On Facebook I decided to repost an article which reported on the Liberal Democrats’ extreme, and highly odious, policies on abortion. Therefore I advocated against voting for the LibDems. In response some have been enquiring as to whether I now support Brexit. It is something of a non-sequitur but not totally illogical, since the LibDems are explicitly committed to reversing Brexit.
However, responsible voting must allow for the fact that there is more than one issue involved in general elections; they are not single-issue referendums. That so many elections often revolve around single issues is another matter. That the LibDems advocate abortion with the barest of limits, and desire to export their anti-life advocacy overseas, represents a single issue which acts as an effective veto on their desirability. What good is it staying in Europe if we condemn our unborn, and therefore powerless, fellow human beings to arbitrary death? To vote for a single issue is usually unwise; the foregoing notwithstanding, to vote against a single issue is sometimes morally necessary.
Labour is no pro-life party either but Labour’s current advocacy of a second referendum should not be allowed to entice Remainers into its camp. The first referendum was a grotesque mistake; another wrong will not make it right.
The problem is the mechanism of the referendum in the British system. It is a glorified, and vastly expensive, opinion poll of those who can be bothered to give their opinion. It requires only a simple majority across the entire United Kingdom. A referendum is not legally binding and there is no mechanism to balance regional variation. Such a referendum is a recipe for discord.
In Australia, also governed on the Westminster system, referendums are required to change its written constitution. Ordinarily the proposal must pass both houses of Parliament (and always at least one) before it can be put to the people. To pass, the question posed at the referendum must be supported by a majority of people in a majority of the six states; that is, there must be a majority of votes in at least four states as well as a majority nationally—a double majority. Moreover, if the proposal being voted on affects specifically the constitutional rights or status of a particular state, that state must return a majority vote for the proposal to pass. Voting is compulsory in Australia. Thus the result will authentically reflect the opinions of the entire nation.
Only eight out of 44 such referendums have succeeded in changing the constitution. There is a high threshold to surpass, and this acts as a brake on ephemeral, or merely regional, enthusiasm. But when a proposal does pass, it has the secure support of the majority of the nation. It is not a perfect system, but it superior to what transpired in 2016 in the UK.
By contrast the Brexit referendum of 2016 required a simple majority among voluntary voters taken as a whole across the Kingdom. 51.9% against 48.1% does not represent a sufficiently wide margin to ensure widespread acquiescence to the result. In total 33.6 million people voted out of a registered electorate of 46.5 million. Thus the referendum result can only be said to have reflected with certainty the opinions of 72.2% of the registered electorate across the Kingdom. Moreover there is no mechanism to take account of significant regional variation. That is why Ms Sturgeon cries foul on behalf of Scotland, that its No vote was disregarded, as in one sense it was since a simultaneous majority of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom was not required in addition to the overall simple majority.
Another referendum will duplicate this situation, and no doubt exacerbate it. Having had the referendum, and the government of the day having pledged—unnecessarily—to act on its result, that referendum needs to be respected.
A further tragedy is that, absent a referendum system fit for purpose, it is not fair to dump all the blame on Parliament for the failure to enact, as yet, the referendum result. Parliament was not legally bound to do so. It is unlikely that MPs were elected solely on their opinion about EU membership. They were elected not to conform to the latest opinion polls but to act and vote in accordance with the principles and policies on which they campaigned to be elected, and also according to their conscience (St Thomas More could teach us much on this point). That is representative democracy. The referendum has set up a rival authority to Parliament, and one that is not countenanced in the British constitution.
In all this can we surely find the roots of the current debacle.
I am not pro-Brexit, but neither am I do-or-die Remain. Another referendum would be pure and destructive folly. The bitterness that has been injected into the British body politic is appalling. The sooner Brexit is done and dusted the better. Then we get on with trying to make the best of it.
No more politics hereafter, but it does at least save me writing at length to all those who suspect a change of opinion on Brexit. And it took my mind off the Church for a while…
Georgia, my home state here in the US, voted to support a bill known as the Heartbeat bill— a bill that would protect a fetus in the womb at the pivotal time of 6 weeks when doctors can actually detect a heartbeat- ergo life.
Opponents argue that most woman are unaware that at 6 weeks they are even pregnant. Hollywood has threatened to pull out of Georgia over the passing of the bill, loudly claiming that their departure will cripple the state’s economy.
And yet it is a bill that passed with great numbers of votes— other states have passed similar written bills with each one being over turned by some court and judge.
Our bill is faring the same fate as courts work to over turn a bill that the population voted for yet the opposition, who lost, works feverently to have the majority’s decision overturned—
The libdems, as you call them, are the same libdems here who uphold abortion at all costs— with politicians such as Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, both of whom are cradle Catholics,touting abortion as a necessary right of women—
It is not a right nor is the life of a baby a choice—
And yes— I support Brexit despite my being on this side of the pond!
Refererenda are not really a part of our polity. When we have them they are one off. Cameron had all choices before him as to date, franchise and the nature and scale of the majority that would allow the question to succeed . He chose what he chose but all party leaders undertook to respect the result and made these undertakings both before and after the vote. There the problem of trust lies
Surely the point must be that those who didn’t bother to vote didn’t care. Therefore the majority of those who cared bothered to vote & the majority of those voting decided that the UK should leave the EU. The case for Scotland is (IMHO) a loose cannon as those who wanted Scotland to stand alone – the minority again – will do anything to make the UK Government (in which they are represented) look bad. Again IMHO if Scotland wants to be free of the UK the English should be allowed to vote because as far as I can see they are net receivers of UK benefits.
Another relevant difference that applies to constitutional referendums in Australia is that the electors vote on precisely worded amendments to the written constitution, not vague statements of intent.
Good point, and very relevant. Pax.
“The sooner Brexit is done and dusted the better.”
There’s a problem with that, which is that Brexit has hardly even started. Johnson’s withdrawal agreement is just the first step in a very long process. It’s been reckoned that it will take something like ten years to negotiate new trade deals with the EU, US, China and the rest of the world. By the time Brexit is actually finished, a sizeable proportion of the people that voted for it won’t even be alive.
Why do people find it so important to “honour” the result of a referendum based on campaigns so fraudulent and illegal that the result would already have been annulled if it had been legally binding (https://tinyurl.com/yymrbaga)? Isn’t the Good Friday Agreement more deserving of respect? If we place a border down the Irish Sea, then we will have, in effect, broken our commitment to a peace treaty (https://tinyurl.com/vj7rsfn). Doesn’t this matter?
Almost every poll conducted over the last 2½ years has shown that the majority of the UK would now rather remain in the EU (https://tinyurl.com/w48hx8h). This is hardly surprising, since Brexit delivers on none of the promises that were made in 2016. So I can’t see how another referendum could possibly repeat the result of 2016. Yes, there would be a minority of people upset with having the 2016 result overturned. But at least Brexit would be done and dusted.
To be fair (speaking as a Remain voter), the government’s lies of economic Armageddon outlined in a £9m publicly-funded leaflet (no such thing as government money) were equally questionable as Leave’s. Post-referendum economic performance confirmed that. As for the argument that ‘by then, they’ll have died off’ is both worryingly ageist and flies in the face of evidence of our 30s bracket sons and friends who all say – as I do – that there are more important things than Brexit. Democracy being extremely high on the list. As a mid-60s guy who has been banging on about the Establishment stitch-ups since my teens, they did their utmost to thwart democracy, and failed. Time to move on, and focus on even bigger issues, such as industrial scale slaughter of unborn humans.
Over-65s were more than twice as likely as under-25s to have voted to Leave the European Union (https://tinyurl.com/ycfl5cze). This is a matter of fact; there’s nothing ‘ageist’ about it. Meanwhile, our Russian-funded prime minister has still refused to publish the report on Russian interference in UK politics, which is extremely worrying (https://tinyurl.com/wml7k9v). Is nobody concerned about this?
I’d just like to point out that Ms Sturgeon and Alex Salmond scuppered the Scottish independence vote by opening it up to ‘residents’ – rather than citizens – which meant that many of the Polish and other Europeans who were simply working in Scotland (owing to the notorious ‘free movement’ policy) and may have gone home the next week, were free to register to vote in the Referendum. They also opened up the vote to sixteen-year-olds which Sturgeon and Salmond mistakenly thought guaranteed them a ‘Yes’ vote. It did not – and I had a very heated discussion on the matter with my own niece who intended to vote ‘No’. In fact, far from acting democratically, they, Sturgeon and Salmond, tried to gerrymander the vote. They failed and it has been calculated that if they had not interfered with the voting rules, the Scottish people would have voted at least 57% in favour of independence. So much for democracy and the will of the people. The British Government scuppered the previous vote by stipulating that two-thirds of the electorate – not of actual voters – must vote in favour, so, although the result was in favour of independence, this threshold was not reached. So – there is democracy and there is democracy.