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.
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.
>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.
And who and from where might folks "import" such votes? I don't understand what that means. Please do elucidate.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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...
> 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 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.
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".
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.
Even a 55% requirement would be a lot better than a simple majority imo.