One moment, a non vote can be interpreted as saying 'I don't want to change anything', and is seen as such in some countries at referendums where they say the vote of 50% of the entire electorate is needed in oder to change legislation. It is very dangerous to combine representative democracy with direct democracy in a country which is not used to it.
The only flaws in your argument H are the contentions that a) Labour are unelectable and b) UKIP will be stronger. The two likely candidates to take over from Farage are Nuttall and Coburn - both of whom are more than capable of taking UKIP down the obscurity path, and pretty damned quick too. As for Labour, IMO there's nothing wrong with them that a little deselection won't fix.
The abstainers obviously did not want to 'not change anything' or else they would have voted remain. The referendum was talked about for years, debated thoroughly in parliament, amended by the Lords then voted for with a large majority. There is no wriggle room to challenge the result. Discussing the terms of Brexit is a completely different subject.
As my Swiss friend who I had a very pleasing day with today, said, a referendum is purely a snapshot of how people feel on one particular day. Having had countless numbers of them, she is well worth listening to. With safeguards in place to prevent results that split the country, they will hold another unless the result shows a clear majority to see if there is a similar result, and usually it turns out differently. As more information is usually available for the second one, people start to see that their gut reaction is questionable. She cannot believe that now with the leaders of the Brexit campaign running away and changing their tune so quickly, that the UK could carry on with this madness, leading towards years of trying to get the economy onto an even keel.
The only reason by Brexiters are telling us to 'get on with life and accept the result' is that they know they'd automatically lose the next referendum by a serious margin. The whole thing is based on lies and fear, the main engineers of it have jumped ship, the economy is suffering and no one can guess how bad things will get. As usual, and as mentioned several times on this thread, if the result was the other way round I refuse to believe the usual suspects would have 'got on with life and accepted the result'...
Fully agree H. The Brexit vote was a massive gamble by Cameron to keep UKIP at bay for a while. He thought he would include this in the Tory manifesto and keep Brexit Tories onside and then expected ta vote to Remain to carry. He gambled one too many times. The Tories have to see it through as they have backed themselves into a corner of their own making. As much as Cologne and the others try and argue that the vote can be ignored, it will not.
It would seem that some groups could not be bothered at all. Despite the calls for younger voters to have a "more important" vote, more than 65% of the 18-25 age group could not be bothered to even turn up.
A raft of deselection's of sitting MP's would really tear New New Labour apart - but it would produce a real State Socialist party that all the extreme left wing can get behind. That will then show the real desire of the people of this country for that brand of politics.
Gerrymandering is an entirely different thing. I agree with you substantially but as always you do not acknowledge any shades of grey - it is always black and white for you. Yet would you have so easily accepted a verdict where perhaps Remain won by 1%? Many would not and I believe the argument would have continued on for years with UKIP pushing for a second referendum. This is only the fourth referendum in the UK they said so the first past the post which applies in Elections has less precedence in this case - together with the fact that an election is legally binding but the referendum was only morally so. When all is said and done only 37.5% of the electorate voted for change so it will not be an infringement on th emajority of the electorate if a general election overturns the result. I am pretty confident that will not happen though as I have said all along.
The LP would then become a fringe party supported by the unions leaving a breakaway new broad centre party which could prove very very popular, a real potential threat to the Tories.
"Andrea Leadsom: I believe we can be the greatest nation on earth" Yawn.... just the sort of retro-nationalism that no longer has a place in a global community. Unless of course you are Putin. I remember hearing Bush saying it a few years back about USA... and I thought ... what small minded arrogance....
The legal profession must be loving this with all the work they are being asked to do. It seems that Article 50 is now being examined, not for what it does say, but for what it doesn't. Would it be possible for a country to invoke it, then withdraw it if they found they would be disadvantaged? It says nothing about that situation, but legal opinion is that yes it could happen because it is not excluded.
It's the sort of comment I might expect from someone who had been propping up a bar stool for the last 5 hours, but not from a politician ! Just imagine if a German politician came out with something like this - all the armies of the old allies would be converging on the Rhine within days. Will this hierarchical thinking never end ?
A lawyer will give you any opinion you want if you pay him. Common sense should prevail - the article is exclusively about exiting the EU and makes no provision for withdrawal once submitted. If those devising the article had envisaged a country wanting to change their mind they needed to specifically put it into Article 50 or another one. In law you cannot use a clause to include things it does not contain just because it now occurs to you that it might have been a good idea. I have read lots of case law where judges reject arguments that say such and such does not exlude something. I am sure lawyers will earn their pretty penny arguing it should it ever come to that but I am certain of the outcome.
Actually it was the French government asking their lawyers to clarify the situation and so far they have said it is pretty clear. Not sure if the two countries would have a different legal outlook. Just seen the Foreign Secretary answering questions from the Foreign affairs committee. It was very clear that that are trying to delay matters as long as possible, and he hasn't a clue what they can negotiate over matters like Gibraltar. He did confirm that the whole matter would have to be debated in Parliament, but the amount of new legislation would be vast and it could take a very long time to wade through it all.
