This is bullshit :- brexit

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www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-supreme-court-ruling-judges-defy-theresa-may-and-hand-power-to-parliament-a7542406.html

I can see the MP voting to stay in.

I will have to try and find where the voting breakdown was - I haven't looked at it since last Autumn.

My MP is convinced that 'the people have spoken' despite being a Remainer herself, in a Remain constituency. I think there is a good chance that she could lose her seat over it - she had a slender win in 2010, but consolidated it in 2015 when the LibDem vote collapsed. But she is likely to find that the LibDem vote comes back, probably from a slightly different section of the electorate - not ex Labour voters but moderate Conservatives as well as true LibDem voters.

I would predict that some Tory constituencies will see much reduced majorities.

My MP is a rabid Leaver, but his constituency voted Remain.
Same here. And, he will be voted in again - because he's a Tory, and where I live has been a Tory stronghold for 50+ years.

Anyway, it will go through - Corbin has announced that Labour will be voting leave, and I presume the Conservatives will issue a whip (is that the right term?) as well.

And this: It's just that the law says it can't be decided by one person. Which is perfectly correct. This is what stops us from living in a dictatorship. Otherwise the PM could decide anything: to make it illegal to wear red socks on Tuesday, to allow only redheads to vote, or to legalise stabbing people.

I think the MPs should vote with their consciences. If they are genuinely convinced that one option is better, put up proper arguments and be prepared to defend that position. That is what we should have had before the Referendum was called.

Of course we can never predict the future exactly, especially when the unknown unknowns turn up unexpectedly, but at least make proper contingency plans for the known knowns.

I don't think many people voting leave understood what they were voting for

How utterly condescending

I can hazard a guess on the general gist of this thread so I'm not going to read through it.

The majority of MPs won't vote against Brexit - we live in a Democracy thank God. Today is a good day for Brexit because.

1. The ruling has now paved the way to a clearer legal Brexit.
2. The ruling says devolved governments cannot veto.
3. Article 50 is imminent.
4. The markets like it.

My only concern today is who footing the Supreme Court bill?

Actually, there is a LOT of evidence about the way different demographics voted. The fact that it has limitations that need to be acknowledged when handling it does not make it fiction or 'pure supposition'. It means that we need to consider it as the outcome of a certain set of assumptions - which is also true of all social scientific and scientific quantitative data. Of course, saying that the data suggests the Leave vote seems to have risen with age is absolutely not to say that all older people voted against Remain. A percentage is a proportion, not a totality.

A lack of calibration in handling evidence, is one of the great evils of the current times. I do not understand how we have come to a situation where people are working in such simplistic terms of 'fact' and 'fiction' instead of more finely graded degrees of certainty. It is an epidemic that affects both sides, too. I know someone who won't travel to the East of the country now because she fears it is full of bigots, even though the proportion of people who voted Leave there is only a few % higher than it is in her Remain-voting 'home'.

I think it's quite possible that some people did not know exactly what they were voting for (you could say that about any election or vote), but to assume most of the Leave voters didn't know what the referendum was about is quite insulting to them.

And this: It's just that the law says it can't be decided by one person. Which is perfectly correct. This is what stops us from living in a dictatorship. Otherwise the PM could decide anything: to make it illegal to wear red socks on Tuesday, to allow only redheads to vote, or to legalise stabbing people.

Indeed. It's rather sad to see so many of the voting public happy to have a dictator unilaterally enforce something they agree with without having the foresight to consider the implications of such power. Even worse when such people have been banging on about taking power back from a so-called unaccountable administration.

My only concern today is who footing the Supreme Court bill?

Ah well, I think you'll find that - at least in part - that was me, as someone who happily donated to the legal bill for this appeal via The People's Challenge component

I'm a little surprised it would be necessary to defend parliamentary sovereignty in a civilized land such as this, but so be it. We must stand up for British Values wherever necessary and whatever cost.

Nope, you don't need to send me a refund...it's on the House of Commons

tiggy - I understand that Leave would win in either case! What I'm pointing to (and doing it incoherently) is that the referendum isn't (entirely) a party political matter. So there are areas where there is a difference between the local and the national vote, and there is a conflict between the party line and the locally expressed will. An example might be Clive Lewis in Norwich. His area voted Remain, but the party line is to back the triggering of Article 50 and being a member of the shadow cabinet, he is pretty strongly mandated to follow that. (I think he may not in practice, though). Really, what we have is two different democratic 'mandates', both of which have a legitimate moral pull on MPs.

There isn't a single Leave voter, who can honestly say they knew what they were voting for. Even to this day, we do not know what Brexit will look like, because there was no fucking plan. How on earth the referendum was allowed to go ahead with no fucking plan is beyond me, but it was, so there you go.

You can argue that the majority understood the implications and possible risks involved in voting Leave and weighed them up against the potential pay-offs of a Leave vote. You can argue that the majority knew there would be no £350 million for the NHS and did not base their vote on that. You can't argue they knew what they were voting for because they didn't.

And in all fairness, nothing I have read from Leavers, before, during or after the vote has instilled any confidence in them from me. Looking at this thread, at least one Leaver is operating under the assumption that the EU give a shit over how you cook your sunday roast.

They also don't seem to quite grasp the idea of parliamentary sovereignty, despite the huge song and dance they made about it in the run up to the vote. In fact one could argue that the 'vocal' Leavers have a done a complete 180 on the matter, without realising the irony.

It's gone from - Take back control from the unelected elite. Give Parliament soverienty over our country. To - How very dare the Supreme Courts take back power from unelected millionaire Theresa May and give it back to parliament. We demand that soveriengnty be removed from parliament and be illegally given to May immediately.

There isn't a single Leave voter, who can honestly say they knew what they were voting for. Even to this day, we do not know what Brexit will look like, because there was no fucking plan.

Clearly not even the proponents knew what they were voting for.

I know someone who won't travel to the East of the country now because she fears it is full of bigots, even though the proportion of people who voted Leave there is only a few % higher than it is in her Remain-voting 'home'.

I wonder if she has ever pondered the irony of her writing off all of us in the east as bigots

It amazes me how many seemingly intelligent people, including journalists, can't seem to grasp that a correlation between a characteristic (say university education) and voting leave or remain can be big correlation or a small correlation or somewhere in between, and doesn't mean that everyone with the characteristic voted one way and without voted the other, just that there is some relationship.

SooWrites actually, the EU does give a shit over limiting exposure to acrylamide via food ...

Meanwhile the EU has issued a directive on how brown a roast potato is allowed to be.
The fact that people who are stupid enough to believe this were given a vote - the consequence of which will be to strip the rest of us of rights that we value - makes me fucking furious.

The fact that people who are stupid enough to believe this were given a vote - the consequence of which will be to strip the rest of us of rights that we value - makes me fucking furious.

Well, yes.

It's just that the law says it can't be decided by one person.

That's the result we heard at 9.30 this morning, although before then it wasn't clear. There were certainly arguments on the opposite side, and while 8-3 is obviously a big majority, three judges clearly found the alternate arguments convincing enough.

I often hear remainers say their opinions are valid and they'd like the views of the 48 to be considered as part of what happens next. The other side of the coin is that those believing our PM had the legal right to trigger Article 50 also held valid and reasonable opinions. And in contrast to certain remainers who want to overturn the referendum result, I don't know of any Brexiter who's going to be aiming to reverse today's result. Outvoted, yes. Uninformed and undemocratic, no.

It's not bullshit. It ensures proper procedure is followed and not bypassed. Hysterical reactions like this from leave supporters do no one any favours

I think the point about a 'downfall of democracy' is perhaps overstating it, but there is no doubt that we're in the middle of a period where traditional ideas of representational government are being questioned on both the left and the right, with both wings pointing out that the status quo is not, in fact, a 'neutral' system but one that propagates the power of a particular class. The irony is that the two movements that are most rabidly opposed to one another: momentum/far-left Labour and UKIP/Leave seem to share a desire to question the idea of middle class sovereignty, though from very different places and to very different ends

I think there is a lot in what you are saying, but I am not convinced that the Labour left are trying to challenge middle class power. In fact I think this is exactly their problem and why they are losing support at a vast rate. That said, I don't know much about the machinations of Momentum etc so happy to be enlightened.

Cameron was his usual superficial self on the referendum, aided and abetted by everyone else in Parliament this time. He told the public that Parliament would follow whatever they decided, without actually bothering to put in place a mechanism for doing so. Neither his Eurosceptic backbenchers nor any opposition party seems to have pulled him up on that.

And then when the Referendum Act was passed, it asked only a stay/leave question without any follow-ups (not saying that was necessarily a mistake, by the way, just pointing out there could have been questions about preferred process and opt-ins/opt-outs if any political faction had wanted them).

Parliament could have made the result binding on itself (but not on any subsequent Parliament) but didn't.

Hence people litigating to ask the judges what process should be followed under the Constitution. The judges have replied, and now it is back with the same politicians who cocked it all up in the first place. Anyone concerned should lobby their MP hard and fast.

99.5% of the population will not have understood the implications of voting either way. It is far too complicated, with far too many unknowns.

Speaking of rights, what about EU citizenship being forced on everyone in the 90s whether they wanted it or not? You can't even revoke your EU citizenship without also having to revoke your UK citizenship. Where was the mandate for the vast number of changes made to the "common market" we joined (with a referendum afterwards following a lot of government propaganda) which was a front for a project which always had becoming a superstate as its aim?

On the subject of not knowing what Brexit will be like, it's true it wasn't precisely defined. Yet people voted Leave despite this, so it would seem they preferred an imprecise future outside the EU, than an imprecise future inside it. (after all, no-one knows what the EU is going to be like in 5, 10, 50 years time either).

What people believed or did not believe prior to voting was researched by IPSOS Mori, valid as of 16th June. The results speak for themselves: www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3746/Immigration-is-now-the-top-issue-for-voters-in-the-EU-referendum.aspx

A snippet:

If Britain votes to stay in the EU:
1) Forty-five percent think it is true Turkey will be fast-tracked into the European Union and their population of 75 million people will have the right to free movement to the UK while another 45% say it is false.
2) Nearly half (48%) think it is true that Britain would be made to pay billions of pounds in bailouts for Eurozone countries in the future compared with 40% who think it is false.
3) Three in ten (28%) think it is true that there will be a higher risk of sex attacks on women by migrants compared with 62% who think this is false.
4) Additionally, just under half (47%) think it is true that Britain sends £350 million a week to the European Union compared to 39% who think it is false (78% say they have heard of this statement).

I'd conclude from this, that there were very many people who were wholly uninformed on the relevant facts one week prior to the referendum, inasmuch as they did not have a basic understanding of: the EU funding process; the Freedom of Movement for Workers legislation; veto process for granting membership; financial bailout rules and regulations. Following today's dummy-spits regarding the independent judiciary upholding the country's most basic democratic principles of UK parliamentary sovereignty, it's a safe bet that they knew fuck all about the way MEPs are elected and the EU legislative process interacts and has been historically embraced by the UK system either ...

Since these issues formed the basis of the Leave campaign, I think we can be sure that very many voters (not 100% but a very high proportion indeed) were ill-equipped to make an informed vote regarding the pros and cons of EU membership as it would affect even themselves, never mind their children or anyone else!

Truly astounding and most definitely bullshit that an opinion poll based on this quality of thought would be deemed as binding to future generations.

The judges have replied, and now it is back with the same politicians who cocked it all up in the first place.

Theresa May did sack quite a few people though

^ The opinion poll^ I was referring to was the EU referendum, by the way. The IPSOS Mori poll in contrast was quite well planned and executed
Shocked: [shoc