7 ms·

I know little of Britain's political system. If Article 50 isn't being invoked until the end of the year, can Britain have another national vote on Brexit befor

by bpyne 10y ago

I know little of Britain's political system. If Article 50 isn't being invoked until the end of the year, can Britain have another national vote on Brexit before then?

monk_e_boy 10y ago
Technically yes. But I imagine that if they did everyone would be incensed and vote leave - to send a message. Whoever was in power at the time would be hoisted out in short order.
- genericpseudo 10y ago
  There isn't going to be a Britain to have that vote. Scotland is leaving and the Brexit vote has reraised the spectre of terrorism in Northern Ireland.
  - monk_e_boy 10y ago
    Maybe it's for the best. Why not let Scotland leave and make their own choices?
    - sbmassey 10y ago
      Definitely - an independent Scotland can get the chip off its shoulder, dust off the statues of Adam Smith and become a decent nation again, EU or no.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > But I imagine that if they did everyone would be incensed and vote leave - to send a message. I suspect not; for one, I think many of the 4+ million who signed the petition for a new referendum would probably vote "Remain".
  - monk_e_boy 10y ago
    How would you know if your vote would count for anything? If the people voted OUT and the government ignored it who's to say what other votes they will ignore. This has been debated to death, 99% of politicians agree that the vote is cast, let's move on.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      By this argument we'd only hold elections once, and move on. A central aspect of a democracy is that people are allowed to change their mind, and that people are allowed to continue to campaign for a decision to be overturned. So no, we won't move on. Even after a Brexit we won't move on - some of us will fight to rejoin, some of us will work for independence (for my part, I've offered to help one of the groups starting to work for independence for London). But this is not over, even it if takes breaking the UK apart to finish it.
- vidarh 10y ago
  What makes you think that? The vote was met with such shock that it has re-raised the prospect of Scottish independence, and caused calls for referendums on Ireland, and has triggered the start of a small movement for independence for London (yes, most of the people who signed the change.org petition probably did it as a joke/out of anger, but there are groups organising more serious endeavours), and the signals all over the place is drastic increased devolution for London to placate anger here. More than 4 million people signed a petition for a new referendum On top of that we now know that most of the promises from the leave camp were flat out lies, and they've basically been shown to not have the faintest idea what they want to achieve. I'm sure some would switch and vote leave out of spite, but frankly I don't think the vote was fair or democratic to begin with - it presented a false choice, in that "leave" could campaign on anything under the sun, with contradicting ideas about what leaving actually meant, and we see now the problems that causes: Did the 52% want EEA membership? Did they want full on isolationism? Something in between? We don't know. And we don't know how the results would be if they had to pick a specific option, but it is highly unlikely that they'd be unchanged.
  - monk_e_boy 10y ago
    It's sort of like D&D. Everyone in the country had rolled their character. Assume one roll of a D20. People who rolled 13+ were doing OK in life. 19s and 20s were rich. 1 to 12s are poor. Cameron (our DM) came along and gave us all a free re-roll. People with 10 or less voted yes. 11 - 15 were about 50/50 depending on risk aversion. 16 - 20 voted no. The numbers are almost always going to sway in favour of change, there are too many people down at the bottom. Sure, more options on how to leave would have been amazing, left-exit was interesting, green-exit was also interesting. Right-racist-exit was bonkers, but people liked it. But remember that remain-the-same and remain-and-re-negotiate had both been tried. And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car, no life insurance, no pension, crap. Next time you're in an Oxfam shop look at us. Picking over dead man suits for our next job interview. The shame of it. Jobs gone. High streets gone. Only option is to move to London away from elderly parents, our kids, our friends.
    - 10y ago
actsasbuffoon 10y ago
It's not clear if they'll be waiting until the end of the year. David Cameron said he was going to wait for his replacement to start Article 50, and he would step down in October. Now that he's announced that he's stepping down tomorrow, we'll have a new prime minister much more quickly than anticipated. That might mean Article 50 could be coming within the next few weeks/months.
- jjp 10y ago
  As there are already legal challenges to whether the PM can declare Article 50 without a new Act of Parliament [1] and that Parliament goes into Summer recess on July 21st until 5th September [2] then struggling to see how we're going to start much before end of September at the earliest. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/legal-attempt-prevent-brexit-preliminary-hearing-article-50 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/legal-attemp... [2] http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/business-faq-page/recess-dates/ http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/bu...
dragonwriter 10y ago
> If Article 50 isn't being invoked until the end of the year, can Britain have another national vote on Brexit before then? Britain could have national votes every week if the Government decided to hold them, but the government seems disinclined to have another referendum on Brexit.

by bpyne 10y ago

I know little of Britain's political system. If Article 50 isn't being invoked until the end of the year, can Britain have another national vote on Brexit before then?

monk_e_boy 10y ago

Technically yes. But I imagine that if they did everyone would be incensed and vote leave - to send a message. Whoever was in power at the time would be hoisted out in short order.

genericpseudo 10y ago
There isn't going to be a Britain to have that vote. Scotland is leaving and the Brexit vote has reraised the spectre of terrorism in Northern Ireland.
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  Maybe it's for the best. Why not let Scotland leave and make their own choices?
  - sbmassey 10y ago
    Definitely - an independent Scotland can get the chip off its shoulder, dust off the statues of Adam Smith and become a decent nation again, EU or no.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> But I imagine that if they did everyone would be incensed and vote leave - to send a message. I suspect not; for one, I think many of the 4+ million who signed the petition for a new referendum would probably vote "Remain".
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  How would you know if your vote would count for anything? If the people voted OUT and the government ignored it who's to say what other votes they will ignore. This has been debated to death, 99% of politicians agree that the vote is cast, let's move on.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    By this argument we'd only hold elections once, and move on. A central aspect of a democracy is that people are allowed to change their mind, and that people are allowed to continue to campaign for a decision to be overturned. So no, we won't move on. Even after a Brexit we won't move on - some of us will fight to rejoin, some of us will work for independence (for my part, I've offered to help one of the groups starting to work for independence for London). But this is not over, even it if takes breaking the UK apart to finish it.
vidarh 10y ago
What makes you think that? The vote was met with such shock that it has re-raised the prospect of Scottish independence, and caused calls for referendums on Ireland, and has triggered the start of a small movement for independence for London (yes, most of the people who signed the change.org petition probably did it as a joke/out of anger, but there are groups organising more serious endeavours), and the signals all over the place is drastic increased devolution for London to placate anger here. More than 4 million people signed a petition for a new referendum On top of that we now know that most of the promises from the leave camp were flat out lies, and they've basically been shown to not have the faintest idea what they want to achieve. I'm sure some would switch and vote leave out of spite, but frankly I don't think the vote was fair or democratic to begin with - it presented a false choice, in that "leave" could campaign on anything under the sun, with contradicting ideas about what leaving actually meant, and we see now the problems that causes: Did the 52% want EEA membership? Did they want full on isolationism? Something in between? We don't know. And we don't know how the results would be if they had to pick a specific option, but it is highly unlikely that they'd be unchanged.
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  It's sort of like D&D. Everyone in the country had rolled their character. Assume one roll of a D20. People who rolled 13+ were doing OK in life. 19s and 20s were rich. 1 to 12s are poor. Cameron (our DM) came along and gave us all a free re-roll. People with 10 or less voted yes. 11 - 15 were about 50/50 depending on risk aversion. 16 - 20 voted no. The numbers are almost always going to sway in favour of change, there are too many people down at the bottom. Sure, more options on how to leave would have been amazing, left-exit was interesting, green-exit was also interesting. Right-racist-exit was bonkers, but people liked it. But remember that remain-the-same and remain-and-re-negotiate had both been tried. And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car, no life insurance, no pension, crap. Next time you're in an Oxfam shop look at us. Picking over dead man suits for our next job interview. The shame of it. Jobs gone. High streets gone. Only option is to move to London away from elderly parents, our kids, our friends.
  - 10y ago

actsasbuffoon 10y ago

It's not clear if they'll be waiting until the end of the year. David Cameron said he was going to wait for his replacement to start Article 50, and he would step down in October. Now that he's announced that he's stepping down tomorrow, we'll have a new prime minister much more quickly than anticipated. That might mean Article 50 could be coming within the next few weeks/months.

jjp 10y ago
As there are already legal challenges to whether the PM can declare Article 50 without a new Act of Parliament [1] and that Parliament goes into Summer recess on July 21st until 5th September [2] then struggling to see how we're going to start much before end of September at the earliest. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/legal-attempt-prevent-brexit-preliminary-hearing-article-50 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/legal-attemp... [2] http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/business-faq-page/recess-dates/ http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/bu...

dragonwriter 10y ago

> If Article 50 isn't being invoked until the end of the year, can Britain have another national vote on Brexit before then? Britain could have national votes every week if the Government decided to hold them, but the government seems disinclined to have another referendum on Brexit.