regardless of how bad it might be. Now of course the best chances of getting an acceptable deal is to be prepared to leave without one. When you go into negotiations with the EU and you tell them you won't leave without a deal you end up with the sort of rubbish that May came back with. You also can't ask should the country leave without a deal as this would rule out any attempt to strike a deal.

The issue was the UK's relationship with the EU. The question succinctly addresses this issue. Indeed, the only people I have heard who have a problem with the wording of the referendum are remainers who can't accept the result of the vote.


The question was poorly worded because it left the door open to so many questions and paths it was ludicrous. This is why, when we have a direct people's vote to something in this country, we vote on proposed bills and laws, not on a nebulous, amorphous change. "Do you want x law to become law?" "Do you want y proposal to be brought forth in Congress?" The UK should have first decided where they want to go and what they want to do, and then voted on it. They needed a plan to vote on, and then as the situation changed or developed, consult the populace as need be when in deadlock.

Apparently, however, people only wanted to vote on something once. They willingly abdicated their own voices at every step of the process after the first one and had faith in the system that everything would work out in the end, and look where that got them. A hung parliament still quibbling over what type of Brexit should be had 4 years after the fact.

Democracy is a process. It starts at a vote. It doesn't end there. Especially in situations like this, where the vote itself was so close. As much as the leavers would have liked to pretend otherwise, the fact that the vote was so close indicated that the UK was split on this issue, and that Parliament would likewise be split on this issue. This is one of the reasons why I advocated for some type of second vote or public input into the process. Lots of different ideas were floated during the campaign by all the different leave camps, and they needed to coalesce around a core of ideas. The easiest way to do that would be with another public vote, either by general election or referendum. But that was dismissed out of hand 'for the purity of Democracy' and now they have this mess.
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#29New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 19:03:15
One of the biggest problems with Parliament over the past few months has involved politicians being elected as members of a particular party with a particular manifesto and then leaving the party they represented at the election, joining another party or group, and not asking for a by election.

Anyway, come Monday the Rebel Bill prohibiting BJ from taking the UK out of the EU without a deal could well be law. If it is then there would be no excuse whatsoever for Labour not to back a snap election. The election would most likely be held on the 15th. The people will then get yet another chance to tell Parliament what they want them to do...
nooneinparticular On March 16, 2023




, Hawaii
#30New Post! Sep 05, 2019 @ 19:28:14
@shadowen Said

The people had already been given a choice in 2016.

He shouldn't have had to call for a snap election. The people were told in 2016 that the referendum result would be respected. It hasn't been. Politicians voted to trigger article 50 that effectively states that the UK would leave 2 years after the date it was triggered with or WITHOUT a deal. So BOTH the people and Parliament (who are meant to serve the people) had voted for the UK to leave the EU with or without a deal. Why therefore did he have to go to the polls when he already had a mandate to take the UK out of the EU...with or without a deal.


People shouldn't 'have' to do a lot of things, but reality has a way of not giving a flying fig about people's ideas about what they should or shouldn't 'have' to do. The reality of the matter was that even though Leave won in the end, the vote was so close and there were so many versions of Brexit that they needed to come together as one in order to pass anything. Instead everyone decided to fight for their own version of Brexit, because there was no ability to gauge what the public will was and the populace did not want to have to vote on anything anymore.

As you said yourself, 'the question was simple and got to the point'. Of course the flip side of having a 'simple' question is that when complications arise, the simple question ceases to hold value. The question was 'necessarily vague in order to not give the negotiation strategy away'. Of course the flip side of that is that people end up not voting on the negotiation strategy or any deals substance, so it falls to the discretion of the negotiators. Hence you get May's Deal. Every piece of political ground the public gives up comes at a cost.

Of course instead of learning this, Leavers seem to have largely decided to blame the EU, the majority Tory Government, and especially the minority government and 'remoaners' for their own failings. Now what was that thing leavers said about labeling them as racists would allow them to 'keep winning', again? Maybe they should take a page out of their own book and stop blaming others for all their problems.
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