You’re not wrong, but doesn’t this describe pretty much every choice that voters are asked to make in a representative democracy? This appeal to what the people truly want over the mandates of the democratic process is considered downright revolutionary in most contexts. And there are many, many areas of society where those two are in deep conflict.
It’s funny how Brexit is the only area where a revolutionary approach is allowed to appear as legitimate, reasonable politics. As Agamben says, the true power of a government is not in enforcing the law, but in enforcing the state of exception.
Brexit is alarming in an immediate sense because many peoples’ livelihoods hang in the balance. But even if things shake out in favor of economic stability, the even more alarming crisis of modern governance will continue to deepen.
I truly hope that you are not from the UK, if so then please do some research. I’ll further assume that you are not trolling.
Sign, no, this would be on a different proposition. Even the hardline Brexiters: Redwood, Rees-Mogg etc. before they ‘won’ the referendum said that there should be 2 stages to any referendum:
Broad decision: in or out.
The terms of the UK’s exit.
We are now, finally, at the point where we know what the latter are. Why is it so unreasonable to ask the question…?
I’m not from the UK, but a few of my coworkers are. They are all “Brexiters”. According to them, the referendum result was “leave”, and it is the government’s job to deliver. Repeating the referendum seams dodgy. They also talk about some EU shenanigans trying to extract a bunch of money from the UK during the whole divorce proceedings… but I don’t pay much attention to that.
(FWIW, I would have probably voted “remain”, had I been a British subject)
The referendum was constitutionally non-binding, and under the circumstances (a small majority to leave, no agreement on whether this meant soft or hard brexit) it made no sense to trigger article 50.
I’m sorry, but this argument is dishonest and disingenuous. It presupposes that the “will of the people” is a fixed thing, and one-time survey of it must be held sacrosanct.
It’s been close to three years since the original referendum. In that time, it’s been shown that there were plenty of irregularities in the electioneering, and that the Leave side lied like a rug. We have heard the experts warning of problems with travel, shipping and transport, and trade, predicting serious economic problems if Brexit goes through. And along these lines, we’ve seen companies moving out of UK and abandoning investment plans, because of the looming threat of Brexit. Furthermore, over the last two years, the British people have seen their government faff around, wasting time and failing to ratify a deal with the EU.
Given all these things, it’s singularly disingenuous to pretend that the original, non-binding Brexit referendum must stand, no matter what. It’s an argument that only the Leave side presents, and that only because they are afraid that a second referendum would have the Remain side win. This is far more hostile to democracy and contemptuous to the “will of the British people” than a second referendum would be!
(Not that there’s any time for a second referendum left, unless the UK govt somehow manages to convince the EU to grant a considerable extension. Which I really doubt, since the UK govt has proven itself both dishonest and incompetent.)
It’s now been explained to you several times why a second referendum wouldn’t be dodgy, even by the terms of the lying greedpigs who promoted Leave on the first ballot. That they’re now lying about that doesn’t change what they said earlier.
A better and more effective use of your time might be to explain this to your co-workers who were gulled by these con artists. Not like it sounds like these rubes will vote any differently if the UK is lucky enough to have another chance at a referendum, but they might be less inclined to deny others the chance to revisit the issue once actual terms are on the table and now that the consequences of crashing out with no deal are more clear.
Prior to the first vote on May’s deal, somebody in the House of Lords suggested that if it was sufficient to poll the electorate once to determine “the will of the people”, why would one even bother conducting general elections again and again every few years, having had one? Right: Because “the will of the people” may actually change based on stuff that happens, and the people might change their mind even on quite important decisions like who should be in charge of the country.
If what the “Brexiters” claim is true and “the people” really want Brexit, they should welcome an opportunity to have this claim vindicated. It is obvious to anyone who has paid attention that the real reason, as LurksNoMore says, is that the Brexiters would almost surely be trounced in a second referendum, which is why there must be no second referendum.
I don’t get the picture. Verhofstadt hasn’t been the prime minister for over a decade. He’s now the liberal leader in the european parliament and not terribly villainous.
I heard there are countries in the world that aren’t a part of the EU, but still have economies, and transport and trade… things one reads on the internets…
Most of those countries, however, have not just deliberately and systematically alienated most of the first-world nations which are geographically close to them and from which they source most of their imports.
And most of them have said that they have no interest in doing those things with the UK if they are out of the EU, which is why it is such a fucking stupid idea.
