101–110 of 316 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not many
6% of leave voters regret their choice according to an academic study published about a month ago, enough to swing the vote the other way.... And as the effects of a potential Brexit continue to bite, this percentage will only increase http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-resources/brexit-bri...
Mrs May has a 14 point lead in the polls and justification to call an election were Parliament to block Article 50. Given the current state of the opposition, their leader, and the fact that many Labour seats voted Leave it is a pretty safe bet that the Conservatives could end up with a 100+ majority. The key thing comes down to what "block Article 50" means. If the Government decide to not give ground during the Par…
The issue here is that Theresa May cannot call a general election. The Fixed-term Parliament Act means that the only ways to call an early general election are if parliament passes a motion of no confidence in her majesty's government or a two thirds majority of MPs passes a motion to bring an early general election. (A third alternative would be to repeal the act.)
Rather odd situation now. May was lukewarm on remaining, but may now be forced to whip her MPs into voting to leave. And the MPs will be under pressure to do as people had voted in the referendum. At the same time public opinion may well have moved.
And the MPs constituents who they are supposed to represent may be from areas that voted remain.
I can't believe the UK government allowed this to happen. They went ahead with the referendum without ever explaining what Leave means. They should have drafted the Leave plan first, with very specific dates, and have people vote on that. "Do you want Britain to invoke Article 50 by 31 Dec 2016?" That would have been the responsible thing to do. (If anyone argues that you can't have a referendum on such a specificall…
Given that both governments refused to contemplate the possibility, how much of a plan did you expect there to be? Planning for the outcome of referendums is the governments job!
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But whatever they call it, it is majority indeed and that's the democracy - you either accept that majority wins or well... don't know
Or realise that the 52-48 reflects a point in time, that things change and therefore it's perfectly ok to campaign against brexit, and try to stop it. Or do you subscribe to the point of view that we should only have had a single general election and abide by that result for all time?
If we weren't asked whether we wanted to join a post-Lisbon Treaty EU, and once we were in it, we actively said we don't want it, why should we remain in it?
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The issue here is that Theresa May cannot call a general election. The Fixed-term Parliament Act means that the only ways to call an early general election are if parliament passes a motion of no confidence in her majesty's government or a two thirds majority of MPs passes a motion to bring an early general election. (A third alternative would be to repeal the act.)
This is a purely theoretical obstacle. In practice, she could call a vote of no confidence in her government and order her MPs to abstain at very short notice.
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> I really wish they'd stop calling it a "clear majority". I'm not sure when 52-48 was ever such. It's a majority though. If they wanted to have a higher threshold for the vote (say 60%) they should have done as much when writing the referendum.
Only 27% of UK people voted to leave, out of all of them.
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...and the referendum was purely advisory which means they can do whatever they wish.
Theoretically, yes. That's sort of like saying the British army ultimately answers to the Queen so the Queen could run the country as a dictatorship if she wanted to. It's not an argument rooted in the real world though. Queenie would be gone tomorrow if she tried that. The vast majority of the British voters do not like the EU. Most voted out and of those who voted remain, about half were motivated by simple fear of…
33.5 million voted 44.7 million could vote 64.1 million people total
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I really wish they'd stop calling it a "clear majority". I'm not sure when 52-48 was ever such.
Given the 72.2% turnout[1] it was just 37.5% of the voting-eligible population that voted for Brexit. The whole Brexit saga makes me think more than ever that voting on issues of such national importance (including general elections) should be made mandatory. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/24/how-did-turnout-a...
Regardless, I think this entire line of reasoning makes no sense. You could dismiss pretty much any election by multiplying the "yes" votes with voter turnout to get less than 50%.
That's just how democracies work, if you don't care enough to vote you don't get a say, that doesn't mean the opinions of people who do turn up should be given less weight.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Commun...
This was frankly unexpected. I wonder what P(supreme=no|high=yes) ? If anyone knows please say. Will the gov bother appealing? The ruling makes available a sabateurs toolbox and could potentially delay Brexit for some time. My bet is that the government don't appeal and then go onto put serious media pressure on parliament to pull the trigger quickly. Having said that I was definitely betting that the high court woul…
The technical question about whether the European Communities Act enshrined a particular set of rights as guaranteed in the treaties, or enshrined whatever rights happened to be a consequence of those treaties from time-to-time seems a much closer question in my view. I think the judgment is convincing on the point, but it wouldn't surprise me if another bench took a different view. In fact, the High Court in Northern Ireland did, when they recently ruled (though the present judgment does address and explain the differences).
I think the other thing worth mentioning is that this was a very high powered High Court panel - it featured both the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls - so it's not exactly akin to a handful of random junior judges giving an opinion in expectation of being overturned. The Supreme Court may take a different view of the merits, of course.