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There was, and is, no legal obligation on a UK government to take note of a referendum. They're just a big opinion poll, legally speaking. In some ways that's a
by NeedMoreTea 7y ago
There was, and is, no legal obligation on a UK government to take note of a referendum. They're just a big opinion poll, legally speaking. In some ways that's a big part of the problem.
Other countries, e.g. Switzerland, that use referenda have rules about super-majorities, campaigning and spending, when and if they will become law and so on. Ensures that you don't get vague hand-wavy referendum that is campaigned as "we'll get a deal easily" morphing into WTO terms hard brexit some painful time later.
- nailer 7y agoThat is correct. There obligation is moral.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoPoint being there is no moral mandate on such a thin margin of the minority who voted when there were laws broken in the campaign finance, the claims made and so forth. At least elections have the veneer of election law behind them. Referendum nations have a similar veneer behind referenda - to decide whether it was fairly arrived at, etc. Switzerland not long threw out a result because the electorate had been given some sort of misleading information in the campaign.
- nailer 7y agoWell we lost by something like 1.5 million people. Overturning the referendum result because of campaign finance law seems somewhat excessive.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoPerhaps so, but I think it would be better to have had those parameters established beforehand, and where the limits of what was considered fair under law were. Maybe people could consider it settled even if they didn't like the result Anything would be better than how we did do it, really. :)