If everything were decided by referendum then we would pay no taxes. How anyone can trust to a referendum in a country where the 2 most read newspapers are the Sun and the Mail is beyond me.
I wonder if all the whinging about the validity of a referendum would have surfaced if remain had won?
To answer that you only need to refer to what Nigel Farage said prior to the referendum, when he thought he would lose narrowly, namely that 52%-48% would be an inconclusive result, and 'unfinished business'.
Whatever Farage said or anybody else for that matter, this referendum was actioned by parliament as the preferred way to decide our future with the EU. Everybody should respect the will of the people. End of story. Fortunately all of the candidates for leader and PM agree that Brexit means Brexit.
My first thoughts on this are that the referendum was accepted by and large by all before it was held. On that basis it ought to take a massively good argument to ignore it. Were Parliament to ignore it then it would undermine the credibility of Parliament for the foreseeable future. At no stage was it suggested that the referendum result should be anything other than the conclusive way forward. I would have been very annoyed if Remain had won by a similar majority only for Farage and others to then call for a second referendum. However. The referendum was conceptually deeply flawed in that it omitted substantial groups of people who had a legitimate right to be heard. Given that if the result was "leave" it would reverse 40 years of history - with no possibility of going back. If we invoke Article 50 the exit is no longer in our control. In most General Elections we accept a ruling government that is supported nowadays usually by less than 40% of the electorate - but that CAN be reversed within 5 years. The Government were deliquent not to require at least a 60% majority - or a stipulation that those voting Leave had to consitute over 50% of those eligible to vote. Should the Country be forced to accept the result of a referendum that was proposed by a government with less than 40% of the vote in 2015 - and the ruling Conservative Party that proposed the referendum was itself split down the middle. It would have been perfectly possible to stipulate that if the majority voted Leave but failed to get a 60% majority a second referendum would be held within 10 years. I cannot see the Conservative Government on its own reneging on the referendum result - it would be elecoral suicide. I could see a General Election being called with a party or coalition of parties pledging to annul the referendum result. The General Election result would be an updated mandate on the will of the electorate. Frankly I doubt that will happen.
Everybody was well aware of the rules of the referendum beforehand. It was well discussed in both parliaments and amendments made. The bill was passed with an overwhelming majority of 316 -53 on the terms of the referendum. It would completely undermine the UK parliament to question the will of the people after they have spoken.Thankfully almost nobody in parliament, maybe apart from the S, would have so little regard for democracy to ask for a re-run.
Given that only 38% of those entitled to vote have managed to instigate such a change is, in my view, entirely undemocratic. So the referendum in my book has insufficient validity to change the status quo.
Some thoughts by one of the constitutional experts. The Brexit referendum was deeply flawed because it gave a simple binary choice, stay or remain, without anyone knowing exactly how a leave vote could happen. The reason it was done that way was because you couldn't specify all that would be entailed in leaving. For that reason it cannot be legally binding. But MPs say it is binding, and that creates a problem as the method of leaving was not on the ballot paper. There will be a change of government policy sometime in the autumn, something that people have not voted for. It looks as if there will be a more hardline, right wing government, which if that had been on the ballot paper would have probably given a different result. So what does this mean? It is perfectly reasonable for MPs to say that they do not reject the result of the referendum, but they do reject the terms of leaving.
Welcome back to the battlefield Leo.....you have been missed. You know that I have been an advocate of direct democracy in the past, but this would be in a very different society to the one we have now. I was one of those who was directly disenfranchised and so am not rquired to accept the result. It is not just the UK. that is affected by this, but rather that every holder of a British Passport everywhere could wake up with a different legal status to the one they have now - is it legitimate that they had no say in this ? We live in a representative democracy, and the referendum had no legal binding to it - it can be treated as only advisory without any loss to our democratic credibility whatsoever. Judges the World over send juries back to reconsider their verdicts - do we call that undemocratic ? My feelings are that our democracy would be damaged much more if MPs voted in Parliament on any other grounds rather than those they think are best for the country. Would parliament override the will of the people in this ? My feeling is that they want to but are waiting for a pretext to do it - changes in circumstances, evidence of a change of opinion in the country, challenges to the legal validity of the vote itself, alarm bells from the city of London, perhaps even the obvious reluctance of the Queen to countersign Brexit (which she must). And lastly Scotland - the replacement of EU. law in Scotland can only be done with the agreement of the Scottish Parliament - to override this means abolishing the devolution act, which, if done, would almost certainly lead to the break up of the UK. My guess is that the actual chances of Brexit are still about 50-50, and even if the wrong 50 comes up then all of the negotiations and changes in law necessitated by Article 50 would need to be voted singly by parliament (with it's 450-150 majority of remainers). What would come out in the end would be a very watered down Brexit, leaving us in a similar position to Switzerland - very far short of what many of the Brexiters wanted.
Constitutional experts must realise the only legal body that could challenge the validity of the referendum result is parliament itself. It will not because any challenge would undermine its original decision to have one.
Wrong SH. as ever. The Law Lords can challenge this - Parliament is the maker of laws not the administrator of them.
You really do not read what is said do you SH. It does not say anything about the validity of the Referendum. It is talking about rejecting the terms of leaving which is a very different thing.
The terms of leaving the EU is purely a decision for the government of the day. Nobody can pretend that any vote in parliament will reverse the decision to leave the EU.
The terms of leaving are for a government of the day to negotiate, but they they cannot be certain that both chambers will think them fair and reasonable, and they will have to be voted on. With no majority in either chamber for leaving there can be no certainty what will happen. Seeing as the whole process will not even begin for months, the country will continue to float in the sea of doubt.
