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Whatever your opinion on Brexit, it would be a miscarriage of democracy to ignore the referendum's result, even if it is not strictly legally binding. If Leave

Whatever your opinion on Brexit, it would be a miscarriage of democracy to ignore the referendum's result, even if it is not strictly legally binding. If Leave can win now, it will garner more support if the public's will is neglected. Also the comment takes it as a foregone conclusion that triggering Article 50 would spell the political demise of the sitting Prime Minister. Isn't this a dubious assumption? We're seeing short-term market reactions today, but it is a very different thing to assert that the long-term impacts are as suicidal as is commonly believed.

mc32 10y ago
If they pull that on people. Use this technicality, it's like the establishment saying: "We grant you have a democracy, except when we disagree with you and your vote". Mocking voters. At that point, British democracy would become a farce with consequences quite possibly worse than the predictions remainders predict for leaving.
dnr 10y ago
Unless they dally for a year or two, then hold another referendum: given the age demographics of the vote, even a year or two of old people dying off and young ones coming of age is probably enough to shift it back (and it's even possible another vote held tomorrow would go Remain).
kmiroslav 10y ago
Technically, sure. Practically... it's a 52%/48% vote. Hardly a mandate. Some people say a revote might yield an opposite result, which means the current outcome is probably under the margin of error. It wouldn't exactly be a miscarriage of democracy to not follow through and see how things unfold in the next couple of years, and maybe vote again to see if the gap widens or if our country remains split in the middle on the issue. At any rate, this comment about the situation is frighteningly deep and chilling.
- jimktrains2 10y ago
  Is there a margin of error with a vote like this? Isn't it a direct count of people who want their opinion known? It isn't sampling and trying to figure out what everyone wants.
  - ianai 10y ago
    I don't know about 'error' but there's definitely room for valid decision changes. You can take most things back within a grace period after signing the dotted line, after all.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - jimktrains2 10y ago
      But that isn't what this measured. Like how the US census is suppose to be an exact count of everyone on April 1; it may change due to births and deaths, but on that day (at some time) it is suppose to be exact. A vote is an exact count of the will of the people at a given time. There is no error. People can change their minds, but that isn't what the vote represent. That is, a vote is what people who chose to vote said they wanted, not a probabilist representation of what the people as a whole want.
  - shawkinaw 10y ago
    Given that people apparently keep changing their minds right up to voting day (indicated by polls), I think there is actually a lot of noise in the result.
  - weezer 10y ago
    That's assuming that people correctly know and express the opinion that they hold. Asking people directly is still somewhat of a noise signal. Also, the act of viewing the result of the vote seems to have changed people expressed opinions at least.
  - Teever 10y ago
    While a margin of error is required for polls due to inherent limitations of accuracy and scale if your democratic institutions have a margin of error you're not doing democracy right.
- voxic11 10y ago
  There is no such thing as a margin of error in a democratic vote, unless you mean votes which were miscounted or uncounted but that is very very unlikely to account for a 4 percentage point difference.
  - vacri 10y ago
    So, given the apparent shock and the extremely large, irreversible changes that will occur if the referendum result is adhered to, why not hold another referendum, and make it binding this time? More voters have signed the petition for a revote than were the difference in the referendum; clearly this is an indication that the people don't want such a destructive change based in a single, simple-majority vote that many people didn't take seriously enough in the first place. The referendum was also made non-binding for a reason. It was made that way exactly so that Cameron had the freedom to do something like he has just done, maybe not specifically the way he did it, but leaving the door ajar to avoid such an incredibly damaging result.
  - kmiroslav 10y ago
    You're right, I misused the term. Statistically, I'm sure the votes were counted accurately and that margin of error is extremely small and would not invalidate that vote. I was referring to the fact that when a result is so close, the vote might have a different outcome simply based on who shows up to vote that day. If there's a revote, more people against leaving might show up because they didn't realize they would lose. And then if a third vote is held, the result might swing again. Our country is clearly split right now, but the road ahead for the brexit outcome is terrifying and full of unknowns, as the commentator acutely outlined. Is it worth going through so much turmoil when there is barely an inch above a majority that voted this way? My answer would be a resounding "yes" if the result was 70%/30%. But 52%/48%? Maybe we should spend some time thinking this through before enacting Article 50. And all the current leaders seem to think this way right now given how discreet they have become as the reality is slowly sinking in.
- klagermkii 10y ago
  Sure it might not be a clear mandate, and I think it was a stupid bet to make, but it met the condition set and they were very clear before the vote what would happen. Normally it might not be that big a deal but it exists in the context of people frustrated with the EU and politics in general for being "undemocratic" and supposedly not listening to them. In this particular case by ignoring the result of it, you would potentially be validating those fears, and play into euro-skeptic views across the whole of Europe.
- qq66 10y ago
  The extent to which a vote is going to be binding needs to be made extremely clear before the vote, and cannot depend on which way the vote goes. It's fine to say that "we will revote if the margin is less than 10%" before the election, but the government throws its entire legitimacy into question if it tries to say "You voted the wrong way, so we're going to pretend that it never happened."
  - mcphage 10y ago
    > The extent to which a vote is going to be binding needs to be made extremely clear before the vote I thought it was made clear beforehand that this vote was not binding? Am I misinformed?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- tzs 10y ago
  > Practically... it's a 52%/48% vote. Hardly a mandate. Some people say a revote might yield an opposite result, which means the current outcome is probably under the margin of error. I think a good case can be made that in general close votes on this kind of thing should automatically have a revote in six months to a year, because seeing how the results were distributed geographically might change some minds. For instance, perhaps many people who voted to leave did so on the assumption that the UK would remain fully intact after leaving, but now seeing the results from Scotland and Northern Ireland might fear that one or both of those will leave the UK and would prefer an intact UK as part of the EU over an independent UK that just has England, Wales, and Gibraltar. It would also probably be a good idea to hold another vote after the negotiations with the EU on what the relationship will be after exit are done, or at least to the point that there is a good idea of what the relationship will be. If that relationship is better than stay voters thought the UK would get, some of them could swing to leave. If that relationship is worse than leave voters thought the UK would get, some of them could swing to stay.
Tiktaalik 10y ago
I think that given the weak mandate and highly regional nature of the vote, there would be a pretty good justification for politicians to not follow through and invoke article 50. This doesn't mean ignoring the results of the referendum, but instead taking the result as a statement from the populace and using that to inform future reforms.
ellius 10y ago
I saw an astute comment somewhere that boiled down to, "Look, it wasn't pitched as 'give us your opinion.'" You're dead on about more serious consequences, especially in the current political environment. You have candidates in the US like Trump and Sanders basically saying to the average voter, "Look, you're being played for a sucker." Nothing would prove them right more than taking a democratic referendum and throwing out the result. It never should have happened in the first place. The original signers to the agreement should have put in provisions requiring a supermajority vote to undo membership. But the fact is it did, and they didn't. Forget about crashing markets. The idea that democracy is even functioning is under threat, and people are ready to elect authoritarians to make sure their voices are finally heard. I'm not one to make light of economic consequences--they literally ruin lives--but something bigger is at stake here. The die is cast. The consequnces of rethrowing are more perilous than letting it land.
- vacri 10y ago
  > The original signers to the agreement should have put in provisions requiring a supermajority vote to undo membership. They did, however, put in 'non-binding'. The referendum actually is 'give us your opinion', regardless of whether it was pitched that way. > The consequnces of rethrowing are more perilous than letting it land. Nonsense. Another referendum of "Lots of you seem to have been unaware of the extent of the ramifications of this. Let's hold another referendum to make sure that we want this, before we start down the irreversible path. This time, it will be legally binding to avoid a repeat of this action". This isn't a playground, but real affects on people's lives - it's worth being sure first. You're still asking the people for what they want, and this time they will have better educated themselves about the issues for and against.
  - klagermkii 10y ago
    But you can't do a more binding referendum than this in the UK. There is no more binding than the Prime Minister promising to do something immediately after the vote. This isn't like other countries which have some kind of constitutional mechanism for holding binding referendums, Parliament always has the final say in the UK.
maxander 10y ago
There are two big results lately that pit the will of the people directly against the elite opinion- the Brexit and the nomination of Trump. Both have suggestions of being opposed by last-minute political maneuvering. It will be interesting to see how both play out. The long-term (at least as long as politicians are concerned) impact of the Brexit is unlikely to be good- mostly because the EU has a strong reason to make an example of Britain that convinces other countries to stay in- and is also likely to be complicated. Further, politicians rely on wealthy backers, and these are going to be dismayed at the short-term implications of the Brexit more than anyone. So the new PM would have everything to lose and little to gain by invoking article 50 immediately. They could put it off a year. And then decide that issues arose requiring it to be delayed a year after that, and later... it could go on indefinitely.
jrockway 10y ago
It's not a miscarriage of democracy to ignore the referendum result. The point of democracy is to elect representatives that can think about solutions and their consequences better than the average person. In the case of Brexit, there are a lot of good reasons for the elected representatives to ignore the result. For one thing, while 52% of people want to leave, 48% of people don't. That's no better than a coin toss. Of the people that voted, there are many reports that they did it "as a protest", or didn't understand what leaving the EU meant. Additionally, a large part of the "leave" demographic is going to be dead well before the consequences of the Brexit are fully realized. Why should someone who will have to deal with the consequences for 10 years get the same say as someone who will have to deal with the consequences for 90 years? Anyway, given the coin-toss like results, 50% of the people are going to be unhappy regardless of the eventual outcome. I would stick with 50% of unhappy people and a strong currency, personally, as opposed to 50% unhappy people and a weak one. I guess that's why I don't win elections, though.
- internaut 10y ago
  > It's not a miscarriage of democracy to ignore the referendum result. How is a referendum different from a direct instance of democracy. I really want to know. I don't like democracy, so don't get confused about my political orientation. That's not the problem here. > The point of democracy is to elect representatives That is Republicanism. > that can think about solutions and their consequences better than the average person. That is epistocracy. Sometimes it is known as the original purpose of the aristocracy before that got a bad rep for a century or two after the last time Europe went into a complete meltdown during the Revolution. Definitions aside I believe you are horribly underestimating the probability of violence breaking out if this referendum result is ignored. It is close to 100%. CFAR says when you're a 100% sure that you're actually only correct 66% of the time. Taking that as a given, this means you have a 66% chance of riots and worse. The working class are not going to lie down on this one. For them this will be the straw that broke the camel's back. I know them personally and assure you this will be seen as nothing less than a complete betrayal by elites. For them it means there is no hope left. Well known pragmatist President Snow would be agog at what I'm seeing expressed on HN, what seems sensible to many people here is suicidal.
threatofrain 10y ago
I propose that it would not be a miscarriage of democracy for the UK to reject the referendum result, because the referendum was non-binding to begin with. This is not the same thing as California's proposition process, which is not a suggestion to legislature; it is part of the legislative process itself. Also, the UK does not have a democracy. They have a parliamentary democracy, which means they believe that elected experts or elites can decide matters better than popular votes. If elected officials feel that their careers are worth sacrificing for the good of the country, that is in lawful keeping with the boundaries of their parliamentary democracy, just as it would be just for the people to vote out their elected officials if they feel that would be a superior decision for the country.

mc32 10y ago

If they pull that on people. Use this technicality, it's like the establishment saying: "We grant you have a democracy, except when we disagree with you and your vote". Mocking voters. At that point, British democracy would become a farce with consequences quite possibly worse than the predictions remainders predict for leaving.

dnr 10y ago

Unless they dally for a year or two, then hold another referendum: given the age demographics of the vote, even a year or two of old people dying off and young ones coming of age is probably enough to shift it back (and it's even possible another vote held tomorrow would go Remain).

kmiroslav 10y ago

Technically, sure. Practically... it's a 52%/48% vote. Hardly a mandate. Some people say a revote might yield an opposite result, which means the current outcome is probably under the margin of error. It wouldn't exactly be a miscarriage of democracy to not follow through and see how things unfold in the next couple of years, and maybe vote again to see if the gap widens or if our country remains split in the middle on the issue. At any rate, this comment about the situation is frighteningly deep and chilling.

jimktrains2 10y ago
Is there a margin of error with a vote like this? Isn't it a direct count of people who want their opinion known? It isn't sampling and trying to figure out what everyone wants.
- ianai 10y ago
  I don't know about 'error' but there's definitely room for valid decision changes. You can take most things back within a grace period after signing the dotted line, after all.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jimktrains2 10y ago
    But that isn't what this measured. Like how the US census is suppose to be an exact count of everyone on April 1; it may change due to births and deaths, but on that day (at some time) it is suppose to be exact. A vote is an exact count of the will of the people at a given time. There is no error. People can change their minds, but that isn't what the vote represent. That is, a vote is what people who chose to vote said they wanted, not a probabilist representation of what the people as a whole want.
- shawkinaw 10y ago
  Given that people apparently keep changing their minds right up to voting day (indicated by polls), I think there is actually a lot of noise in the result.
- weezer 10y ago
  That's assuming that people correctly know and express the opinion that they hold. Asking people directly is still somewhat of a noise signal. Also, the act of viewing the result of the vote seems to have changed people expressed opinions at least.
- Teever 10y ago
  While a margin of error is required for polls due to inherent limitations of accuracy and scale if your democratic institutions have a margin of error you're not doing democracy right.
voxic11 10y ago
There is no such thing as a margin of error in a democratic vote, unless you mean votes which were miscounted or uncounted but that is very very unlikely to account for a 4 percentage point difference.
- vacri 10y ago
  So, given the apparent shock and the extremely large, irreversible changes that will occur if the referendum result is adhered to, why not hold another referendum, and make it binding this time? More voters have signed the petition for a revote than were the difference in the referendum; clearly this is an indication that the people don't want such a destructive change based in a single, simple-majority vote that many people didn't take seriously enough in the first place. The referendum was also made non-binding for a reason. It was made that way exactly so that Cameron had the freedom to do something like he has just done, maybe not specifically the way he did it, but leaving the door ajar to avoid such an incredibly damaging result.
- kmiroslav 10y ago
  You're right, I misused the term. Statistically, I'm sure the votes were counted accurately and that margin of error is extremely small and would not invalidate that vote. I was referring to the fact that when a result is so close, the vote might have a different outcome simply based on who shows up to vote that day. If there's a revote, more people against leaving might show up because they didn't realize they would lose. And then if a third vote is held, the result might swing again. Our country is clearly split right now, but the road ahead for the brexit outcome is terrifying and full of unknowns, as the commentator acutely outlined. Is it worth going through so much turmoil when there is barely an inch above a majority that voted this way? My answer would be a resounding "yes" if the result was 70%/30%. But 52%/48%? Maybe we should spend some time thinking this through before enacting Article 50. And all the current leaders seem to think this way right now given how discreet they have become as the reality is slowly sinking in.
klagermkii 10y ago
Sure it might not be a clear mandate, and I think it was a stupid bet to make, but it met the condition set and they were very clear before the vote what would happen. Normally it might not be that big a deal but it exists in the context of people frustrated with the EU and politics in general for being "undemocratic" and supposedly not listening to them. In this particular case by ignoring the result of it, you would potentially be validating those fears, and play into euro-skeptic views across the whole of Europe.
qq66 10y ago
The extent to which a vote is going to be binding needs to be made extremely clear before the vote, and cannot depend on which way the vote goes. It's fine to say that "we will revote if the margin is less than 10%" before the election, but the government throws its entire legitimacy into question if it tries to say "You voted the wrong way, so we're going to pretend that it never happened."
- mcphage 10y ago
  > The extent to which a vote is going to be binding needs to be made extremely clear before the vote I thought it was made clear beforehand that this vote was not binding? Am I misinformed?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tzs 10y ago
> Practically... it's a 52%/48% vote. Hardly a mandate. Some people say a revote might yield an opposite result, which means the current outcome is probably under the margin of error. I think a good case can be made that in general close votes on this kind of thing should automatically have a revote in six months to a year, because seeing how the results were distributed geographically might change some minds. For instance, perhaps many people who voted to leave did so on the assumption that the UK would remain fully intact after leaving, but now seeing the results from Scotland and Northern Ireland might fear that one or both of those will leave the UK and would prefer an intact UK as part of the EU over an independent UK that just has England, Wales, and Gibraltar. It would also probably be a good idea to hold another vote after the negotiations with the EU on what the relationship will be after exit are done, or at least to the point that there is a good idea of what the relationship will be. If that relationship is better than stay voters thought the UK would get, some of them could swing to leave. If that relationship is worse than leave voters thought the UK would get, some of them could swing to stay.

Tiktaalik 10y ago

I think that given the weak mandate and highly regional nature of the vote, there would be a pretty good justification for politicians to not follow through and invoke article 50. This doesn't mean ignoring the results of the referendum, but instead taking the result as a statement from the populace and using that to inform future reforms.

ellius 10y ago

I saw an astute comment somewhere that boiled down to, "Look, it wasn't pitched as 'give us your opinion.'" You're dead on about more serious consequences, especially in the current political environment. You have candidates in the US like Trump and Sanders basically saying to the average voter, "Look, you're being played for a sucker." Nothing would prove them right more than taking a democratic referendum and throwing out the result. It never should have happened in the first place. The original signers to the agreement should have put in provisions requiring a supermajority vote to undo membership. But the fact is it did, and they didn't. Forget about crashing markets. The idea that democracy is even functioning is under threat, and people are ready to elect authoritarians to make sure their voices are finally heard. I'm not one to make light of economic consequences--they literally ruin lives--but something bigger is at stake here. The die is cast. The consequnces of rethrowing are more perilous than letting it land.

vacri 10y ago
> The original signers to the agreement should have put in provisions requiring a supermajority vote to undo membership. They did, however, put in 'non-binding'. The referendum actually is 'give us your opinion', regardless of whether it was pitched that way. > The consequnces of rethrowing are more perilous than letting it land. Nonsense. Another referendum of "Lots of you seem to have been unaware of the extent of the ramifications of this. Let's hold another referendum to make sure that we want this, before we start down the irreversible path. This time, it will be legally binding to avoid a repeat of this action". This isn't a playground, but real affects on people's lives - it's worth being sure first. You're still asking the people for what they want, and this time they will have better educated themselves about the issues for and against.
- klagermkii 10y ago
  But you can't do a more binding referendum than this in the UK. There is no more binding than the Prime Minister promising to do something immediately after the vote. This isn't like other countries which have some kind of constitutional mechanism for holding binding referendums, Parliament always has the final say in the UK.

maxander 10y ago

There are two big results lately that pit the will of the people directly against the elite opinion- the Brexit and the nomination of Trump. Both have suggestions of being opposed by last-minute political maneuvering. It will be interesting to see how both play out. The long-term (at least as long as politicians are concerned) impact of the Brexit is unlikely to be good- mostly because the EU has a strong reason to make an example of Britain that convinces other countries to stay in- and is also likely to be complicated. Further, politicians rely on wealthy backers, and these are going to be dismayed at the short-term implications of the Brexit more than anyone. So the new PM would have everything to lose and little to gain by invoking article 50 immediately. They could put it off a year. And then decide that issues arose requiring it to be delayed a year after that, and later... it could go on indefinitely.

jrockway 10y ago

It's not a miscarriage of democracy to ignore the referendum result. The point of democracy is to elect representatives that can think about solutions and their consequences better than the average person. In the case of Brexit, there are a lot of good reasons for the elected representatives to ignore the result. For one thing, while 52% of people want to leave, 48% of people don't. That's no better than a coin toss. Of the people that voted, there are many reports that they did it "as a protest", or didn't understand what leaving the EU meant. Additionally, a large part of the "leave" demographic is going to be dead well before the consequences of the Brexit are fully realized. Why should someone who will have to deal with the consequences for 10 years get the same say as someone who will have to deal with the consequences for 90 years? Anyway, given the coin-toss like results, 50% of the people are going to be unhappy regardless of the eventual outcome. I would stick with 50% of unhappy people and a strong currency, personally, as opposed to 50% unhappy people and a weak one. I guess that's why I don't win elections, though.

internaut 10y ago
> It's not a miscarriage of democracy to ignore the referendum result. How is a referendum different from a direct instance of democracy. I really want to know. I don't like democracy, so don't get confused about my political orientation. That's not the problem here. > The point of democracy is to elect representatives That is Republicanism. > that can think about solutions and their consequences better than the average person. That is epistocracy. Sometimes it is known as the original purpose of the aristocracy before that got a bad rep for a century or two after the last time Europe went into a complete meltdown during the Revolution. Definitions aside I believe you are horribly underestimating the probability of violence breaking out if this referendum result is ignored. It is close to 100%. CFAR says when you're a 100% sure that you're actually only correct 66% of the time. Taking that as a given, this means you have a 66% chance of riots and worse. The working class are not going to lie down on this one. For them this will be the straw that broke the camel's back. I know them personally and assure you this will be seen as nothing less than a complete betrayal by elites. For them it means there is no hope left. Well known pragmatist President Snow would be agog at what I'm seeing expressed on HN, what seems sensible to many people here is suicidal.

threatofrain 10y ago

I propose that it would not be a miscarriage of democracy for the UK to reject the referendum result, because the referendum was non-binding to begin with. This is not the same thing as California's proposition process, which is not a suggestion to legislature; it is part of the legislative process itself. Also, the UK does not have a democracy. They have a parliamentary democracy, which means they believe that elected experts or elites can decide matters better than popular votes. If elected officials feel that their careers are worth sacrificing for the good of the country, that is in lawful keeping with the boundaries of their parliamentary democracy, just as it would be just for the people to vote out their elected officials if they feel that would be a superior decision for the country.