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That's fair. I suspect we're both nutpicking at this point, facilitated by the abundance of nuts on both sides. I do think it's a little disingenuous to try to

by mrec 9y ago

That's fair. I suspect we're both nutpicking at this point, facilitated by the abundance of nuts on both sides. I do think it's a little disingenuous to try to limit the mandate to just those four words. If both sides of the referendum campaign made it clear that a Leave win would entail X (e.g. leaving the Customs Union) then it's tough to deny that the result constituted a mandate for X. In the same way, a government that breaks its manifesto promises can't just turn around and say, "Well, we didn't write that promise on the ballot paper itself, so what are you complaining about?"

notahacker 9y ago
An abundance of nuttiness around symbolic issues is certainly another argument for why referenda in general make policy laundering easy! There's a big difference between a manifesto mandate for a government to try to do X, which the Opposition are expected and encouraged to try to revise and thwart, and an assumption that something as little-discussed and likely irrelevant to most people's voting intent as whether to retain a Customs Union is a non-severable, non-contestable facet of public assent to leave the EU. That would have been the case even if a simple, practical customs border solution had been proposed at any time. As it is, we get "look, we can square this circle with the unilateral free trade we've been advocating for years, and to hell with the people who actually voted Leave because they wanted more protectionism not less..."