While campaigning for Remain outside a local train station, I spoke to a woman who seemed to be a conspiracy theorist. She told me that she expected that the majority of people would vote Leave, but that she was nevertheless convinced that Britain would remain in the EU anyway.
“They’ll fix it somehow.” She said.
I tried to assure her that it was more or less impossible for the count to be rigged (which I assumed to be the sort of scenario she was envisaging).
She was clearly unconvinced, and walked away, with a smile which seemed to say “You’ll see…”
After the result, I thought of this woman, and reflected that at least now she would realise that she had unfairly maligned our democratic processes.
But now, I’m beginning to wonder if she is thinking “I told you so…”
Thousands have signed a petition calling for a second referendum, for no other reason than that they didn’t like the result of the first one.
Others are claiming that the referendum wasn’t legally binding anyway, and are demanding that Parliament should just ignore the result.
It may be technically true that the referendum was not legally binding, but this was certainly not something that was ever made clear to the public. All politicians, on both sides, appeared to accept that whatever the public decided in the referendum, was what would happen.
I have been especially shocked that among those who are demanding that the result should just be ignored are many Liberal Democrats.
Liberal DEMOCRATS. Have we forgotten what the second word in our name actually means? It means accepting the decision of the majority, even if we strongly disagree.
Some are arguing that the referendum is somehow invalidated by the fact that politicians on the Leave side made misleading statements, and promises – or implied promises – that they had no intention of keeping. But if an election is invalidated by misleading statements and promises that will not be kept, then probably every election ever held in Britain was invalid. We should remember that the public these days are quite sceptical, indeed cynical, about the claims of politicians, and unlikely to take what they are told at face value.
If we truly believe in democracy, we should accept that, for the foreseeable future, Britain’s future is outside the EU. While this is far from ideal, it does not necessarily have to be the bleak, dystopian future that many fear. Perhaps I am being naively optimistic, but I feel that it is still quite possible for Britain outside the EU to be a liberal, progressive nation, welcoming to immigrants and refugees, and continuing to have a friendly relationship with Europe. Our focus as a party should be on building this sort of Britain.
* Catherine Crosland is a member in Calderdale and joined the party in 2014
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Agreed up to a point. I think that once we’re out, it’s then 100% fair game to have a party policy of applying for re-entry, which is what Tim has suggested. It’s clear that re-entry has enough support that people ought to be allowed to vote for it in future general elections. But I agree we have to accept result as given and not stitch up or derail the leaving process (we’ve also of course got to fight for the least worst deal in these circumstances).
I too, have had this conversation.
Everyone who is secretly hoping that someone will somehow derail the process of exit by fair means or foul, should consider the phrase ‘stabbed in the back’ and the myth created around the concept in 20s and 30s Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth
The point, surely is that Votes are only binding until the next one. Each Election rubs out the result of the one before. Theres nothing Undemocratic about calling for new Votes when the old Vote was unclear. Leave supporters have no common story of what their Vote meant.
There is nothing undemocratic about campaigning on a platform of ignoring the referendum result (as the Lib Dems seem to be doing now). If a political party wins the election on the basis of a promise to ignore a referendum result, then it has a democratic mandate to do so. It is also arguable that as Leave won by essentially fraudulent means, there is no reason why we should accept the result of this merely advisory poll.
If Remain had won, would UKIP and the Tory right have just “put up and shut up”? Of course they wouldn’t. Then neither should we.
Thanks, James. Yes, I would agree that it would be quite reasonable to have a party policy of eventually re – applying for membership of the EU at some point in the future, if there comes a time that this is what the majority of British people want. But I think we should accept that realistically, this could only happen several years after we leave. For the moment, I don’t think its a good idea for us to give the impression that this is the party’s main policy. Instead, we should focus on ensuring that Britain outside Europe is a nation with liberal values
Paul, a new national vote doesn’t inherently worry me – blocking legislation in the House of Commons would, however, without a clear new popular mandate.
I think also that the Leave campaign have to cope with the inherent problem that they were seen to promise different things to different people – there are some voters who will (and reasonably so, one could argue) still feel ‘stabbed in the back’ if we go out but do not repeal free movement – or, for some more extreme elements, decisively or perceptibly bring down immigration.
The referendum saw a lot of bad, manipulative politics that leaves us with several different festering problems. Some of them may take a long time to fully mature.
Tuition fees has nothing on this.
If we leave its unlikely the UK will ever rejoin the EU. The euro currency is a non starter for us and is the force driving the EU towards political union. At present we have opted out of the eurozone so are already only partial members in practice.
The euro currency is where the EU has all gone wrong for the UK and we should have stifled it at birth. Unless this referendum is challenged immediately by whatever democratic means then I don’t see amy possibility of our re-entry to the EU.
By the logic of Catherine’s argument that we should just “accept the decision of the majority”, Parliamentary oppositions should not vote against government legislation as this would be overturning the decision of the majority. The whole point of representative democracy is that it doesn’t work like that.
If the referendum were run as a legally binding vote, as they are in places where referendums are a common part of the political system (e.g. Switzerland), then the result would be taken as THE decision, equivalent to a Parliamentary vote on it, and the Prime Minister would be constitutionally obliged to invoke Article 50 now. However, it isn’t. In our representative democracy, our democratically elected representatives should be able to note that a lot of the case for Brexit as made by Leave campaigners is unravelling before our eyes, and a lot of people seem to be regretting their decision to Vote Leave so there is no reason to plough blindly into implementing the decision implied by the referendum result.
Thanks, Matt
Paul Barker, its true in a way that “votes are only binding until the next one”. But usually the next vote is several years later. This is very different from demanding another vote straight away just because you didn’t like the result of the first one. All through the campaign, the public were given the impression that if the vote was Leave, then there was no doubt at all that we would leave.
The dishonesty of the Leave campaign went well beyond any broken election promises, even tuition fees. The claim of £350M saved that would go to the NHS was a double-lie, both that there was £350M to be saved, and that it was all pledged to the NHS. Most broken election promises are because circumstances made it impossible to fulfill them. Sometimes it’s not desirable to fulfill them (should the Major government have been forced to continue with the Poll Tax?) But in this case, the Leave campaigners were making claims they must have known not to be true, knowing there was no way of holding them accountable during or after the campaign. Accordingly, IMV Parliament has absolutely no moral obligation to respect the result of the referendum.
Alex, I’m afraid it is quite bizarre to claim that “there is nothing undemocratic about campaigning on a platform of ignoring the referendum result.” Actually it is not quite clear at the moment whether Tim Farron is actually advocating ignoring the referendum result, or just advocating applying to re-join the EU at some point in the future. I think and hope he actually means the latter, but I feel he should make it more clear that as a Democrat he respects the result of the referendum.
@Alex Macfie “If a political party wins the election on the basis of a promise to ignore a referendum result, then it has a democratic mandate to do so.”
And if that party wins the election by campaigning on a mixture of policies under first-past-the-post with 37% of the vote on a 66% turnout (as per the 2015 general election) does a Lib Dem really think it has a democratic mandate to ignore the result of the referendum?
@Catherine Jane Crosland. Its true that Votes usually come after a period of years but this isnt Politics as usual. Back in 1974 we had two General Elections within a space of six Months so there is a precedent.
The big problems with The Leave Vote are that its backers are unclear what it means in practise, had no plan for how it was to be done & didnt expect to win. Thats their problem not ours.
I feel its misleading to say that a party that was elected on a platform of ignoring the referendum therefore would have a mandate to do so. The party that forms a government was almost always voted for by less that fifty percent of those who voted. So even if a party formed a government having campaigned on a platform of ignoring the referendum, it would almost certainly have been voted for by fewer people than voted Leave in the referendum.
I, nor anyone else, knows what is happening or will happen…
The ‘Brexit’ leaders are backtracking on almost every major plank in their promises…Boris stated that there was “no need to rush into anything” clearly hoping that informal (secret) talks would give him some ideas as to ‘where do we go from here’…..
However, it appears that our European neighbours have decided that ‘OUT means just that and talks will only happen when article 50 has been presented to them…..
More in hope than expectation I will put my name on the petition for a re-run hoping that it will reach 18 million….
@Alex Macfie “Parliament has absolutely no moral obligation to respect the result of the referendum”
When considering our “representative democracy”, Lib Dems should also remember that the Conservatives were elected to form a majority government with a pretty clear manifesto commitment and consequently a “democratic mandate” for what is now unfortunately happening:
Ominously, the Tory manifesto went on to say, “the Liberal Democrats won’t give you a say over the EU”, which is sadly proving to be truer than I would have thought possible.
But Catherine Jane you fail to specify what type of democracy we necessarily respect. I’m a democrat and I don’t respect the result of the referendum because I believe in representative democracy only, and not referenda, for reasons I gave in my post here https://www.libdemvoice.org/the-mess-we-are-in-51070.html
@Catherine Jane Crosland ‘it is not quite clear at the moment whether Tim Farron is actually advocating ignoring the referendum result’
This is what Tim said in New Statesman: “Even though the vote was close, the majority of British people want us to leave. We must accept that decision but we refuse to give up on our beliefs.”
On the subject of untruthfulness during the referendum campaign, Cameron should have triggered Article 50 by now and Osborne should be announcing his emergency budget.
Neither side covered itself in glory, and most of the Brexit fibs (e.g. £350 million per week for the NHS) were thoroughly debunked before the vote and are being over-egged now.
The Remain campaign was dire before the election but it is worse now.
I voted to Remain. Before that, I bemoaned the fact that I was not being offered a positive message about the state of the EU nor a vision for its future. Now I am not being offered a positive approach to making the best of a bad job, I’m simply drowning in sore losers whinging that it’s sooooo unfair!
I disagree with the Brexiters, but I am bitterly disappointed by the Bremainers.
Whilst I agree we shouldn’t prevent it or block the departure in parliament or via any other legal or illegal vote, I feel that we have every right to continue to campaign against the majority, let’s be honest its that what we lib dems do, more often than not we don’t stand for what the majority believe, we stand for for what we believe to be right. Having lost the referendum we need to make our voices clear on Europe more now than ever before.
Using the logic that the people have spoken so shut up, we would never have had the referendum in the first place, euro sceptics didn’t shut up after the last referendum they continued to campaign for what they believed in, and so should we now.
The best thing about living in a democracy is that it gives the opportunity for all views to be heard. The most undemocratic thing that can be done is to silence any section of society. The lib dems have be the pro European party for decades, it is fundamentally part or our party and beliefs and I do not plan on abandoning that view or brushing it under a rug just because 51.8% of people disagree with me. When we lost an election and say came third or fourth did we say “oh well, the people have spoken, stop knocking on doors, stop delivering the local focus, all local councillors must vote with winning party”? Absolutely not, we knocked on more doors, delivered more leaflets and kept campaigning harder than ever. That’s what democracy is, that’s what our party stands for. We lost the referendum, now we campaign harder than ever before for Europe on every platform that is available until we are heard.
Frankly, I don’t care about whether a government elected on a mandate to go back on the referendum result would have the backing of 50% of voters. That’s the system; the other side have shafted us, why on earth should we play nicely with them? Anyway it would be bizarre if Tim Farron, leading a party that has always supported EU membership, were to invoke Article 50 having been elected into government by voters who presumably would have been against such an action. It would not be our duty to fight Farage’s battles for him.
I don’t think we’re doomed to accept Brexit in all circumstances.
But … I think we have to give any government that emerges with Brexit as its agenda – under the pressure of consistent, constructive, democratic scrutiny, as I have said in my article of Saturday AM on this site – the opportunity to negotiate a reasonable Brexit settlement that is acceptable to the British people, in the same way that if a government is elected that we don’t like, we don’t send our activists to the House of Commons to prevent them taking office.
I don’t see that as inherently incompatible with saying that we will seek to negotiate re-entry into the EU (or a cessation in the Exit process) – with or without a further referendum depending on the context – if the opportunity arises for us to in government after a fresh general election.
But there is a difference between constructive and obstructive opposition. Constructive opposition to Brexit (pointing out the flaws, the broken promises, preventing ‘bad deals’, seeking to keep as many links with the EU open as possible) is something I am for. Obstructive opposition (refusing to allow debate, trying to ‘annul’ the referendum without a further vote or a general election) is something I am dead against as it will heap up further future pain for the country.
PS – Catherine – thank you for this article, because it starts with empathy with ordinary people. Don’t be shouted down.
Good post.
I think if there was another General Election before article 50 is enacted, and the majority of MPs following that election voted not to enact it having stood individually on that platform, then under the British convention of Parliamentary Democracy the referendum result could be ignored.
I do not think this scenario is impossible at all..
@Andrew McCaig “I think if there was another General Election before article 50 is enacted, and the majority of MPs following that election voted not to enact it having stood individually on that platform, then under the British convention of Parliamentary Democracy the referendum result could be ignored.”
Perhaps candidates could pledge to vote against it: I’m sure that would go down well! 🙂
Or we could find ourselves even worse off with a UKIP government. 🙁
Given that the Tories, in both of their Leave and Remain factions (which can now be seen as a coordinated and cynical attempt to cover their bets) have reneged and backtracked on every pledge and promise made before and during the referendum, it is perhaps safer to bet that, before October, Cameron will say “I’m sorry, did you think I said ‘resign’? You must have misheard”.
Delaying the implementation of Article 50, does nothing for the country and only weakens the UK’s already tenuous bargaining position. The UK is already effectively out of the decision-making process; the question is whether the government intends to needlessly irritate the EU ahead of negotiations. There will be no “pre-negotiation negotiations” — the UK has nothing to bargain with until it plays its hand (and little thereafter, but let’s not squander even that little).
There is nothing in contradiction with either liberalism or democracy in simultaneously demanding (a) that the mandate of the people be respected in execution and (b) that that same mandate be changed. We can both argue that Cameron should not renege on his explicit promises to respect the outcome of the referendum (and that the Leavers should be held to their pledges, however impossible they may be in practice, and held responsible for their failure to meet them) and that the results of the referendum should be reversed — not by a new referendum, we’ve had enough of referenda — but by a new Parliament and a new government, preferably one led by Tim Farron.
You scare me a little, Alex Macfie. I hope you have no real influence in the party.
Hi Caroline, it’s not for us to implement the result of this referendum, that’s the job of those who want Britain to leave the EU. We always said that leaving the EU would be a lengthly and painful process and we may find that people who voted leave change their minds along the way. I think we should reserve the right to vote against whatever gets negotiated (or to support it of course – who knows !)
Catherine, sorry !
Alex, I certainly wasn’t suggesting for a moment that the result means that we should “shut up”. We should make it clear that we believe that those who voted Leave made the wrong decision, and we should explain why. But we should not try to stand in the way of a democratic decision being implemented.
Thanks Matt (Bristol) , Thanks Mark Wright
Sir,
It is certainly undemocratic to ignore a referendum but, even more so, the LibDems would be dragged over broken glass if they were to campaign on the referendum to be ignored.
It is my opinion that we should make the best of the situation and campaign for a radical change to the EU to make it more democratic.
I would suggest that the barest minimum is that the President of the Commission is elected at the time of the EU MEP elections, after putting themselves forward on a manifesto of their planned emphasises in future legislation or (more importantly) deregulation.
They would have a time limit on this and probably the USA four year period with one re-election is probably the most familiar.
And of course, the ability to bring in their own West Wing group of advisers and bureaucrats to effect their manifesto pledges.
The people of the UK now believe that the EU is a creature spawned by faceless civil servants, for civil servants, who now wield immense power and with little political control.
As they have come to realise, this so they have come to realise also it has little democratic legitimacy.
So, of course they are feeling disconnected.
The LibDems could earn its ‘democratic’ title by campaigning on the above turn towards democracy. and more….
Jim Murray
Catherine is absolutely right. If we cheat by trying to change the rules retrospectively in our favour, if we take part in a democratic process and then refuse to accept the result because we lost, then we traduce our own fundamental principles as democrats.
What’s more, we wouldn’t actually persuade Cameron to play the gerrymander on our behalf. All we would achieve would to warn the voters that we are a bunch of cheats.
But Matt (Bristol) is also right. We are not doomed to accept Brexit.
A General Election will inevitably revisit the issue. People know what we stand for. A big Lib Dem vote will be a clarion call for a rethink. Perhaps Labour, alongside SNP and Greens and maybe some rebel Tories, will also stand against Brexit. If so, we could elect a new Government with a new mandate – to stay in.
Even if that does not happen – The final decision is years away, and we will be faced with negotiated exit terms from the EU. We have no idea at this stage what those terms will be. The decision to accept the terms, or instead to stay in, will be a wholly new decision. To call for another referendum when we reach that stage will be entirely reasonable, and it won’t infringe upon our credentials as democrats.
You are probably right Catherine, but we can’t leave at any cost. There’s no public mandate for getting a poor deal and last week I was afraid the EU was going to boot us out and make an example out of us.
I find the whole thing saddening.
The EU may yet, Eddie Sammon. After all, we’ve just told them that it’s their club, not ours, and they get to write the club rules. The UK just hanging around the club, after having loudly told everyone that it’s had it and is leaving, never to be seen again — and then rushing back to the bar and demanding one free drink after another. How long do you suppose the members who are actually committed to the organisation are going to put up with this sort of boorish behaviour?
Eddie Sammon 27th Jun ’16 – 5:05pm….You are probably right Catherine, but we can’t leave at any cost. There’s no public mandate for getting a poor deal and last week I was afraid the EU was going to boot us out and make an example out of us……
We HAVE left at any cost….. The ‘Leave’ campaign spent the run up to the election explaining that the EU didn’t listen to us…If they didn’t listen when we threatened to leave how likely are they to listen now we’ve gone?
There is no mandate for ANY deal….The Leaders of the ‘Out’ campaign are as lost as ‘joe public’….
David-1 concludes :
“…we’ve had enough of referenda”
If that is a universal view in your party, then at least have the common decency to remove *Democrats* from your party name, because it is deeply hypocritical to call yourselves Liberal Democrats, when you so clearly despise voters and their rights to have a say in their life.?
@Catherine Crosland
Excellent post.
I’d put it even stronger.
If we want to keep open the possibility of not leaving the EU, we’ll need some of those who voted to leave to change their minds. If we run vehemently campaign that they were wrong, and we should immediately revoke their decision, they’ll get very angry – I know I would.
Rather than setting ourselves against the 52%, we should be on their side. They’ve been lied to. If the referendum was traduced by blatant and deliberate lies, then they’ve been cheated just as we have.
At present, I think the focus of those who are pro-remain should be to point out the lies. To challenge those who did the lying, and ask them how it can be acceptable to tell deliberate lies in order to deliberately mislead voters into voting for something that is against their wishes.
In my opinion, the reason they lied is they wanted the Norway option, but they knew they would fail if they campaigned for that. It is therefore unacceptable that they get what they want.
I’d like Pro-Remain people to say something like:
“if it becomes clear that the British people feel they were lied to, and so they want another chance to have a say, we should give them that opportunity”
However, that may be too nuanced a message for the Lib Dems to put out. So I think the simpler message from the party of: we will continue to campaign to be members of the EU is fine.
@J Dunn: Democracy is not an endless series of plebiscites. Democracy is a system of representative government conducted according to rules agreed upon by all factions. Frequent referenda undermine democracy by stripping democratic representatives of responsibility and accountability. The referendum is a tool that should be used very sparingly, and only when there is no other way forward via existing institutions. It should not be used to settle the internal political squabbles of one party, or to exculpate legislators from the consequencs of their votes.
David-1
“Democracy is not an endless series of plebiscites.”
And yet whichever mode of democracy we have,.. FPTP, MEP PR, or Direct referenda, Liberal Democrats have been constant losers. :
2011 AV referendum,… total rejection.
2014 EU (PR) elections,.. crushed, ..down to 1 MEP
2015 General Election,..(FPTP),…. smashed down from 57 to 8 MP’s
2016 EU referendum,… You want Remain, but Leave win the debate.
Seriously,..How many times will this electoral… Whac-a-Mole with Lib Dems go on,.. before your party realises that you are totally on the wrong side of voters, and frankly,.. you are staring at a destiny as a political footnote?
Is it not a logical given, that, if your relationship with voters is non-existent, then your party will not exist.?
@David-1 “Democracy is a system of representative government conducted according to rules agreed upon by all factions.”
And under that system of representative government the Conservatives won an election with a mandate to uphold their promise to hold a referendum on EU membership and to honour the result.
We may not like the outcome (or the first-past-the-post system that delivered a not very representative government) but the excuses used to justify ignoring the result of the referendum do sound illiberal and undemocratic. That does not mean they are necessarily wrong or impractical, but it is not the moral high ground that some Lib Dems are trying to pretend.
An insightful article.
Indeed, and the logic of this is that if an election is called before Article 50 is invoked, and is won by an avowedly pro-EU party or coalition, then it would be illogical and absurd for this new government to then ‘pull the lever’ to begin the process of extricating the UK from the EU. Thus, doing the exact opposite of what it believes in, and following an agenda set by UKIP and the Tory right. We would be doing their job for them, while they smirk from the benches opposite.
This scenario shows the inherent conflict between representative democracy and the direct/mandatory variety. In the scenario, the pro-EU government elected after the referendum, but before its implementation, would be mere delegates doing what they have been told to do as a result of a campaign run by people who believe in essentially the opposite of what the new government’s people believe. The fact is, however, that we have a representative democracy, and the referendum is non-binding. Once again, a binding referendum would have required David Cameron to invoke Article 50 at the earliest available opportunity, with no Parliamentary vote (because the referendum would have been equivalent to this). It would also really have required ALL the constitutional implications to have been sorted out BEFORE the referendum. It has been suggested that the Scottish government might have a veto on Brexit. This is a question that would have needed to be settled before a binding referendum was run.
I do not think that people would elect an avowedly pro-EU government to do the bidding of Farage, Johnson and Gove. They would have a fresh mandate. And it is not undemocratic to say this. It is a recognition of the type of democracy we have, which is a representative democracy.
@Peter Watson: If you have read any of my other comments, you know that I have never once argued for “ignoring the result of the referendum”, and have in fact regarded it as definitive. However, the moods of the electorate change, and if, in a future election, the people elect parties pledged to bring the UK back into the EU, then it would be the right of a government supported by those parties to do so, without any referendum being necessary beyond the election itself. That is how democracy works.
OP:
The lies from the Leave campaign are of a completely different order from the usual election promises (yes, even tuition fees). Candidates in elections have to be held to account for the claims they make, and making false statements can, in certain circumstances, lead to disqualification. And, of course, they can be voted out next time. But there is no way of holding referendum campaigners to account over claims or promises, because the campaign groups dissolve after the referendum finishes. So if, as is inevitable, leaving the EU produces a UK that is nothing like that envisaged by the Leave campaign, it could be argued that Leave broke their promises. But how do we hold the campaign to account over this, whether legally or electorally.
Also an election actually, legally, decides who represents the people who vote in it, unlike this referendum which has no legal significance. And this is an important point, becase it goes right to the central question of whether we have a representative democracy of a direct democracy . If we have a representative democracy, then it is quite reasonable to say that circumstances have changed since the referendum, so it should not be valid. If we have a direct democracy, meaning that referendums automatically make new law, then the referendum should not have been run the way it was.
Monday 27th June 2016 The day the UK lost its triple-A credit rating….
Had any ‘Remainer’ put this scenario forward pre vote they would have been howled down as “Alarmists”…
What we are seeing is what the ‘experts’ predicted but, of course they knew nothing….
The conspiracy theorists tended to vote leave, doing what they want proves them right as does doing what they don’t want, that conspiracy theorists for you. Democracy is about more than just holding a vote, otherwise, Zimbabwe would be a democracy, and it isn’t. We can’t just implement a democratic decision because the eave campaign pledged the impossible and the contradictory. Do you really think people who voted to end all immigration will be happy if the UK retains free movement ? Do you think all the people who voted because they wanted more immigration from India and Pakistan will be happy if this is further restricted ? Will the people who want an extra £350m a wee spent on the NHS be happy as the tiny gain of £175m from the EU is wiped out many times over by losses? No, surely not, we need a vote on the terms of the deal agreed with the EU.
Re: “Disregard the referendum result”
I think many here are failing to understand the meaning of the word ‘should’. It does not mean ‘must’ or ‘shall’, it merely indicates a desire. It is up to Parliament to decide whether it can fulfil that desire and whether doing so is in the national interest – as MP’s see it. If Parliament determines ‘Leave’ is not in the national interest then Parliament are at liberty to not fulfil the desire and so put the result to oneside. This isn’t disregarding or dismissing the result, just the natural outcome from a proper evaluation process; such as any one goes through when making a major purchase.
@Roland: That’s an absurd way to parse the question. Had it been as you imply, the wording might have been: “Might it be possible to politely request Parliament to carefully consider the potential positives of leaving the European Union?”
But that wasn’t it. And the response the majority — a small majority, but a real one — of voters gave was “The UK should leave the European Union.”
If you’re in my house and I tell you that you should leave it, do you think I’ll be agreeable if you consider that as a mere suggestion, which you are free to disregard if you find it inconvenient?
@David-1 – “don’t play with fire” comes to mind re: ignoring the DEMOCRATIC result (at least politically) – Prime Minister Farage?
@Leave EU: Unlike you, I regard the vote to leave as an unmitigated disaster, with no redeeming features or up sides whatsoever. However, that does not mean that I think that UK is legally or morally justified in ignoring the result or indefinitely deferring its logical consequence.
As for Farage, obviously with one UKIPper in the Commons, he won’t be Prime Minister any time soon (and, most likely, never). However, if chicanery and legal weaselling is used to evade the very clear result of the election, I do suppose that at the next general election, UKIP could hoover up many Tory and perhaps even some Labour seats, and could end up with more seats than the Liberal Democrats. That would position them to be a player in a coalition with the Tories — or whatever parties the Tories split into. And I would expect parties even more extreme than UKIP to arise. None of which I consider in any way desirable. Which is why I would rather see this horror of a decision go through, have people directly face the real consequences, and then set about fixing it, than somehow circumvent those consequences through a direct betrayal of democracy and giving fuel to the extremists.
Roland is right: the referendum was advisory. The flaw in David-1’s analogy is that if you’re in somoene else’s house and they tell you to leave, they have a legal right to throw you out. The refendum result has no such legal backing. MPs can’t be compelled to follow instructions from a referendum, because of Parliamentary sovereignty. So it’s more like a mob taking over a house and telling the owner “you should leave”.
Again, if the referendum were legally binding, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, because the Prime Minister would have already invoked Article 50, as an automatic result of the referendum.
Actually that’s not what it means. You’re describing tyranny of the majority.
There is a lot of anger amongst those of us on the Remain side: anger at Cameron for putting the future of the United Kingdom in jeopardy; anger at the Tory government for holding the referendum in the first place; anger at the result and its consequences for us in the decades to come. But we should also recognise that those who voted Leave were angry too, principally at the level of immigration and its consequences for their communities, but also about a myriad of other things, many of which have a tenuous connection to the EU. Had the vote gone the other way I have no doubt that Leave campaign supporters would be signing petitions and urging parliament to ignore it, and LibDemVoice would be full of articles condemning them for refusing to accept the expressed view of the people. Now is not the time to be adding fuel to the flames of the anger in our society. We have to accept what has happened but explain, without rancour, to those who took a different view – and as we know, many of them did not believe that Leave would win and are in a mood of trepidation – why we believe that this is a bad outcome for the United Kingdom. We are not going to win over racists, but we must not be doing things which imply that we accept that our country is split into two warring factions which can do nothing but spit bile at each other. I will not be signing any petitions.
Alex Macfie, actually I am well aware that democracy does not mean the dictatorship of the fifty-one percent. I would have liked to make my article rather more complex and nuanced, but Lib Dem Voice’s recommended word count is up to 500 words, and I was already close to that – as this was the first time I have contributed an article to Lib Dem Voice I didn’t want to push it. But our democracy does mainly work through elections in which it is understood that the outcome that the largest number of people voted for, is the outcome which will occur. In Parliamentary elections this usually means that we end up with a government that most people did not vote for, but which received more votes than any other party did. At least a referendum requires an actual majority. I know we are a representative rather than a direct democracy. But it should be remembered that Parliament voted that a referendum should be held, and apparently agreed that the decision of the public should be final.
Well when Parliament voted on that it perhaps did not foresee the underhand, dishonest campaign that the Brexiteers would run (maybe it should have done, but that’s another matter). It also perhaps did not foresee the events after the vote, like the fall in the £ and the stock markets, the racist attacks, the expressions of regret etc. As with any other decision made by elected representatives, it can be modified to take account of changed circumstances. IMO saying that come what may we should support the “will of the people” as represented by the referendum is to say that we agree with the lies told by the Leave campaigners: that we agree that Turkey joining was an imminent threat, and that there was £350M a week that went to the EU that could be handed to the NHS.
Elections are legally binding. This referendum was not. That is a fact. I think it would be a grave political error to pretend that the referendum was a proper exercise in direct democracy, and so tie our hands behind our backs, when actually it was not.
Ultimately we need to represent our “constituency”, being the people who voted Remain. And this means rejecting the referendum result.
Don’t reject the referendum result.
Ask the voting public to reconsider the referendum result.
It’s different.
Alex Macfie, actually I am well aware that democracy does not mean the dictatorship of the fifty-one percent.
Catherine, like many, you are falling to learn the lesson of the rise of UKIP et al. The big problem with the Remain campaign has been letting UKIP et al dictate the field of combat and lead the debate. So every time you and others talk about the ‘51%’ you are reinforcing the Leave campaign who are very happy to imply that 51% of the country voted Leave, as it aids their cause. Instead, use the real figure, namely the Leave ‘majority’ only represents 37% of the UK electorate. Now the real point of your statement “democracy does not mean the dictatorship of the thirty-seven percent” is clear.
Matt, the thing is that there isn’t really any valid reason to ask the public to “reconsider the referendum result”. After all, they had plenty of time to “consider”, during the original campaign. I think that would make people angry. They would think, with good reason, that it was being “fixed” – that they would just be asked to “reconsider” repeatedly until they agreed to Remain
Eddie Sammon
You are probably right Catherine, but we can’t leave at any cost. There’s no public mandate for getting a poor deal and last week I was afraid the EU was going to boot us out and make an example out of us.
‘fraid not. The vote was to Leave, that’s it, it was not “Leave, but only if …”.
The people of this country voted for it, they must face the consequences.
We should not be actively stopping it from happening, but we should be challenging those who led the “Leave” campaign, reminding them of their promises and all they implied it would lead to. We should be demanding them to provide a clear plan for how Leave will work and what will happen after it. When they were asked that before, all they replied was “Oh, this country will then be free, so we can do what we like”. Ok, them, you’ve won, tell us. We’ve lost, we leave it up to you.
I suggest we do this until Boris Johnson et al are down on their knees begging forgiveness for what they’ve done. Because if we halt Leave, we know they’ll go back to the game of blaming us for everything that makes people unhappy.
It’s like those fairy stories where people get three wishes. So, Wish 1 was to destroy conventional politics, well you’ve got your wish, the three main political parties are all destroyed. Wish 2 is to leave the EU, well you’ll get that.
Let’s leave Wish 3 until the people are ready for it.
Of course, those fairy stories were invented and told and passed on for a purpose. The same purpose as why we need to let the people get their wishes now: sometimes you have to learn to think carefully, and sometimes you only learn by making mistakes and suffering the consequences.
Roland, I said “the dictatorship of the fifty-one percent”, because that phrase represents a misunderstanding of what democracy means. I wasn’t specifically referring there to the number who voted Leave. That was actually fifty-two percent, wasn’t it, or perhaps 51.9 percent. I’m not sure where you got the 37% figure. The point is that everyone had the opportunity to vote, and of those who did vote, the majority undeniably voted Leave.
Catherine,
It’s a bit of a knife-edge thing for me.
I see that there is a reasonable concern about ‘reconsidering’, and I have it myself to an extent.
We are playing with fire here, in terms of the popular imagination, and we need to see that and not do things glibly and cheaply.
But – much like George Kendall, above – I’m prepared to back the Tim Farron agenda.
Given that the leadership have put their eggs in the ‘seek a parliamentary mandate for re-entry or cessation of negotations’ basket, it now becomes about how we communicate our policy.
If we communicate it as ‘We’re making the case for the people to have a chance to reconsider leaving’, and we will critique but won’t actively seek to sabotage the Brexit process up to and until we get that mandate, I’m OK with that, on balance, more or less…
However, if we slip up or don’t get the air-time and are heard as saying ‘this referendum result is ridiculous, a stupid decision made by stupid, credible people who were lied to and manipulated by lying liars’, well, I think we can say good-bye to the spirit of late-20th century democracy and hello fascism pretty soon.
I think this piece in the Guardian today shows we might start to make traction:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/28/liberal-democrats-fight-election-halting-brexit-tim-farron
As for conspiracy stories…I was being told that a rule change which comes into force on 31 March 2017 would mean that no SINGLE state can invoke article 50 and that any vote for leaving would be subject to EU majority voting. This would effectively stop any single nation from being able to leave….
I was told forcibly, “It is in the Lisbon Treaty”… I said I hadn’t seen any such wording and the UKipper became vague when asked for ‘chapter and verse’…
Does anyone have an answer?
Catherine, I think one strong reason to reconsider is the high risk of the break up of the UK, with for eg Sturgeon openly discussing a non-English federation of nations with Gibraltar and NI politicians.
People who voted Leave were voting for the UK to leave. It looks like the UK won’t be leaving, it could be England only. Is that what people want?
I think Tim’s position as expressed in that Guardian article is perfectly fair and gives us a chance to regain some of the younger voters that we so disastrously abandoned in the tuition fees fiasco
Catherine, I had not come across the phrase and so interpreted in the context of the referendum, and simply assumed you had made a simple mistake over the size of the Leave vote. As for my figure: 17,410,742 / 46,501,241 ie. Total Leave Vote / Total Electorate, expressed as a percentage is 37.44%, which I rounded down. If we put the vote into the context of the UK’s total population, directly impacted by our EU membership status, the percentage gets smaller still…
I do however stand by the main thrust of my comment, not just because of my accidental misunderstanding and misinterpreting your comment – but that does not excuse me making this mistake, but more because of the reason’s given in another LDV article (https://www.libdemvoice.org/we-are-the-48-but-also-the-52-51095.html). As democrats, we seek to govern in the interests of our democracy as a whole and not just particular groups within it – thus whilst we should seriously listen to what significant numbers of people are saying, in reaching a final decision we have to take into consideration the interests of all and the future interests of our country.
Matt, I don’t think even the possible break – up of the UK is actually a “new” reason to ask the public to reconsider. It had been predicted for some time that Scotland might vote to remain while England and Wales voted to leave, and that this might lead to demands for another Scottish referendum on Independence. So this was something that people should have taken into consideration while making their decision.
Also I think to some extent Nicola Sturgeon is using the result as an excuse for the second referendum on Independence that she wanted anyway. I have a feeling that Scotland is likely to become independent in a few years whether we stay in the EU or not.
Catherine, well, I think there’s a difference between saying something might happen and the First minister of Scotland in open talks about creating not just an independent Scotland but a new federal state including Northern Ireland and Gibraltar which I for one didn’t see coming, and I’m normally quite good at speculating wildly.
But anyway, I think we need to be clear that Tim’s position is not to ‘reject’ the referendum, it’s to get a mandate at a general election for reconsidering the referendum.
I agree this is risky for the Party, but it is a clear direction, and I accept it.
I do hope that this doesn’t prevent cross-party working to constructively scrutinise the Brexit project and its many broken promises, as it evolves.
However, I continue to agree with your original point that there is a clear need for liberals to continue to reach out to those who would feel betrayed by an aborted Brexit, and the only kind of aborted Brexit this party should be prepared to sanction or engage in is one with a clear democratic mandate.
I feel also that if going ahead with Tim’s plan and failing to get that clear and unambigous mandate means we in England (and Wales) are left behind by the rest of the former UK as they progress into Europe and we go out, we should not obstruct Brexit any further and not heap further scorn on the heads of those who vote against, if they do. But that will be very painful for many of us.
The best thing about the referendum for me – dark as it has been – is the idea that every vote counted, and more people than ever before voted.
If we do play out a tetchy, dull, low-turnout general election with mealy-mouthed promises, in the dead of winter, I will find it hard to argue that the criteria of a clear democratic mandate has been met.
@David-1 UKIP got nearly 4 million votes last time (over 2x Lib Dems?) – next time with “winner” Nigel, how many millions more – perhaps this time part of a coalition government as a minimum?
NF speech today: https://www.facebook.com/nigelfarageofficial/video.
I think that we should not, under ANY circumstances, vote for a Parliamentary motion to invoke Article 50. Even before an election. This is a matter of principle; referendum or not, it goes against our principles, and we cannot afford to be a party that betrays its principles. Work with government towards a palatable Brexit solution; but we must not ourselves help push the button.
“Don’t reject the referendum result.
Ask the voting public to reconsider the referendum result.
It’s different.”
Yes, and to add: Don’t ask the public to reconsider until time has passed, the situation has evolved, and people are clearly thinking anew.
Do demand a General Election. That is the only way a negotiating team can get a proper mandate – whether it is for EEA, or for a complete break from Europe, or whatever else. Deciding between these alternatives, not yet put to the public, is itself a big change in the issue being put to the voters.
Then at the election – We were pro EU a week ago. We are pro EU now. If in 2020 we have left the EU then we will be campaigning to re-join the EU. So if a GE is held in late 2016, what stance can anyone possibly expect us to take, other than that we want to stay in the EU?
It is not up to us to worry about whether that would overturn the result of the referendum. It is for the voters to decide whether that is what they want to do!
If a voter thinks the referendum result should be set in concrete, then he/she can decide not to vote for us. If a voter thinks Leave would be a terrible mistake, they can decide to vote Lib Dem. Let the voters decide what is right.
@Leave EU: Perhaps then you’d like to join the Liberal Democrats in advocating for a fairer, more proportional electoral system, in which those millions of votes don’t end up being spread across hundreds of constituencies and having no effect in terms of the composition of Parliament.
@Alex Macfie: I agree, though for somewhat different reasons. I think it would be better for Parliament to stay out of the matter, for two reasons:
1) First, from the EU’s perspective, this is a matter for the government to decide (the EU being an association of governments) and, as long as it remains in power, the government has the authority to speak to the EU for the UK regardless of what Parliament says. If Cameron, or his successor, says the UK is out then it is out, even if a majority in Parliament vote against it, and even if they bring down the government over it. Parliament’s voice would only be relevant anyway if it were in contradiction to government policy — but who knows what that is?
2) Parliament exists to be a voice for the people, representing their concerns and desires to the government. But the people have spoken on this issue, rendering the mood of a Parliament elected over a year earlier moot. Only a new Parliament, with a fresher mandate, would have the authority to overrule the referendum.
Of course Liberal Democrat MPs should not cast any vote that can be construed as being for Brexit, but at the same time they should not look as if they are trying to suppress the express will of the people.
I just wonder whether the result had been the other way round the brexit brigade would be content to be told just to accept it and pull together.
anyway, am increasingly hostile toward referenda, they don’t seem to assist progressive politics and only really help politicians too cowardly to take decisions they should be dealing with. this is because politicians see elected office as a career, rather than public service.
that said, it was clear to me that the referendum was advisory, and it is just as clear that a political party which campaigns openly to the effect that it will ignore it has every right to do so. if they win power, or at least influence, then they have every right to do so.
finally, my mother said to me only today that if she had known that the £325m per week to the nhs pledge was untrue …. [I haven’t even raised with her that bizarre idea that a regerendum side could lay out govt policy!]