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Herzlos wrote:
Yeah, my quoting has gone to hell.

Stranger83 wrote:

It has, but Parliament did say they would enact the will of the people, regardless of if it is binding or not

I'm always keen to note the distinction between what the government says, and what the government does. I wouldn't trust Cameron to tell me if it was raining outside.
Government said "We'll do the thing", Government does "make the thing optional".

Stranger83 wrote:

I fully agree, but you’re the one who setup the scenario not me

Agreed, it was a bad example on my part. Apologies.

Stranger83 wrote:

And what other information would that be? I think it was all covered pretty well in the referendum, people made the choice that leaving the EU was worth the risk to the economy. And again, you idea seems to be that 51.8% isn’t a clear mandate so we should go with the 48.2% option instead- I think you’d find that that idea is the one that would be laughed out of business.

We could always try asking the experts, or trying to find out what's in the best interests of the 29% that didn't vote for whatever reason.

I have never said we should go with the 48.2% option. I've said that 51.8% isn't statistically significant enough to gain any information for it, and we need to find more information in order to make a rational decision. Of course, we should have been clear on the outcome requirements before we started.

Being somewhat contradictory, I'd say that with no additional information, 51.8% isn't a high enough bar for making such a massive change, just because of the logistics of the change, in which case I would recommend the 48.2% option.

Stranger83 wrote:

A slightly higher bar? We had a manifesto commitment as part of the general election, then a vote in parliament, then a free election on the process with everyone knowing what the rules would be, how high a bar would you like it to be?

I'd like the result to be based on more than a statistically irrelevant difference. Either a larger margin, or some further debate from the representatives. Having a significant majority in the referendum OR an insignificant majority in the referendum followed by parliamentary approval would be sufficient for me. Currently we've got an insignificant referendum majority and no parliamentary discussion about even what the details are going to be.

Edit: Fething quotes.

So we should only ever have a change in the way we are governed if we have a ‘significant majority’ vote for it?

So lets say a significant majority if 60%, by this logic I think we are pretty clear that we’ll be stuck with a Tory government until the ends of time because the chance of 60% of the population coming together and voting for the same (but different to tory) government is highly unlikely. It’s even less likely if you start to include those who don’t vote into the calculation of that 60%.

I do get your point that 51.2% is ‘with the margin of error’ but you also need to look at the size of the sample – it was circa 33 million people asked, the margin of error goes down with the proportion of people asked.

Again, I do get your point, I just don’t think that the correct solution to ‘the mandate to leave isn’t clear as it was 51.8%’ is ‘so lets go with the 48.2% option instead’

Yes, as part of the negotiation we need to keep in mind that there is a significant portion of the population that voted to stay, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore the wishes of the larger portion who voted to leave.

As for experts, that comment does make me laugh – because they do SOOO well at predicting the outcome of things in recent history….

A major constitutional change is usually required to meet a minimum threshold of support to enact.

Take the USA, for example. In order to even propose an amendment to the constitution the support of two thirds of both the house of representatives and the senate is required. To then ratify that amendment into the constitution requires three quarters of the state legislatures to vote to ratify it.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

The public want out of the EU, but Parliament wants in...

Not wanting to get too far off into the weeds, but it's hard to confidently declare the public wants out of the EU when the referrendum voted "leave" by less than the margin of error of almost all polls in a straight "majority wins" vote, meaning if you held the vote the day before or day after, or had less than 1% of the population woken up on the other side of the bed that morning, its entirely possible that a different result would have been obtained, and that the public is not in anything near concensus on the matter, with an appalling amount of misleading and misinformation on both sides. It would appear that in such a situation, leaving it up to the elected representatives or "political elite", is exactly what those people are there to do, at least to some degree.

Not that I want to disagree too much with the assertion that the upper echelons of politics appear to be disconnected from larger society, they are (and not just in the UK), but with how close the voting was and how confused the issue has become, its hard to cast the situation as one where there is a clear and unambiguous public mandate supported by a clear and undeniable majority of the population vs a political elite united in diametric opposition in defiance of the clear will of the people.

I'm not a Remain voter, and if people voted Remain because they believe in the EU and the European project, then fair enough. I don't agree, but I can respect that.

However, there is a problem with our MPs. Many of them, like Nick Clegg (a leading Remain supporter) used to work for the EU, and he probably gets a pension out of it.

Some of our MPs are landowners and benefit from EU farming subsidies, often to the tune of thousands of pounds.

I'm not saying they're corrupt, but in my mind, there is a seed of doubt there.

Are they supporting Remain because they believe in the EU or are they more worried about the money they've had or are still getting from the EU?

You can't blame the British public for wondering...


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 A Town Called Malus wrote:
A major constitutional change is usually required to meet a minimum threshold of support to enact.

Take the USA, for example. In order to even propose an amendment to the constitution the support of two thirds of both the house of representatives and the senate is required. To then ratify that amendment into the constitution requires three quarters of the state legislatures to vote to ratify it.

They have a proper written constitution, though. We on the other hand have this 'unwritten' constitution nonsense.

Stranger83 wrote:


So we should only ever have a change in the way we are governed if we have a ‘significant majority’ vote for it?

Statistically significant. I.e. more than the margin of error.

So lets say a significant majority if 60%, by this logic I think we are pretty clear that we’ll be stuck with a Tory government until the ends of time because the chance of 60% of the population coming together and voting for the same (but different to tory) government is highly unlikely. It’s even less likely if you start to include those who don’t vote into the calculation of that 60%.

I wouldn't be against, say, a 55% majority for government, even if that requires a coalition. As I understand it, they need to get a majority (more MP's than everyone else, by at least 1) which even if a representative parliament effectively means the dominant party is the winner. Though to be fair, I think we need reform there.

I do get your point that 51.2% is ‘with the margin of error’ but you also need to look at the size of the sample – it was circa 33 million people asked, the margin of error goes down with the proportion of people asked.

Yeah, I'm not suggesting an error margin of +/- 30% or anything, +/- 5% might be sufficient.

I just don’t think that the correct solution to ‘the mandate to leave isn’t clear as it was 51.8%’ is ‘so lets go with the 48.2% option instead’

Neither do I.

Yes, as part of the negotiation we need to keep in mind that there is a significant portion of the population that voted to stay, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore the wishes of the larger portion who voted to leave.

No, but we also shouldn't ignore the portion who voted to stay, or couldn't vote, because the Leave vote has a statistically insignificantly higher number.

As for experts, that comment does make me laugh – because they do SOOO well at predicting the outcome of things in recent history….

They do (on the whole) a lot better than the non-experts. They should at least be consulted, and ignored if needs be.

Herzlos wrote:
The result was 51.8% leave, so it'd take a 0.96% swing to change the result to majority remain. It's about as close to a tie as you can get; bad weather could change the vote by that much.

If it was 60/40 leave I'd agree that it's a fair mandate, but not 52/48, since we still need to include those that can't vote.

We're all democrats here, and we all knew that 50% + 1 vote was the winning line. If Remain had won by that, I wouldn't be happy, but I would bloody well support it and resist talk of a rerun.

All this talk about mandate and narrow margins is nonsense in my book.

You may have been happy with 50% + 1 but I suspect a lot of people wouldn't be, on either side. Farage (who for all intents and purposes was the figurehead of the Leave campaign) made it pretty clear he'd be demanding a do-over if it was a close Remain.

Where that threshold is I don't know, but there's no denying that if it was a clear majority one way or the other, there would be a lot less complaint coming from the losing side.

Because Nigel Farage is the be-all and end-all?

This just seems like so much pointless flailing around at this juncture.

FPTP is the way our system works. If 3 people vote and two go one way that person wins.

It was a very close vote, but the leave size won. There is no point talking about the people who didn't vote, because they couldn't be bothered to find 20 minutes in the whole day they had to get to the voting station. Or even postal vote. Sure, some people might have been unable too. But surely several million people haven't got an excuse.

 welshhoppo wrote:
FPTP is the way our system works. If 3 people vote and two go one way that person wins.

We weren't using FPTP for the Referendum. It was just a straight up highest vote count wins which everyone knew and nobody seemed to hold issue with before the referendum. Perhaps there should have been a minimum % to win by but there wasn't (plus that could be argued as unfair unless you'll have revotes until that margin is reached by one side or the other).

Something like 18 million people weren't allowed to vote for some reason or other (14 million under 18s, 4 million foreigners/expats).

Herzlos wrote:
Something like 18 million people weren't allowed to vote for some reason or other (14 million under 18s, 4 million foreigners/expats).

Under 18 are not allowed to vote in anything, we deem them children. Bringing this up is akin to me claiming my dog cannot vote - or the recently deceased, or what about the people of Brazil - they never get to vote in the UK but they didn't get a say in the referendum either!!! If we're going to start complaining about people who were not allowed to vote the number is something closer to 7billion (I forget what the population of the world is right now)

Again I point out that the rules were agreed by parliament, where the majority of MPs were on the remain side so they can hardly claim that the rules were unbalanced against them.


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Herzlos wrote:
You may have been happy with 50% + 1 but I suspect a lot of people wouldn't be, on either side. Farage (who for all intents and purposes was the figurehead of the Leave campaign) made it pretty clear he'd be demanding a do-over if it was a close Remain.

Where that threshold is I don't know, but there's no denying that if it was a clear majority one way or the other, there would be a lot less complaint coming from the losing side.

You may be unhappy, but them were the rules. The time to change the rules if you don't like them is before the vote - not after, that just makes you sound like a spoilt child who can't take the fact you lost.

Edit to add:

Also, to put this claim in perspective, there was a government petition started by a guy who figured leave would lose saying if the vote was not over 60% it should be re held. The petition got circa 5/600 votes. Once the results came in it surged to hundreds of thousands (I forget the final number of it) from the leave camp.

On this evidence it does indeed seem that these claims are nothing to do with ‘it should be a clear mandate’ and everything to do with ‘we lost and need an excuse to overturn it’. It also puts paid to the idea that leave would have been clamouring for a revote if it had been narrow, because nobody was signing it when that looked to be the case

Sure, children cannot vote, because most presumably don't have an understanding level sufficient to voting, but should their interests be entirely ignored because they were born too late?

But yeah, we're largely going round in circles and it's a done thing, Leave > Remain, so we're leaving.

Now what?

Herzlos wrote:
Sure, children cannot vote, because most presumably don't have an understanding level sufficient to voting, but should their interests be entirely ignored because they were born too late?

But yeah, we're largely going round in circles and it's a done thing, Leave > Remain, so we're leaving.

Now what?

I voted leave BECAUSE of my children, I don’t want them to grow up in the world that the EU is attempting to create. To claim that being in the EU is guaranteed to be better for anyone under the age of 18 is simply wrong, you have no way of knowing that and it’s just your opinion. Unless your claiming that everyone who voted out is childless or doesn’t care one jot about their children I find that comment pretty disrespectful in all honesty.

It sadly however is the kind of thing I’ve come to expect from remainers – they are always right and the rest of us are always wrong.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/criminal-records-handed-to-people-who-dont-clean-their-windows-a3383681.html

Community Protection Notices (CPNs) have been issued thousands of times since their introduction by then Home Secretary Theresa May in 2014, a survey has revealed.

They can be used for people playing music or watching television too loudly, drinking alcohol in public and even crying noisily.

what could possibly go wrong here then eh ?


http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2016-2017/0087/amend/digital_rm_rep_1101.pdf

Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause gives a power to the age-verification regulator to require internet service
providers to block pornography websites that do not offer age-verification.

whole bill is, essentially, unworkable.

Stranger83 wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
Sure, children cannot vote, because most presumably don't have an understanding level sufficient to voting, but should their interests be entirely ignored because they were born too late?

But yeah, we're largely going round in circles and it's a done thing, Leave > Remain, so we're leaving.

Now what?

I voted leave BECAUSE of my children, I don’t want them to grow up in the world that the EU is attempting to create. To claim that being in the EU is guaranteed to be better for anyone under the age of 18 is simply wrong, you have no way of knowing that and it’s just your opinion. Unless your claiming that everyone who voted out is childless or doesn’t care one jot about their children I find that comment pretty disrespectful in all honesty.

It sadly however is the kind of thing I’ve come to expect from remainers – they are always right and the rest of us are always wrong.

I didn't say that Remain is better for kids, just that their needs are entirely uncounted, and they are going to be more affected by the changes.

The driving force behind me voting Remain was because of my children. I want them to be able to get the most out the world, and that involves the EU.


I suspect a lot of this is down to political divide, we're in different countries with different environments and interactions with the EU, which are mashed together under a one-size-fits-all policy which doesn't seem to fit either that well.

I don't known what you're arguing for. Are you saying children should have a vote too? Its the responsibility of parents to represent their children's interests, and should vote accordingly.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I don't known what you're arguing for. Are you saying children should have a vote too? Its the responsibility of parents to represent their children's interests, and should vote accordingly.

What they should do does not always equate to what they actually do.

If that were the case then there would be no need for child protection services and other things like that.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I don't known what you're arguing for. Are you saying children should have a vote too? Its the responsibility of parents to represent their children's interests, and should vote accordingly.

I'm saying that parliaments decision on what to do should factor in more than just the votes of the people who voted, because it's an incomplete picture, especially when the vote is as close as it is.

Peoples needs shouldn't be completely ignored because they are unable to vote.

Except they aren't ignored. Their parents vote on their behalf. The majority of people vote for what is best for their family.

 welshhoppo wrote:
Except they aren't ignored. Their parents vote on their behalf. The majority of people vote for what is best for their family.

Citation needed. Also, what people believe is best does not always correspond to what is actually best.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Except they aren't ignored. Their parents vote on their behalf. The majority of people vote for what is best for their family.

Citation needed.

Citation needed? Hardly. He's simply saying that the average person votes out of selfish self interest, and by extension their family's self interest.

Also, what people believe is best does not always correspond to what is actually best.

Oh, so its the "We know whats best for you even if it goes against your wishes" argument?

Disclaimer: I'm pro-EU.

I'm a bit flabbergasted as to how a referendum that essentially asked "do you want change or the status quo?" even happened in the first place. It's not possible to answer the question of whether the UK should remain in the EU or not without defining what "leaving the EU" actually is. We now know that a majority of the votes cast favoured "leave". We still haven got the foggiest about what that means though. Figuring out what leaving would actually entail should have been done before the referendum, and since it wasn't Britain is now toying with the economic futures of far more people than just your own population. "Irresponsible" is fething generous.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Disclaimer: I'm pro-EU.

I'm a bit flabbergasted as to how a referendum that essentially asked "do you want change or the status quo?" even happened in the first place. It's not possible to answer the question of whether the UK should remain in the EU or not without defining what "leaving the EU" actually is. We now know that a majority of the votes cast favoured "leave". We still haven got the foggiest about what that means though. Figuring out what leaving would actually entail should have been done before the referendum, and since it wasn't Britain is now toying with the economic futures of far more people than just your own population. "Irresponsible" is fething generous.

Not having a go at you, but I don;t get what you're saying. The question was crystal clear to me: do you want to be in the EU or do you want to leave the EU?

It's people like Clegg and Miliband that muddied the waters with talk of 'soft' BREXIT and 'hard' BREXIT.

I'm not attacking Remain voters on Dakka, but it's clear to me that there is a faction of the Remain side who are hell bent on either keeping us in, or making sure we end up half out!

But these are old arguments, and I'm not going there again.

I voted to leave, the country voted to leave, and IMO, leave means leaving the EU body and soul. YMMV.

Canada just signed a trade deal with the EU and to the best of my knowledge, it doesn't include free movement of people.

If Canada can do it with the EU, then so can Britain.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Disclaimer: I'm pro-EU.

I'm a bit flabbergasted as to how a referendum that essentially asked "do you want change or the status quo?" even happened in the first place. It's not possible to answer the question of whether the UK should remain in the EU or not without defining what "leaving the EU" actually is. We now know that a majority of the votes cast favoured "leave". We still haven got the foggiest about what that means though. Figuring out what leaving would actually entail should have been done before the referendum, and since it wasn't Britain is now toying with the economic futures of far more people than just your own population. "Irresponsible" is fething generous.

You can thank David Cameron for that.

We had a Pro-EU Government and a Prime Minister who declared long before the referendum that he would campaign to stay regardless, which undermined our negotiating position as he essentially called our own bluff. The EU never took him seriously because they believed it was an empty threat. His Government never planned for a Brexit or made an effort to define what form Brexit would take, because they didn't want Brexit. They thought the result would be a foregone conclusion, and used the referendum to ambush the Euro-sceptic wing of the Tory party and fend off UKIP, which obviously backfired.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Not having a go at you, but I don;t get what you're saying. The question was crystal clear to me: do you want to be in the EU or do you want to leave the EU?

And what does "leave the EU" actually mean? Norway model? WTO? Pretending they just don't exist?

You seem to want a Hard Brexit, but even then, what's the extent?

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Disclaimer: I'm pro-EU.

I'm a bit flabbergasted as to how a referendum that essentially asked "do you want change or the status quo?" even happened in the first place. It's not possible to answer the question of whether the UK should remain in the EU or not without defining what "leaving the EU" actually is. We now know that a majority of the votes cast favoured "leave". We still haven got the foggiest about what that means though. Figuring out what leaving would actually entail should have been done before the referendum, and since it wasn't Britain is now toying with the economic futures of far more people than just your own population. "Irresponsible" is fething generous.

You can thank David Cameron for that.

We had a Pro-EU Government and a Prime Minister who declared long before the referendum that he would campaign to stay regardless, which undermined our negotiating position as he essentially called our own bluff. The EU never took him seriously because they believed it was an empty threat. His Government never planned for a Brexit or made an effort to define what form Brexit would take, because they didn't want Brexit. They thought the result would be a foregone conclusion, and used the referendum to ambush the Euro-sceptic wing of the Tory party and fend off UKIP, which obviously backfired.

Why would it be up to the self admitted Pro-EU Government anyway? Their plan is to stay in the EU.

Why didn't the Euro-sceptics come up with a plan? Other than thinking the result would be a foregone conclusion and if it was close some of them where going to complain until they got another referendum (Farage).
They've had 40 years of moaning about Europe, surely they could have got something together in that time?

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:

Why would it be up to the self admitted Pro-EU Government anyway? Their plan is to stay in the EU.

Because THEY were the ones who decided to call a Referendum and should have come up with a Plan B in case we voted to Leave.

Why didn't the Euro-sceptics come up with a plan?

Because they weren't a single, united party. Euroscepticism is cross-partisan, there are Labour Eurosceptics, Tory Eurosceptics, UKIP Eurosceptics (and even SNP Eurosceptics. I'm looking at you Do I Not Like That ). That means many competing visions for Brexit, with no leading figurehead to unite everyone into a singlecohesive movement. Instead of one plan, you had several plans.

It is/was rather difficult to come up with a plan for Brexit when you're just a backbencher, subject to the Party Whip of your Pro EU party leadership.

You're effectively blaming individual disunited backbench MP's across countless parliamentary parties for failing to come up with a cohesive policy. I mean seriously, do you even understand what you're saying? You really expected Labour, Tory, SNP and UKIP backbenchers to work together? British MP's can't even work and cooperate with their own parties.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Except they aren't ignored. Their parents vote on their behalf. The majority of people vote for what is best for their family.

Citation needed. Also, what people believe is best does not always correspond to what is actually best.

That's their problem. I said people tend to vote for what is best for them, and by extension their family. Whether they are correct isn't important. What is is why they think they are correct. The majority voted to leave because they thought that was best, are they right? Who knows. The ones who voted to stay also voted what they thought was right. We're they right? Well we don't know either.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:

Why would it be up to the self admitted Pro-EU Government anyway? Their plan is to stay in the EU.

Because THEY were the ones who decided to call a Referendum and should have come up with a Plan B in case we voted to Leave.

Why didn't the Euro-sceptics come up with a plan?

Because they weren't a single, united party. Euroscepticism is cross-partisan, there are Labour Eurosceptics, Tory Eurosceptics, UKIP Eurosceptics (and even SNP Eurosceptics. I'm looking at you Do I Not Like That ). That means many competing visions for Brexit, with no leading figurehead to unite everyone into a singlecohesive movement. Instead of one plan, you had several plans.

It is/was rather difficult to come up with a plan for Brexit when you're just a backbencher, subject to the Party Whip of your Pro EU party leadership.

You're effectively blaming individual disunited backbench MP's across countless parliamentary parties for failing to come up with a cohesive policy. I mean seriously, do you even understand what you're saying? You really expected Labour, Tory, SNP and UKIP backbenchers to work together? British MP's can't even work and cooperate with their own parties.

Maybe they should have banded together in some kind of cross party leave campaign, then used that to come up with a plan.

That means many competing visions for Brexit, with no leading figurehead to unite everyone into a singlecohesive movement. Instead of one plan, you had several plans.

As far as i can tell, there wasn't a single plan between them.