Generally speaking the more important an issue is, the less it is allowed to be affected by democratic processes. That's why Brexit was such a big upset, it bucked the trend (the management miscalculated, nobody expected the result and would not have put it to referendum otherwise).
> nobody expected the result and would not have put it to referendum otherwise
I think you're right, you see this sometimes where the powers that be are extremely over-confident in themselves and think "sure, let's put this thing up for referendum and show those stupid right-wingers how unpopular they really are." Which works until it doesn't.
A US example was Proposition 8 in California (banning same-sex marriage) in 2008. I have zero doubt the thinking was "sure, let's put it up for a vote and show those morons how behind the times they really are." When it passed, in _California_ no less, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and accusations of all sorts of treachery. Anything but doing a little self-reflection and considering that maybe it wasn't as popular an idea as they thought. Didn't matter in the end, courts said "yeah well too bad, you can't ban it anyway, sorry" (kind of funny those legal arguments never came up BEFORE it could even be put up for a vote, again showing the level of confidence on display).
What's shocking of course is that the Brexit vote didn't end up the same way ("ok the vote passed but it can't be done anyway").
[−]optimalsolver · 2026-08-30 Sun 10:41 UTC ·
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>What's shocking of course is that the Brexit vote didn't end up the same way
All that happened was that Britain exchanged limited Eastern Euro immigration for unlimited non-EU immigration.
> What's shocking of course is that the Brexit vote didn't end up the same way ("ok the vote passed but it can't be done anyway").
There was an attempt.
A campaigner managed to get the courts to issue a verdict that the referendum was not binding, and Parliament must then have a vote on whether or not to implement the result. Remain voters rejoiced and lauded her as a hero. Brexit voters demonised her as an enemy of democracy.
Parliament then duly voted to implement the result.
(Edit - looking back this may have been counterproductive. The argument that the referendum was not legally binding could have continued for some time, maybe even long enough to try to change something. But forcing a parliamentary vote to affirm the result put all that to bed)
Which was, procedurally, the correct course of action: the referendum was non-binding, because the UK's constitution only allows for non-binding referendums. Parliament is sovereign, whether you and I like it or not (and I'm generally ambivalent about it).
Given one of the major themes of the leave campaign was "restoring parliamentary sovereignty", it's darkly ironic that leave also campaigned against parliament actually using that sovereignty, and indeed came closer than anyone else (including the EU) to restricting parliamentary sovereignty.
[−]TheOtherHobbes · 2026-08-30 Sun 11:39 UTC ·
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I wouldn't call it ironic. The forces behind Leave were - still are - far-right nationalists and wannabe autocrats. They consider democracy an annoyance - ideally a temporary one.
Their idea of sovereignty is telling everyone else what to do. They wrap this up in flags and Sptifire biscuit tin patriotism for the poorly educated, but it's all for show.
What they want is unlimited power over others. The EU has always been an obstacle to that.
The different nationalists - the Republicans in the US, the Putinists in Russia, the Zionists in Israel, the Brexiters in the UK, the Saudi oil imperialists - are all tentacles of the same creature, and more likely to cooperate with each other against their native populations than act independently.
It's even a bit sillier than that. David Cameron promised a dumb thing to get elected, on the assumption that he'd be in another libdem coalition, and the libdems wouldn't allow it. Then he got a majority. And campaigned against his own dumb thing.
Not only was it expected to fail at referendum, but the referendum itself was never really meant to happen.
> What's shocking of course is that the Brexit vote didn't end up the same way ("ok the vote passed but it can't be done anyway").
It went very much the opposite; they went for almost the most extreme possible version of the thing. A lot of people voting for Brexit had been sold on, basically, Norway's status (effectively in the EU, but can pretend not to be, and has its own rules on fish and can have whatever weird passports it wants). This is part of why support for it evaporated so quickly (the last time any serious poll showed staying out as having more support for rejoining was early 2022); the delivered product was simply not what most people had been sold.
Little did they know that the UK effectively already had Norway's status and then some, what with all the special privileges they were granted in the EU.
> (kind of funny those legal arguments never came up BEFORE it could even be put up for a vote, again showing the level of confidence on display)
Actually, IMO, it shows one of the weaknesses of our legal system.
The courts can't rule on something that someone's talking about doing. They can only rule on actual legislation.
It would genuinely be great if there were a formal legal process for writing a bill, submitting it to some particular court (maybe the top state appeals court?) for review, and only after that review letting it be voted into law.
It was virtually 50/50 and should not have proceeded. The bar to leave was set too low. 2/3rd better, and larger turnout should have been mandated. 16 year olds should have voted. The campaign to stay too weak. Mass confusion. Some particularly pernicious lies on the leave side too convincing. Brexit wasn't 100% going to happen, it was more like...
Leave 17,410,742 51.89%
Remain 16,141,241 48.11%
[−]TulliusCicero · 2026-08-30 Sun 10:48 UTC ·
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I dunno about 2/3rds, but there should definitely be some kind of supermajority required for things like joining or leaving the EU.
Even a 55% requirement would be a lot better than a simple majority imo.
[−]FartyMcFarter · 2026-08-30 Sun 10:50 UTC ·
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Then we'd have to hear the Brexiteers whining on and on about democracy.
Hm, which is worse: An entire country of millions of people suffers from the shortsighted actions of a few with reduced quality of products, increased prices, worse access to other countries, and a host of other problems...
...or we have to listen to some people whine?
[−]FartyMcFarter · 2026-08-30 Sun 11:23 UTC ·
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That's a good point, but sometimes it's a good thing for people to see the consequences of their (and others') choices. Perhaps it could have some good medium / long-term effects.
> Hm, which is worse: An entire country of millions of people suffers from the shortsighted actions of a few
Few? 51% is a few? I mean, I also think Brexit was a monumentally stupid decision, but 51% of people wanted it, no?
Even assuming that everyone who didn't vote would have voted for remain, given the voter turnout of 71% (which is already very high for any election, typical turnout is around 57%), 35% of people said yes. That's not a few, that a big chunk.
The "few" I'm talking about are the politicians who pushed for the referendum, and the politicians and media execs that cheerfully portrayed it as if Brexit was going to cause Europe to give the UK everything it wanted with zero drawbacks or tradeoffs, as if they were still the Mighty And Unchallengeable British Empire.
And in any case, the point of my post was the "suffering", not the "few".
The biggest issue is that at the time of the vote, nobody had any idea of what Brexit actually meant. The leave campaign could literally promise anything and a) they wouldn’t have to deliver it and b) everyone who voted for Brexit can reasonably suggest that they voted for something other than what was actually delivered.
The best you can say about the Brexit vote is that 51% wanted something other than the status quo.
[−]tonyedgecombe · 2026-08-30 Sun 12:05 UTC ·
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55%, maybe. But that still leaves a divided country for decades afterwards. It was handled badly from start to finish. Many 'remainers' didn't take the threat serious enough. Never under estimate your opponent.
[−]TheOtherHobbes · 2026-08-30 Sun 11:31 UTC ·
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Cameron put a Eurosceptic in charge of the Remain campaign, and Nick Clegg - supposedly an arch Remainer - went to work for Meta after Cambridge Analytica and its contribution to Brexit became public knowledge.
The public were conned. The oligarch-adjacent ruling faction of the ruling class knew exactly what they were doing, the lack of specificity for any Leave plan was deliberate, the lies and propaganda were cynical and calculated, and they were delighted with the result.
Then they gave us Boris as the first of a succession of clown car comedy Prime Ministers, and started hyping Farage.
It's all a stage set. The public in the UK have zero influence on any of these developments.
I blame Corbyn as much as Cameron if not more. Corbyn was supposed to represent the working class but because Remain could have benefited some Tories he backstabbed the working class and at least a whole generation if not 2 and for what?
If the vote outcome is directly influenceable by campaigns, you can just let the campaign owners perform the decision. Campaigns only distribute information, voters still need to make a choice.
Did they even have a referendum on joining the EU? Just skimming through, it looks like [0] they only had a referendum on EEC membership which sounds like it would predate the EU. It is a bit of an unfair ratchet where people can sidle in to the EU but require strong consensuses to leave. It should be symmetrical.
Particularly when the scope of the EU seems to be a bit vague and regularly expanding to micromanage various aspects of life. It looks like they might be trying to rebuild the US federal government.
[−]kQq9oHeAz6wLLS · 2026-08-30 Sun 13:47 UTC ·
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This brings to mind the government set up in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: it takes 2/3rds to pass a law, but only 1/3rd to repeal it.
The thinking being if a law isn't good/useful enough to garner 2/3rd support, it shouldn't be law. And if a law is so bad that it can't even get more than 1/3rd the people to support it, it should no longer be a law.
Sadly, I don't think it'd work today. People are too divided, it's too easy to import the votes you need, and people are too lazy to understand a law beyond the headline or what the news tells them about it.
You could flip that argument. The bar set to remain was too low.
As for 16 years old voting, I'd argue the age to vote should be raised to 21.
> Some particularly pernicious lies on the leave side too convincing
Both sides lied, both sides exaggerated.
The referendum to simply leave or remain would never have happened if UK Parliament went to the public more often with referendums about various treaties such as Maastricht, Amsterdam and Rome. Giving people the illusion of choice would have been enough.
The UK seems to be an outlier for an arrogant Parliament that thinks it knows best, in spite of public sentiment.
I would say if the age of voting increased then there should also be an upper limit as over a certain age, it's not your future. Prisoners should be allowed the vote for everything also
>> As for 16 years old voting, I'd argue the age to vote should be raised to 21.
Why? Brexit will impact 16 year olds for decades. A large number of the old farts who voted for it are dead now and won't have to suffer the consequences. If you're going to adjust voting ages but don't want to lower it, it makes sense that those over 75 don't get a say in something like Brexit.
And if your thought is that 16 year olds don't have the education yet to understand the implications of something so big, I'd say they're much better informed than most people over 60 who are consuming Facebook AI slop and believing it wholesale.
As a middle-aged person, I can't agree with that. Declining social interaction as one settles into a narrower world of job and family, and less free time for activism and engagement, means that my peers and myself have less clue than we used to about how to vote; the general feeling about politics when it comes up at get-togethers with friends, is aporia.
Also, part of getting older and wiser, and becoming more aware of history, is knowing the damage that old people like us have done at times. It was people our age who caused the failure of May '68, for example.
> A large number of the old farts who voted for it are dead now
You must meet extremely weird old people. Most old people care a lot about the future of their "offspring". Also they have already seen a lot and are able to see through influence much better.
>And if your thought is that 16 year olds don't have the education yet to understand the implications of something so big, I'd say they're much better informed than most people over 60 who are consuming Facebook AI slop and believing it wholesale.
Well if you're dismissive of an entire generation by calling them 'old farts', I'm not sure I can take you 'better informed 16 years old' argument seriously.
You can flip any argument, but there isn't real symmetry here.
If a change would be large and far-reaching and painful to undo, then it should be more difficult to make. Not impossible, of course: sometimes you need to make large far-reaching hard-to-undo changes. But imagine the following situation: about half the population likes X and about half hates it, and every year we hold a referendum on whether to have X or not. Then about once every two years you flip between X and not-X and all the upheaval costs you more than the gain from whichever is the better choice would get you.
So before making a big upheaval-inducing change on the grounds that The People want it, you should have good evidence that The People really do, which means one referendum with a result much more decisive than 51:49, or maybe a series of 51:49 referenda all going the same way.
If I were setting up something like this and could choose the rules, they would be something like: we run a referendum every couple of years until we get a decisive result; a side that won the last N referenda needs a 20%/(N+1) margin to get its way. So, first time round you need to be 60-40 ahead to settle the question; if you won the first time then you only need 55-45 the second time; if you win again but still more narrowly than that then you only need about 53-47 next time; etc. If one position really does consistently have majority support it'll win eventually even if its advantage is narrow. If public opinion is very changeable then too bad, a decision will have to wait until The People have a strong enough opinion to measure with confidence.
(Obviously nothing like that will ever happen. Too geeky and complicated.)
Of course, that wasn't the only major problem with the Brexit referendum. The other catastrophic problem was that it was a choice between "stay in the EU", a well defined outcome with known good and bad points, and "leave the EU somehow", something that could mean dozens of different things. It should have been between "stay in" and "attempt to negotiate terms for leaving, and then hold another referendum on whether to go ahead". Or between "stay in" and "leave on such-and-such terms if we can get them, and otherwise ask again". Or the government should have held extensive negotiations first on what terms it could leave on, and then held a referendum on whether to leave on those terms. Or the referendum could have offered options "stay regardless of terms", "leave regardless of terms", and "leave if such-and-such terms can be achieved". Those possibilities are all pretty unsatisfactory, but they're all better than choosing between the status quo and An Undertaking Of Great Advantage But Nobody To Know What It Is.
Well there is symmetry. Based on the original comment of wanting a clear majority to 'leave', knowing the result now and the polling at the time, that would have ensured the status quo would continue, and I'm guessing there, that the parent commenter voted remain.
A leave voter would argue for exactly the same thing - a clear majority need to vote to remain. If a majority vote isn't a majority vote, what's the point of calling yourself a 'democracy' and virtue signalling to the rest of the planet how great your governance is?
> a well defined outcome with known good and bad points
How so? What was the well-defined defined outcome of the UK joining the EEC in 1973? What's your time horizon? Was that outcome still true in 1980, 1999, 2026? How does being a member of the EU make you immune to probability and chance? Was a 'well defined outcome' in 1973 that, under the Blair government, we would allow East European nationals with freedom of movement to migrate en-masse to the UK, and that, ironically, is claimed to be one of the reasons for the leave vote.
It's actually quite sad to me that in 2026 the whole thing is still so tribal. Everything promised by either side largely never came to pass, and it's now a decade on. I just wish both sides would recognise that it's been over three decades of continuous poor Government that's the root of most of the UK's problems, and spend their energy fixing that instead.
> A leave voter would argue for exactly the same thing - a clear majority need to vote to remain.
But that's exactly what I'm saying is importantly not symmetrical. Making major changes has extra costs beyond the advantages and disadvantages of being in one state or another.
There is a symmetry here, one you remarked on earlier, but it maps the Brexit referendum not to itself with roles reversed but to earlier EU-related decisions that were made without referenda. You could absolutely argue that, say, signing the Treaty of Maastricht was a major change that the individual states involved shouldn't have made without consulting their populations. I'm not sure I agree -- see below for why -- but it's definitely the same sort of issue as with Brexit.
The reason why I'm not sure I agree is that the entry of the UK into the EU was done gradually. The UK joined the EEC (without a referendum at the time, but there was one a few years later on whether to stay, which a large majority voted for, suggesting that joining without an explicit referendum was maybe a reasonable step), which was a substantially less major change than joining the EU would have been if it had existed then, and then the EU gradually increased its scope: Maastricht, Amsterdam, Lisbon. The combined effect of all those things was large, but each individual step was smaller, less risky, and (maybe) more undo-able.
(I do think, on balance, that probably each step should have been subject to referenda in the countries affected, with rejection triggering a rethink of how much European integration to aim for how quickly.)
If the proponents of Brexit had been able to divide Brexit into phases, each much smaller, less risky, and more undo-able than the whole, then that would have had many advantages and the downsides of a simple-majority referendum would have been less, though they'd still have been big changes and I think should still have needed more than a bare plurality of votes. I don't know whether any such thing could actually have been done, and kinda suspect not.
> If a majority vote isn't a majority vote [...]
Not every vote has to be a majority vote. Being a democracy doesn't mean that at every instant you do what The Majority wants at that instant, no matter how slimly it prefers that. Not because there's anything particularly wrong with The Majority, but because like an individual it may change how it feels too often for that to be a good idea.
(Likewise, having my own interests at heart doesn't mean that at every instant I do what I want to at that instant. That's why we have things like marriages and contracts and deliberately-established habits. My preferences are noisy and benefit from a bit of low-pass filtering, and I think the same is true of almost everyone. So we deliberately get ourselves into commitments it takes some effort to get out of. We can still get out of them -- you can get divorced, quit your job, explicitly break off a friendship, etc. -- but it's to our advantage that those things aren't so easy to do and we will only do them when we are really quite sure that they're a good idea. I think research suggests that most people are a bit too reluctant to make such changes, but the amount of friction we want getting in their way isn't zero.)
> What was the well-defined outcome of the UK joining the EEC in 1973? [...]
I am bemused by the question because I never so much as vaguely hinted that there was any such thing. I said that in 2016 the option of staying in the EU was a well-defined one with known advantages and disadvantages, unlike the "leave the EU somehow but no one's specifying any details at this time" option it was opposed to on the ballot papers.
I completely agree that joining the EEC in 1973 was not like that. That too was a major change, though a smaller one because the EEC was a smaller deal than the EU became over time, and holding a referendum on that (with something more than a mere plurality being required to proceed) would probably have been a good idea. As I said above, the result of the referendum held not long after suggests that joining would probably have won by a comfortable margin, in which case holding a referendum wouldn't have made much difference -- but as a matter of principle I'm in favour of explicitly running such things past The People unless it's already very clear what they want.
Britons may choose to change their minds but this is not a single party decision. The EU will likely not readmit them on the same terms and the UK is not nearly as powerful or relevant to European interests as it once was.
As a safe far away island, the UK has much more use in a captive alliance to defend a threatened continent than it is as a participant in Europe that gets special exemptions.
My understanding is they considered a vote on the type of brexit, but were pretty convinced the public would vote for a hard brexit that no one in the regime wanted.
But that's the point of democracy, whoever was interested in the isue, went out to vote, kids are too young to vote, and more than half of people interested enough to go out, voted to leave.
You personally might have wanted to remain and wanted to raise the bar, but that's undemocratic, you can't just change the rules when you don't get the outcome you wanted.
I'm not from Britain, honestly I don't care what you guys do, but a majority of voters decided in a way they did, and you have to respect that.
I said 16 yo should've had a Brexit vote/say because, especially in this case, it's the kids that reap the choices made.
More Generally 16 year olds are old enough to take part in democracy vote-wise, and maybe in all votes too. The point being - look at the short term, actually make that 'not long term', policies being made now by us olds, they don't favor young people, on the whole - or their children.
I mean, so do the 14 years olds and 10 year olds, and newborns, and the ideas still separated, because future mommy and daddy didn't have sex yet.
But as a society, we've decided that 16 year olds are too young to do many proper things, be it buy alcohol in most countries, drive a car in many, open a bank account, or legally jerk off to porn. They don't watch the news, they have no recollection of previous governments and the promises that were made, never kept and are being made again, they have basically zero sense of taxes and also mostly don't pay any and have little experience with anything related to politics. Neither do most 18 year olds, but if we let them buy booze and drive, we also let them vote.
Usually the push for younger voters comes, when someone prefers a push to a generally more "left" side of spectrum, but even this is turning around, since in my country (slovenia) more and more younger voters are turning right (eg. in the last election), especially young men, since they feel left out by the "left" parties.
Ideally children are taught more about what voting is at school. Additionally they could vote in elections with their vote recorded but not counted. So they get into the swing of it. This might avoid rampant apathy, which suits extremes. Sidenote, I wouldn't want you to read into this I am ignorant just how third rate most political parties and their policies have become.
Turnout was about 72%, so really it was (approx) Leave 37%, Remain 35%, Don’t Know/Care 28%.
Also worth pointing out that the hard Brexit we got, where we left Schengen and abandoned much of our cross-European programmes, was almost unthinkable, and not seriously considered by the media. Whenever it was brought up, it was decried as “project fear” by those who pushed for it.
These were not only ads, but shadow ads; they were different per person and effectively couldn't be vetted (if I have the technical underpinnings wrong do let me know)
It's bad regardless of which political side or issue you support. You go on FB to talk to your friends and you get... that? Come on now, Zuck. Remember the human
Including those who pushed for Brexit. Farage gave a speech accepting a defeat around midnight, the value of GBP skyrocketed for a moment etc.
The referendum was supposed to be a tool for the political class to wrestle each other, not a real life changing decision. Turns out if you fuel enough BS you may not be able to control it.
The same for this fear mongering about evil people messaging in secret each other. It’s not a real discussion, if someone should lose their privacy its the people in power. Make it illegal having secret messaging for politicians and people rich beyond some point. The danger doesn’t come from some regular people talking about something nasty in secret, the danger comes from billionaires talking secretly with politicians. We should have been able to see the messages that led the pro-brexit billionaire "gifting" Farage 5 million GBP. Of course the secrecy is needed even for the politicians and the super rich but we should be able to "debug" them, we should be able to have a committee or something of that sort that will be able to decrypt and check all their communications when needed.
[−]NoddingPudding · 2026-08-30 Sun 11:22 UTC ·
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The Farage speech just seemed to be part of a pump and dump on the pound.
In my more cynical moments I think that was the whole point of Brexit. An awful lot of the big names in the pro-Brexit movement were in one sort of investment-management business or another, and I'd love to see what positions they and their companies held in June 2016.
This is conspiracism-adjacent, IMO. Plenty of consequential decisions have been put to referendums, if only because the political class may not want to take responsibility for them. And the outcome of a referendum is never certain.
The more interesting difference is surely in how the elite responds to unexpected referendum results. Plenty of mainland Europeans assumed that Brexit would somehow be canceled (which was surely the right thing to do on paper). That was never going to happen. British political culture sacralizes majorities. Canceling a referendum "victory" is as anathema as proportional representation, coalition government, or limits on parliamentary sovereignty. This (IMO archaic) understanding of democracy partly explains the Brexit result itself.
> British political culture sacralizes majorities.
I'm genuinely curious what you would offer as an alternative? Democracy should ignore the majority if it disagrees with the controlling cabal who hold the correct opinions?
Perhaps a misunderstanding. In this case "majority" (or "majoritarianism") really means plurality. British (and US) democracy fetishizes winners, i.e. whoever comes first, whether or not they represent a majority of the electorate. In Britain you get all the power with 30% of the vote. Some might call that undemocratic.
As a Brit, I certainly think it’s a problem, because as you say, you can end up with a government with a large majority of seats based on a small proportion of electoral support.
I much prefer the ranked choice system here in Australia. I’m sure there are flaws, but you tend to end up with candidates who are more representative of the wishes of the electorate, and you eliminate that “I’d better vote for A in case B gets in” vote-splitting thing.
Then you push the coalitions forming outside of the party process to parliament where voters have no say compared to forming coalitions to within the party where party members have a say.
The big coalition in Australian politics, the LNP, has been integrated enough (in most states) to share a platform and field single candidates, giving people that choice ahead of time. We haven’t had a post-election coalition formed in some time.
But I think you might be thinking more of PR systems rather than preferential votes. In Preferential systems you still have a single winner of a given constituency, but the method of choosing that winner is more focused on a wide basis of support rather than on just who has the most votes.
I.E. if you have three parties for a seat, Centre-right gets 40% of the vote, Centre-left gets 35, “Legalise Everything Dudes!” get 25.
Under FPTP Centre-right takes it.
In a preference vote, we discard LED and count its voters’ second preference. Let’s say the split is 4:1 left/right. This leads us to Centre Right getting 45%, Centre left on 55% and the seat goes left. In this case we end up with a candidate acceptable to a larger part of the electorate. And the existence of LED didn’t split any votes, you can’t say a vote for a smaller party is wasted in this system, or blame smaller-party voters for Right getting in rather than left.
Under PR you’d split the seats in the parliament by national vote share (as in the Australian Senate)
[−]skippyboxedhero · 2026-08-30 Sun 13:08 UTC ·
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it isn't undemocratic, the purpose of the system is to produce governments that are able to govern
look at the last few governments, now imagine that we had a system that meant it was impossible to form a government if the government wasn't popular. there is no natural majority for any position that a political party in the UK can realistically take.
you don't end up with greater democracy, you end up handing unlimited power to unelected people working in government who end up being the only source of administrative stability
one of the main problems is that people in the UK who are in politics often disagree with voters at a fundamental level. changing the electoral system will not fix this. you will have elections, they will say they will fix problems they don't want to fix to win the election, and then their popularity will plummet shortly after as the insiders take over and do weird stuff that no-one voted for or wants. when you have governments that are repeatedly unable to perform very basic state functions, the problem is not the electoral system (or voters, one of the unusual aspects of politics in the UK is the blame and contempt that politicians have for voters, it is easy to see on this thread...perhaps you realise why they want proportional representation now).
[−]armchairhacker · 2026-08-30 Sun 11:29 UTC ·
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"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all others that have been tried".
If the people aren't capable of handling an issue, who is? Bureaucrats who are...elected democratically?
Brexit's issue is that it can't be easily reversed, I don't understand why they don't just hold another referendum and undo everything.
The government is not the people. The process goes something like:
A) I get voted in if I give the people what they want
B) The people don't want to be spied on
C) I increase spying
D) ???
E) Profit!
I'm still hazy on the details. But the politicians really can't plead ignorance. At least in the US you regularly hear things like "the Senate convened at 11:30pm on Friday night to push through unpopular legislation". They know.
> I don't understand why they don't just hold another referendum and undo everything.
I see you follow the EU model of democracy; keep putting matters up for a vote until you get the result you want.
Despite what you may have been led to believe, there's still a substantial number of British people that reject EU membership, and this goes beyond the "racist" and "economically illiterate" arguments that remainers typically fall back on. I would suggest you do what your predecessors did not and consider the consequences of losing.
Because the UK had a preferential agreement with the EU and a leadership position. It would be impossible to restore that state.
Even if there were a UK referendum where a clear majority voted to rejoin the EU as a member state, not at the top table, our return to the EU depends on the EU accepting our application. We burned a lot of bridges on exit that we need to rebuild.
And also the favourite party to win in the next election is spearheaded by the very people who orchestrated Brexit. The EU will not be receptive while it seems that a majority of people are still voting for an anti-EU party.
The sensible course for rejoining is to work towards Schengen or similar, while acting as a partner state in good faith for a decade or two.
>The sensible course for rejoining is to work towards Schengen or similar, while acting as a partner state in good faith for a decade or two.
Except nothing logical or sensible is ever done by the government. Which means it won't happen. At least not in the next 10 years.
By the time they come to that conclusion it will be 2035. And starting any talks or preparation would take at least another 5 years if not 10 given how slow these things move. And that is on the assumption public is not against it.
We are looking at 2046. The probability of Scotland breaking out and join the EU is higher than that happening.
I do not expect it to happen in my lifetime. I dearly hope we manage to strike a deal that restores our freedoms to live and work within the EU, but I’m not holding my breath.
I think you're right, you see this sometimes where the powers that be are extremely over-confident in themselves and think "sure, let's put this thing up for referendum and show those stupid right-wingers how unpopular they really are." Which works until it doesn't.
A US example was Proposition 8 in California (banning same-sex marriage) in 2008. I have zero doubt the thinking was "sure, let's put it up for a vote and show those morons how behind the times they really are." When it passed, in _California_ no less, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and accusations of all sorts of treachery. Anything but doing a little self-reflection and considering that maybe it wasn't as popular an idea as they thought. Didn't matter in the end, courts said "yeah well too bad, you can't ban it anyway, sorry" (kind of funny those legal arguments never came up BEFORE it could even be put up for a vote, again showing the level of confidence on display).
What's shocking of course is that the Brexit vote didn't end up the same way ("ok the vote passed but it can't be done anyway").
All that happened was that Britain exchanged limited Eastern Euro immigration for unlimited non-EU immigration.
https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/2060561179408548029
There was an attempt.
A campaigner managed to get the courts to issue a verdict that the referendum was not binding, and Parliament must then have a vote on whether or not to implement the result. Remain voters rejoiced and lauded her as a hero. Brexit voters demonised her as an enemy of democracy.
Parliament then duly voted to implement the result.
(Edit - looking back this may have been counterproductive. The argument that the referendum was not legally binding could have continued for some time, maybe even long enough to try to change something. But forcing a parliamentary vote to affirm the result put all that to bed)
Given one of the major themes of the leave campaign was "restoring parliamentary sovereignty", it's darkly ironic that leave also campaigned against parliament actually using that sovereignty, and indeed came closer than anyone else (including the EU) to restricting parliamentary sovereignty.
Their idea of sovereignty is telling everyone else what to do. They wrap this up in flags and Sptifire biscuit tin patriotism for the poorly educated, but it's all for show.
What they want is unlimited power over others. The EU has always been an obstacle to that.
The different nationalists - the Republicans in the US, the Putinists in Russia, the Zionists in Israel, the Brexiters in the UK, the Saudi oil imperialists - are all tentacles of the same creature, and more likely to cooperate with each other against their native populations than act independently.
Not only was it expected to fail at referendum, but the referendum itself was never really meant to happen.
> What's shocking of course is that the Brexit vote didn't end up the same way ("ok the vote passed but it can't be done anyway").
It went very much the opposite; they went for almost the most extreme possible version of the thing. A lot of people voting for Brexit had been sold on, basically, Norway's status (effectively in the EU, but can pretend not to be, and has its own rules on fish and can have whatever weird passports it wants). This is part of why support for it evaporated so quickly (the last time any serious poll showed staying out as having more support for rejoining was early 2022); the delivered product was simply not what most people had been sold.
Actually, IMO, it shows one of the weaknesses of our legal system.
The courts can't rule on something that someone's talking about doing. They can only rule on actual legislation.
It would genuinely be great if there were a formal legal process for writing a bill, submitting it to some particular court (maybe the top state appeals court?) for review, and only after that review letting it be voted into law.
Also you can ask anyone you like about your legislative proposal, including the judges of a court.
Leave 17,410,742 51.89% Remain 16,141,241 48.11%
Even a 55% requirement would be a lot better than a simple majority imo.
This way we get to see their project fail.
I don't know which one is worse.
...or we have to listen to some people whine?
Few? 51% is a few? I mean, I also think Brexit was a monumentally stupid decision, but 51% of people wanted it, no?
Even assuming that everyone who didn't vote would have voted for remain, given the voter turnout of 71% (which is already very high for any election, typical turnout is around 57%), 35% of people said yes. That's not a few, that a big chunk.
And in any case, the point of my post was the "suffering", not the "few".
The best you can say about the Brexit vote is that 51% wanted something other than the status quo.
It was recently the 10-year anniversary of the Brexit vote. Not a single firework.
The public were conned. The oligarch-adjacent ruling faction of the ruling class knew exactly what they were doing, the lack of specificity for any Leave plan was deliberate, the lies and propaganda were cynical and calculated, and they were delighted with the result.
Then they gave us Boris as the first of a succession of clown car comedy Prime Ministers, and started hyping Farage.
It's all a stage set. The public in the UK have zero influence on any of these developments.
Particularly when the scope of the EU seems to be a bit vague and regularly expanding to micromanage various aspects of life. It looks like they might be trying to rebuild the US federal government.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_membership_of_t...
The thinking being if a law isn't good/useful enough to garner 2/3rd support, it shouldn't be law. And if a law is so bad that it can't even get more than 1/3rd the people to support it, it should no longer be a law.
Sadly, I don't think it'd work today. People are too divided, it's too easy to import the votes you need, and people are too lazy to understand a law beyond the headline or what the news tells them about it.
- Nigel Farage, May 2016
As for 16 years old voting, I'd argue the age to vote should be raised to 21.
> Some particularly pernicious lies on the leave side too convincing
Both sides lied, both sides exaggerated.
The referendum to simply leave or remain would never have happened if UK Parliament went to the public more often with referendums about various treaties such as Maastricht, Amsterdam and Rome. Giving people the illusion of choice would have been enough.
The UK seems to be an outlier for an arrogant Parliament that thinks it knows best, in spite of public sentiment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_related_to_the_Eur...
Also two years of growing into the political system is not very long compared to the decades of being able to vote.
Why? Brexit will impact 16 year olds for decades. A large number of the old farts who voted for it are dead now and won't have to suffer the consequences. If you're going to adjust voting ages but don't want to lower it, it makes sense that those over 75 don't get a say in something like Brexit.
And if your thought is that 16 year olds don't have the education yet to understand the implications of something so big, I'd say they're much better informed than most people over 60 who are consuming Facebook AI slop and believing it wholesale.
Also, part of getting older and wiser, and becoming more aware of history, is knowing the damage that old people like us have done at times. It was people our age who caused the failure of May '68, for example.
You must meet extremely weird old people. Most old people care a lot about the future of their "offspring". Also they have already seen a lot and are able to see through influence much better.
>And if your thought is that 16 year olds don't have the education yet to understand the implications of something so big, I'd say they're much better informed than most people over 60 who are consuming Facebook AI slop and believing it wholesale.
Care to back this claim?
If a change would be large and far-reaching and painful to undo, then it should be more difficult to make. Not impossible, of course: sometimes you need to make large far-reaching hard-to-undo changes. But imagine the following situation: about half the population likes X and about half hates it, and every year we hold a referendum on whether to have X or not. Then about once every two years you flip between X and not-X and all the upheaval costs you more than the gain from whichever is the better choice would get you.
So before making a big upheaval-inducing change on the grounds that The People want it, you should have good evidence that The People really do, which means one referendum with a result much more decisive than 51:49, or maybe a series of 51:49 referenda all going the same way.
If I were setting up something like this and could choose the rules, they would be something like: we run a referendum every couple of years until we get a decisive result; a side that won the last N referenda needs a 20%/(N+1) margin to get its way. So, first time round you need to be 60-40 ahead to settle the question; if you won the first time then you only need 55-45 the second time; if you win again but still more narrowly than that then you only need about 53-47 next time; etc. If one position really does consistently have majority support it'll win eventually even if its advantage is narrow. If public opinion is very changeable then too bad, a decision will have to wait until The People have a strong enough opinion to measure with confidence.
(Obviously nothing like that will ever happen. Too geeky and complicated.)
Of course, that wasn't the only major problem with the Brexit referendum. The other catastrophic problem was that it was a choice between "stay in the EU", a well defined outcome with known good and bad points, and "leave the EU somehow", something that could mean dozens of different things. It should have been between "stay in" and "attempt to negotiate terms for leaving, and then hold another referendum on whether to go ahead". Or between "stay in" and "leave on such-and-such terms if we can get them, and otherwise ask again". Or the government should have held extensive negotiations first on what terms it could leave on, and then held a referendum on whether to leave on those terms. Or the referendum could have offered options "stay regardless of terms", "leave regardless of terms", and "leave if such-and-such terms can be achieved". Those possibilities are all pretty unsatisfactory, but they're all better than choosing between the status quo and An Undertaking Of Great Advantage But Nobody To Know What It Is.
A leave voter would argue for exactly the same thing - a clear majority need to vote to remain. If a majority vote isn't a majority vote, what's the point of calling yourself a 'democracy' and virtue signalling to the rest of the planet how great your governance is?
> a well defined outcome with known good and bad points
How so? What was the well-defined defined outcome of the UK joining the EEC in 1973? What's your time horizon? Was that outcome still true in 1980, 1999, 2026? How does being a member of the EU make you immune to probability and chance? Was a 'well defined outcome' in 1973 that, under the Blair government, we would allow East European nationals with freedom of movement to migrate en-masse to the UK, and that, ironically, is claimed to be one of the reasons for the leave vote.
It's actually quite sad to me that in 2026 the whole thing is still so tribal. Everything promised by either side largely never came to pass, and it's now a decade on. I just wish both sides would recognise that it's been over three decades of continuous poor Government that's the root of most of the UK's problems, and spend their energy fixing that instead.
But that's exactly what I'm saying is importantly not symmetrical. Making major changes has extra costs beyond the advantages and disadvantages of being in one state or another.
There is a symmetry here, one you remarked on earlier, but it maps the Brexit referendum not to itself with roles reversed but to earlier EU-related decisions that were made without referenda. You could absolutely argue that, say, signing the Treaty of Maastricht was a major change that the individual states involved shouldn't have made without consulting their populations. I'm not sure I agree -- see below for why -- but it's definitely the same sort of issue as with Brexit.
The reason why I'm not sure I agree is that the entry of the UK into the EU was done gradually. The UK joined the EEC (without a referendum at the time, but there was one a few years later on whether to stay, which a large majority voted for, suggesting that joining without an explicit referendum was maybe a reasonable step), which was a substantially less major change than joining the EU would have been if it had existed then, and then the EU gradually increased its scope: Maastricht, Amsterdam, Lisbon. The combined effect of all those things was large, but each individual step was smaller, less risky, and (maybe) more undo-able.
(I do think, on balance, that probably each step should have been subject to referenda in the countries affected, with rejection triggering a rethink of how much European integration to aim for how quickly.)
If the proponents of Brexit had been able to divide Brexit into phases, each much smaller, less risky, and more undo-able than the whole, then that would have had many advantages and the downsides of a simple-majority referendum would have been less, though they'd still have been big changes and I think should still have needed more than a bare plurality of votes. I don't know whether any such thing could actually have been done, and kinda suspect not.
> If a majority vote isn't a majority vote [...]
Not every vote has to be a majority vote. Being a democracy doesn't mean that at every instant you do what The Majority wants at that instant, no matter how slimly it prefers that. Not because there's anything particularly wrong with The Majority, but because like an individual it may change how it feels too often for that to be a good idea.
(Likewise, having my own interests at heart doesn't mean that at every instant I do what I want to at that instant. That's why we have things like marriages and contracts and deliberately-established habits. My preferences are noisy and benefit from a bit of low-pass filtering, and I think the same is true of almost everyone. So we deliberately get ourselves into commitments it takes some effort to get out of. We can still get out of them -- you can get divorced, quit your job, explicitly break off a friendship, etc. -- but it's to our advantage that those things aren't so easy to do and we will only do them when we are really quite sure that they're a good idea. I think research suggests that most people are a bit too reluctant to make such changes, but the amount of friction we want getting in their way isn't zero.)
> What was the well-defined outcome of the UK joining the EEC in 1973? [...]
I am bemused by the question because I never so much as vaguely hinted that there was any such thing. I said that in 2016 the option of staying in the EU was a well-defined one with known advantages and disadvantages, unlike the "leave the EU somehow but no one's specifying any details at this time" option it was opposed to on the ballot papers.
I completely agree that joining the EEC in 1973 was not like that. That too was a major change, though a smaller one because the EEC was a smaller deal than the EU became over time, and holding a referendum on that (with something more than a mere plurality being required to proceed) would probably have been a good idea. As I said above, the result of the referendum held not long after suggests that joining would probably have won by a comfortable margin, in which case holding a referendum wouldn't have made much difference -- but as a matter of principle I'm in favour of explicitly running such things past The People unless it's already very clear what they want.
I can definitely support that. It seemed to basically boil down to "you dirty proles aren't going to stop poor Tarquin going on Erasmus are you? :'("
The vote should have been, should we entertain this idea?
If yes, a second referendum on what Leave actually means when it comes to the final decision point.
Y'know the same way that any remotely functioning democracy would approach something this large and nebulous.
Iceland being just the most recent example.
Instead the vote was "life carries on as is" vs "something changes", with no clarity of what that change is.
Given the state of the UK post austerity there is no surprise the vote for "I don't want more of this" was so high.
That's the incredible failing of the UK democratic process here, Cameron foremost.
As a safe far away island, the UK has much more use in a captive alliance to defend a threatened continent than it is as a participant in Europe that gets special exemptions.
You personally might have wanted to remain and wanted to raise the bar, but that's undemocratic, you can't just change the rules when you don't get the outcome you wanted.
I'm not from Britain, honestly I don't care what you guys do, but a majority of voters decided in a way they did, and you have to respect that.
I said 16 yo should've had a Brexit vote/say because, especially in this case, it's the kids that reap the choices made.
More Generally 16 year olds are old enough to take part in democracy vote-wise, and maybe in all votes too. The point being - look at the short term, actually make that 'not long term', policies being made now by us olds, they don't favor young people, on the whole - or their children.
But as a society, we've decided that 16 year olds are too young to do many proper things, be it buy alcohol in most countries, drive a car in many, open a bank account, or legally jerk off to porn. They don't watch the news, they have no recollection of previous governments and the promises that were made, never kept and are being made again, they have basically zero sense of taxes and also mostly don't pay any and have little experience with anything related to politics. Neither do most 18 year olds, but if we let them buy booze and drive, we also let them vote.
Usually the push for younger voters comes, when someone prefers a push to a generally more "left" side of spectrum, but even this is turning around, since in my country (slovenia) more and more younger voters are turning right (eg. in the last election), especially young men, since they feel left out by the "left" parties.
Also worth pointing out that the hard Brexit we got, where we left Schengen and abandoned much of our cross-European programmes, was almost unthinkable, and not seriously considered by the media. Whenever it was brought up, it was decried as “project fear” by those who pushed for it.
That's not an argument, that is not liking the result.
These were not only ads, but shadow ads; they were different per person and effectively couldn't be vetted (if I have the technical underpinnings wrong do let me know)
It's bad regardless of which political side or issue you support. You go on FB to talk to your friends and you get... that? Come on now, Zuck. Remember the human
Including those who pushed for Brexit. Farage gave a speech accepting a defeat around midnight, the value of GBP skyrocketed for a moment etc.
The referendum was supposed to be a tool for the political class to wrestle each other, not a real life changing decision. Turns out if you fuel enough BS you may not be able to control it.
The same for this fear mongering about evil people messaging in secret each other. It’s not a real discussion, if someone should lose their privacy its the people in power. Make it illegal having secret messaging for politicians and people rich beyond some point. The danger doesn’t come from some regular people talking about something nasty in secret, the danger comes from billionaires talking secretly with politicians. We should have been able to see the messages that led the pro-brexit billionaire "gifting" Farage 5 million GBP. Of course the secrecy is needed even for the politicians and the super rich but we should be able to "debug" them, we should be able to have a committee or something of that sort that will be able to decrypt and check all their communications when needed.
The more interesting difference is surely in how the elite responds to unexpected referendum results. Plenty of mainland Europeans assumed that Brexit would somehow be canceled (which was surely the right thing to do on paper). That was never going to happen. British political culture sacralizes majorities. Canceling a referendum "victory" is as anathema as proportional representation, coalition government, or limits on parliamentary sovereignty. This (IMO archaic) understanding of democracy partly explains the Brexit result itself.
I'm genuinely curious what you would offer as an alternative? Democracy should ignore the majority if it disagrees with the controlling cabal who hold the correct opinions?
I much prefer the ranked choice system here in Australia. I’m sure there are flaws, but you tend to end up with candidates who are more representative of the wishes of the electorate, and you eliminate that “I’d better vote for A in case B gets in” vote-splitting thing.
The big coalition in Australian politics, the LNP, has been integrated enough (in most states) to share a platform and field single candidates, giving people that choice ahead of time. We haven’t had a post-election coalition formed in some time.
But I think you might be thinking more of PR systems rather than preferential votes. In Preferential systems you still have a single winner of a given constituency, but the method of choosing that winner is more focused on a wide basis of support rather than on just who has the most votes.
I.E. if you have three parties for a seat, Centre-right gets 40% of the vote, Centre-left gets 35, “Legalise Everything Dudes!” get 25.
Under FPTP Centre-right takes it.
In a preference vote, we discard LED and count its voters’ second preference. Let’s say the split is 4:1 left/right. This leads us to Centre Right getting 45%, Centre left on 55% and the seat goes left. In this case we end up with a candidate acceptable to a larger part of the electorate. And the existence of LED didn’t split any votes, you can’t say a vote for a smaller party is wasted in this system, or blame smaller-party voters for Right getting in rather than left.
Under PR you’d split the seats in the parliament by national vote share (as in the Australian Senate)
look at the last few governments, now imagine that we had a system that meant it was impossible to form a government if the government wasn't popular. there is no natural majority for any position that a political party in the UK can realistically take.
you don't end up with greater democracy, you end up handing unlimited power to unelected people working in government who end up being the only source of administrative stability
one of the main problems is that people in the UK who are in politics often disagree with voters at a fundamental level. changing the electoral system will not fix this. you will have elections, they will say they will fix problems they don't want to fix to win the election, and then their popularity will plummet shortly after as the insiders take over and do weird stuff that no-one voted for or wants. when you have governments that are repeatedly unable to perform very basic state functions, the problem is not the electoral system (or voters, one of the unusual aspects of politics in the UK is the blame and contempt that politicians have for voters, it is easy to see on this thread...perhaps you realise why they want proportional representation now).
If the people aren't capable of handling an issue, who is? Bureaucrats who are...elected democratically?
Brexit's issue is that it can't be easily reversed, I don't understand why they don't just hold another referendum and undo everything.
A) I get voted in if I give the people what they want
B) The people don't want to be spied on
C) I increase spying
D) ???
E) Profit!
I'm still hazy on the details. But the politicians really can't plead ignorance. At least in the US you regularly hear things like "the Senate convened at 11:30pm on Friday night to push through unpopular legislation". They know.
I see you follow the EU model of democracy; keep putting matters up for a vote until you get the result you want.
Despite what you may have been led to believe, there's still a substantial number of British people that reject EU membership, and this goes beyond the "racist" and "economically illiterate" arguments that remainers typically fall back on. I would suggest you do what your predecessors did not and consider the consequences of losing.
Even if there were a UK referendum where a clear majority voted to rejoin the EU as a member state, not at the top table, our return to the EU depends on the EU accepting our application. We burned a lot of bridges on exit that we need to rebuild.
And also the favourite party to win in the next election is spearheaded by the very people who orchestrated Brexit. The EU will not be receptive while it seems that a majority of people are still voting for an anti-EU party.
The sensible course for rejoining is to work towards Schengen or similar, while acting as a partner state in good faith for a decade or two.
Except nothing logical or sensible is ever done by the government. Which means it won't happen. At least not in the next 10 years.
By the time they come to that conclusion it will be 2035. And starting any talks or preparation would take at least another 5 years if not 10 given how slow these things move. And that is on the assumption public is not against it.
We are looking at 2046. The probability of Scotland breaking out and join the EU is higher than that happening.
Actually yes. Some opinions change simply by being required to engage with the topic.
If it came back with a similar slim majority to rejoin, would the EU even want us given the very high chance of us leaving again?