8 ms·

Petitions for Brexit are completely pointless. We already know half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay, so unless that petition has more than 33

Petitions for Brexit are completely pointless. We already know half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay, so unless that petition has more than 33 million signatures then it doesn't prove much does it. (FYI: I voted remain and think Brexit is completely dumb, but it doesn't change how pointless petitions are for subjects where it's well established what people's opinions are)

colinramsay 8y ago
While I think this petition will fall on deaf ears, you can't definitively say "half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay", because not all of the country voted in the referendum. Likewise, you could say: voting population of UK - 17.6m leave votes = people who didn't vote for Brexit Which is a huge majority and by that measure we shouldn't leave. I don't agree with that standpoint either, but both your viewpoint and that are misrepresentations.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >While I think this petition will fall on deaf ears, you can't definitively say "half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay", because not all of the country voted in the referendum. Those that didn't vote either way, don't count, and shouldn't count. Percentages in elections are of active voters. Unless they were prevented from voting some way, their post-facto protests are meaningless. You can't have your cake (not give a toss about votes and not participate) and eat it (still have your opinion matter on voted topics) too
  - colinramsay 8y ago
    I agree. But the statement "half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay" is still false.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Taken literally it is indeed false. But in democracies the percentages who want this or that are counted through voting. So technically, it is correct.
      - isostatic 8y ago
        You ask 66 people today, About 16 will have voted to leave, 16 to remain, 11 who didn't vote but could have, and 23 didn't get to vote because they were too young or aren't British citizens (even if they've lived here for 20 years and have British kids) (based on 1 million births and deaths a year, with about 2:1 ratio of people dying voting leave (in line with surveys that the older you were the more likely you were to vote and the more likely you were to vote leave) So about 24% would have voted to leave, 24% to remain, 17% didn't vote, 5% who can now vote but couldn't, and and 30% who still can't vote. The problem is that only the views of the 24% that voted to leave, and arguably the 41% that voted leave or didn't vote, seem to matter.
        coldtea 8y ago
        >and 23 didn't get to vote because they were too young or aren't British citizens Those are also not meant to vote, and rightly so. If you aren't a citizen (or aren't yet), you shouldn't decide of the country's matters. And if you're not an adult, you are considered not mature enough to have an opinion. That's part for the course in every democracy. In a democracy, "X of the the country wants Y" = "X of people qualified to vote && who voted, want Y". Even in the suffrage and civil rights era, nobody seriously complained that this doesn't include 10 year olds or non-citizens of a country. >The problem is that only the views of the 24% that voted to leave, and arguably the 41% that voted leave or didn't vote, seem to matter. That's not a problem, that's how democracy works. Want your opinion to matter? 1) Become an adult (e.g. just wait), 2) Become a citizen (if you're a foreigner) 3) DO vote (don't stay at home). Else the others who are will determine the result. The real problem is the hypocrisy. In the sense that all of the above wouldn't be considered a problem if the majority had voted to remain.
        isostatic 8y ago
  - megous 8y ago
    > Those that didn't vote either way, don't count, and shouldn't count. That's 3 years ago. There are ~3-4 mil. more young people that are now elligible for vote. Should they have no say?
    - lordlimecat 8y ago
      There are new voters who had no say in Trumps election. Thems just the breaks.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >That's 3 years ago. There are ~3-4 mil. more young people that are now elligible for vote. Should they have no say? They don't have a say in any other long-term-implementation matter which was voted before they became eligible for vote, so why would this be an exception?
      - megous 8y ago
        You just can't say what the country wants. You may only say what it wanted 3 years ago.
- atzd4b 8y ago
  More than half the people who cared enough to go and vote want to leave.
  - Jarmsy 8y ago
    *wanted
- jonplackett 8y ago
  The point I was making is that the petition proves nothing that isn't already know - a lot of people don't want to leave. It's not even a march where people have to go somewhere to show how much they care. it's just a button click - which is an easier thing to do than go out and vote. so it's not worth reporting, it's meaningless.
Jarmsy 8y ago
"half the country wants to leave" A slim majority of those who voted, several years ago, stirred up by masses of illegal propaganda, especially in the last days before the vote. Now after getting some idea of the reality, the tides look to have significantly changed. Current opinion polls are showing significant majority for remain.(61% in the last YouGov poll) (Also, it was 17 not 33)
- nisuni 8y ago
  > Current opinion polls Polls before Brexit where wrong, no reasons to trust them now.
  - dabeeeenster 8y ago
    They were within a margin of error on the day of the vote.
    - nisuni 8y ago
      That’s false.
- bloak 8y ago
  According to The Economist, Feb 23, reporting on a YouGov survey in December, 49% support Remain, and that number hasn't changed much. However, the 51% who don't support Remain support a variety of different proposals. To me it seems highly unlikely that any particular proposal would beat Remain in a choice between those two options. Remain is the Condorcet winner. That "61%" is probably about right for what would you'd get for a two-way referendum between Remain and No Deal, or between Remain and May's Deal, but if you were to repeat the Remain-Leave referendum (which would be an insane thing to do - it was madness the first time), I wouldn't be surprised if Leave would win again, by a narrow margin. "Well, if you knows of a better 'ole go to it"?
  - gpderetta 8y ago
    A proper followup referendum should be something like this. A) Should we leave? B) if we leave, should be we leave even without a deal with the EU? I.e. two (or more) distinct questions. If you vote no at the fort question, you still get to express your opinion on the second.
avar 8y ago
> [...]so unless that petition has more than 33 million signatures then it doesn't prove much does it[...] It's not going to prove much even then. As a test I just signed this with a fake name, all you need is an E-Mail address and to enter some valid UK post code. Anyone who's paying any attention to some Internet petition that's implemented like this is crazy. In some other European countries there's online petitions like this, but they'll make you go through the government's official login gateway.
- tikkabhuna 8y ago
  Are you sure they don't check the electoral roll behind the scenes?
  - blinky1456 8y ago
    Entries are absolutely validated, you cannot just use proxies and automate hundreds of thousands of signings. The people behind the petition website are not idiots.
    - j16sdiz 8y ago
      Do you meant the petition website have access to a full list of British citizen personal information? This can be worrying.
      - gideonparanoid 8y ago
        The electoral register is relatively open. You can view it in most public libraries, town hall etc. [0]. You can even buy it in some cases [1]. [0] https://www.gov.uk/electoral-register/view-electoral-register https://www.gov.uk/electoral-register/view-electoral-registe... [1] https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/162824/List-of-people-entitled-to-be-supplied-with-the-electoral-register.pdf https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_fil...
      - pjc50 8y ago
        The "electoral roll" is hardly secret.
minikites 8y ago
>We already know half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay The two halves are not static. Leave voters are predominately older and enough of them have died to shift the proportion (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-leave-eu-remain-vote-support-against-poll-uk-europe-final-say-yougov-second-referendum-peter-a8541971.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-leave-...). It's clear that that Leave was a racist (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/06/25/483362200/brexit-whats-race-got-to-do-with-it https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/06/25/483362200...) campaign designed to frighten old people. >Even if no one had changed their mind since the 2016 referendum, population changes mean that, from 19 January 2019, a majority of voters will back staying in the EU, according to the analysis. By 29 March, when Britain is due to leave the bloc, the Remain side is forecast to have a majority of around 100,000.
- huffmsa 8y ago
  You don't get to keep having do overs until enough of your opposition has died to get the result you want. Might as well just start banning "racists" and other undesirables from the polls outright if that's the path you want to go down.
  - lm28469 8y ago
    Or realize that referendums shouldn't be used for anything other than getting a rough idea of the population's opinion and starting discussions between people who actually know what they're talking about.
    - huffmsa 8y ago
      Oh yes. Giving the population a direct vote on anything is wildly dangerous and unpredictable unless you're Switzerland.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    > You don't get to keep having do overs One could say the same about May's repeated requests for votes in parliament on her "deal". It was rejected, we need a better solution. I voted remain but I'd rather crash out with no deal on the 29th than go through this endless uncertainty ad nauseum.
lm28469 8y ago
> We already know half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay I get it's a democracy yada yada, but how are people expected to make such a decision ? It has so many consequences on short and long term, even experts in the field struggle(d) to predict. We're not talking about the color of a national football team jersey or a 1% increase on alcohol tax here. The vote wasn't about staying or leaving EU, it was about how modern propaganda can tear apart a leading world nation. You always get the worst of people when you target their irrational fears "they" steal our money (EU budget) , "they" invade our country (immigration), &c.
- lazyjones 8y ago
  > You always get the worst of people when you target their irrational fears You get the worst anti-democratic statements from people who believe their own voting to be based on rational thought and everyone else's on irrational fears.
  - lm28469 8y ago
    > worst anti-democratic statements Direct democracy isn't the only form of democracy. We're all irrational and biased, that's inherent to being human. Some people are more informed than other and there are processes to mitigate biases (direct democracy isn't one of them). The problem comes from people who have no business in the vote, no knowledge of the issues, are not even aware of what biases are, and drink the propaganda kool aid. Brexit was mostly about: - "we spend to much money on EU" - "too many migrants" Well first off London only strives because of international financial businesses, closing the borders and making it harder for people to migrate is a death sentence [0]. Since the vote Brexit cost the UK much more than what they contribute to the EU [1], they export/import ~50% of their good to/from Europe [2] Time will tell, what I'm convinced of is that Brexit was sold on lies. It might turns out good for them, but if it does it won't be because of good planning and well thought decisions, it'll be a combination of luck and really good damage control. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/371c63ba-4b08-11e9-8b7f-d49067e0f50d https://www.ft.com/content/371c63ba-4b08-11e9-8b7f-d49067e0f... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46338585 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46338585 [2] https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-eu-trade/ https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-eu-trade/
vladimir-y 8y ago
> Brexit is completely dumb Well not completely. It allows UK politicians to imitate useful activity around the Brexit.
ksec 8y ago
The question, or the Referendum was never very clear. There are those who voted Leave but would not have voted for leaving the EEA. There are those who voted leave because there were not happy with EU AND the UK Government. When you have inequality, people start to blame something, whether that is EU or UK. Basically the Referendum should never have happened in the first place, it doesn't have a legal blinding ( Correct me if I am wrong on this one ), and I totally blame David Cameron for the current mess.
raxxorrax 8y ago
True. A petition is clearly less worth than a referendum. I think the UK should just leave, consolidate the result, and re-join if they wish to do so. Sure, they would have to give up a lot of privileges, but these would be scrapped anyway and are mostly counter to the idea of a union. I am not from the UK and I would have voted for staying in the union. Even if the EU is a undemocratic, bureaucratic moloch that really needs a lot of constructive criticism to improve. But having people actually want to be part of a union is much more important than any technicalities involving trade, foreign relations and policies. The lack of respect for the position of Brexiteers had its own effect, no matter how stupid you think their decision is.

colinramsay 8y ago

While I think this petition will fall on deaf ears, you can't definitively say "half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay", because not all of the country voted in the referendum. Likewise, you could say: voting population of UK - 17.6m leave votes = people who didn't vote for Brexit Which is a huge majority and by that measure we shouldn't leave. I don't agree with that standpoint either, but both your viewpoint and that are misrepresentations.

coldtea 8y ago
>While I think this petition will fall on deaf ears, you can't definitively say "half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay", because not all of the country voted in the referendum. Those that didn't vote either way, don't count, and shouldn't count. Percentages in elections are of active voters. Unless they were prevented from voting some way, their post-facto protests are meaningless. You can't have your cake (not give a toss about votes and not participate) and eat it (still have your opinion matter on voted topics) too
- colinramsay 8y ago
  I agree. But the statement "half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay" is still false.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Taken literally it is indeed false. But in democracies the percentages who want this or that are counted through voting. So technically, it is correct.
    - isostatic 8y ago
      You ask 66 people today, About 16 will have voted to leave, 16 to remain, 11 who didn't vote but could have, and 23 didn't get to vote because they were too young or aren't British citizens (even if they've lived here for 20 years and have British kids) (based on 1 million births and deaths a year, with about 2:1 ratio of people dying voting leave (in line with surveys that the older you were the more likely you were to vote and the more likely you were to vote leave) So about 24% would have voted to leave, 24% to remain, 17% didn't vote, 5% who can now vote but couldn't, and and 30% who still can't vote. The problem is that only the views of the 24% that voted to leave, and arguably the 41% that voted leave or didn't vote, seem to matter.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >and 23 didn't get to vote because they were too young or aren't British citizens Those are also not meant to vote, and rightly so. If you aren't a citizen (or aren't yet), you shouldn't decide of the country's matters. And if you're not an adult, you are considered not mature enough to have an opinion. That's part for the course in every democracy. In a democracy, "X of the the country wants Y" = "X of people qualified to vote && who voted, want Y". Even in the suffrage and civil rights era, nobody seriously complained that this doesn't include 10 year olds or non-citizens of a country. >The problem is that only the views of the 24% that voted to leave, and arguably the 41% that voted leave or didn't vote, seem to matter. That's not a problem, that's how democracy works. Want your opinion to matter? 1) Become an adult (e.g. just wait), 2) Become a citizen (if you're a foreigner) 3) DO vote (don't stay at home). Else the others who are will determine the result. The real problem is the hypocrisy. In the sense that all of the above wouldn't be considered a problem if the majority had voted to remain.
        isostatic 8y ago
- megous 8y ago
  > Those that didn't vote either way, don't count, and shouldn't count. That's 3 years ago. There are ~3-4 mil. more young people that are now elligible for vote. Should they have no say?
  - lordlimecat 8y ago
    There are new voters who had no say in Trumps election. Thems just the breaks.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >That's 3 years ago. There are ~3-4 mil. more young people that are now elligible for vote. Should they have no say? They don't have a say in any other long-term-implementation matter which was voted before they became eligible for vote, so why would this be an exception?
    - megous 8y ago
      You just can't say what the country wants. You may only say what it wanted 3 years ago.
atzd4b 8y ago
More than half the people who cared enough to go and vote want to leave.
- Jarmsy 8y ago
  *wanted
jonplackett 8y ago
The point I was making is that the petition proves nothing that isn't already know - a lot of people don't want to leave. It's not even a march where people have to go somewhere to show how much they care. it's just a button click - which is an easier thing to do than go out and vote. so it's not worth reporting, it's meaningless.

Jarmsy 8y ago

"half the country wants to leave" A slim majority of those who voted, several years ago, stirred up by masses of illegal propaganda, especially in the last days before the vote. Now after getting some idea of the reality, the tides look to have significantly changed. Current opinion polls are showing significant majority for remain.(61% in the last YouGov poll) (Also, it was 17 not 33)

nisuni 8y ago
> Current opinion polls Polls before Brexit where wrong, no reasons to trust them now.
- dabeeeenster 8y ago
  They were within a margin of error on the day of the vote.
  - nisuni 8y ago
    That’s false.
bloak 8y ago
According to The Economist, Feb 23, reporting on a YouGov survey in December, 49% support Remain, and that number hasn't changed much. However, the 51% who don't support Remain support a variety of different proposals. To me it seems highly unlikely that any particular proposal would beat Remain in a choice between those two options. Remain is the Condorcet winner. That "61%" is probably about right for what would you'd get for a two-way referendum between Remain and No Deal, or between Remain and May's Deal, but if you were to repeat the Remain-Leave referendum (which would be an insane thing to do - it was madness the first time), I wouldn't be surprised if Leave would win again, by a narrow margin. "Well, if you knows of a better 'ole go to it"?
- gpderetta 8y ago
  A proper followup referendum should be something like this. A) Should we leave? B) if we leave, should be we leave even without a deal with the EU? I.e. two (or more) distinct questions. If you vote no at the fort question, you still get to express your opinion on the second.

avar 8y ago

> [...]so unless that petition has more than 33 million signatures then it doesn't prove much does it[...] It's not going to prove much even then. As a test I just signed this with a fake name, all you need is an E-Mail address and to enter some valid UK post code. Anyone who's paying any attention to some Internet petition that's implemented like this is crazy. In some other European countries there's online petitions like this, but they'll make you go through the government's official login gateway.

tikkabhuna 8y ago
Are you sure they don't check the electoral roll behind the scenes?
- blinky1456 8y ago
  Entries are absolutely validated, you cannot just use proxies and automate hundreds of thousands of signings. The people behind the petition website are not idiots.
  - j16sdiz 8y ago
    Do you meant the petition website have access to a full list of British citizen personal information? This can be worrying.
    - gideonparanoid 8y ago
      The electoral register is relatively open. You can view it in most public libraries, town hall etc. [0]. You can even buy it in some cases [1]. [0] https://www.gov.uk/electoral-register/view-electoral-register https://www.gov.uk/electoral-register/view-electoral-registe... [1] https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/162824/List-of-people-entitled-to-be-supplied-with-the-electoral-register.pdf https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_fil...
    - pjc50 8y ago
      The "electoral roll" is hardly secret.

minikites 8y ago

>We already know half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay The two halves are not static. Leave voters are predominately older and enough of them have died to shift the proportion (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-leave-eu-remain-vote-support-against-poll-uk-europe-final-say-yougov-second-referendum-peter-a8541971.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-leave-...). It's clear that that Leave was a racist (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/06/25/483362200/brexit-whats-race-got-to-do-with-it https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/06/25/483362200...) campaign designed to frighten old people. >Even if no one had changed their mind since the 2016 referendum, population changes mean that, from 19 January 2019, a majority of voters will back staying in the EU, according to the analysis. By 29 March, when Britain is due to leave the bloc, the Remain side is forecast to have a majority of around 100,000.

huffmsa 8y ago
You don't get to keep having do overs until enough of your opposition has died to get the result you want. Might as well just start banning "racists" and other undesirables from the polls outright if that's the path you want to go down.
- lm28469 8y ago
  Or realize that referendums shouldn't be used for anything other than getting a rough idea of the population's opinion and starting discussions between people who actually know what they're talking about.
  - huffmsa 8y ago
    Oh yes. Giving the population a direct vote on anything is wildly dangerous and unpredictable unless you're Switzerland.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  > You don't get to keep having do overs One could say the same about May's repeated requests for votes in parliament on her "deal". It was rejected, we need a better solution. I voted remain but I'd rather crash out with no deal on the 29th than go through this endless uncertainty ad nauseum.

lm28469 8y ago

> We already know half the country wants to leave and half wants to stay I get it's a democracy yada yada, but how are people expected to make such a decision ? It has so many consequences on short and long term, even experts in the field struggle(d) to predict. We're not talking about the color of a national football team jersey or a 1% increase on alcohol tax here. The vote wasn't about staying or leaving EU, it was about how modern propaganda can tear apart a leading world nation. You always get the worst of people when you target their irrational fears "they" steal our money (EU budget) , "they" invade our country (immigration), &c.

lazyjones 8y ago
> You always get the worst of people when you target their irrational fears You get the worst anti-democratic statements from people who believe their own voting to be based on rational thought and everyone else's on irrational fears.
- lm28469 8y ago
  > worst anti-democratic statements Direct democracy isn't the only form of democracy. We're all irrational and biased, that's inherent to being human. Some people are more informed than other and there are processes to mitigate biases (direct democracy isn't one of them). The problem comes from people who have no business in the vote, no knowledge of the issues, are not even aware of what biases are, and drink the propaganda kool aid. Brexit was mostly about: - "we spend to much money on EU" - "too many migrants" Well first off London only strives because of international financial businesses, closing the borders and making it harder for people to migrate is a death sentence [0]. Since the vote Brexit cost the UK much more than what they contribute to the EU [1], they export/import ~50% of their good to/from Europe [2] Time will tell, what I'm convinced of is that Brexit was sold on lies. It might turns out good for them, but if it does it won't be because of good planning and well thought decisions, it'll be a combination of luck and really good damage control. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/371c63ba-4b08-11e9-8b7f-d49067e0f50d https://www.ft.com/content/371c63ba-4b08-11e9-8b7f-d49067e0f... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46338585 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46338585 [2] https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-eu-trade/ https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-eu-trade/

vladimir-y 8y ago

> Brexit is completely dumb Well not completely. It allows UK politicians to imitate useful activity around the Brexit.

ksec 8y ago

The question, or the Referendum was never very clear. There are those who voted Leave but would not have voted for leaving the EEA. There are those who voted leave because there were not happy with EU AND the UK Government. When you have inequality, people start to blame something, whether that is EU or UK. Basically the Referendum should never have happened in the first place, it doesn't have a legal blinding ( Correct me if I am wrong on this one ), and I totally blame David Cameron for the current mess.

raxxorrax 8y ago

True. A petition is clearly less worth than a referendum. I think the UK should just leave, consolidate the result, and re-join if they wish to do so. Sure, they would have to give up a lot of privileges, but these would be scrapped anyway and are mostly counter to the idea of a union. I am not from the UK and I would have voted for staying in the union. Even if the EU is a undemocratic, bureaucratic moloch that really needs a lot of constructive criticism to improve. But having people actually want to be part of a union is much more important than any technicalities involving trade, foreign relations and policies. The lack of respect for the position of Brexiteers had its own effect, no matter how stupid you think their decision is.