To think a second referendum is the ONLY democratic way forward?

[tequilasunrises]

With Remain, Deal and No Deal on the ballot?

It’s becoming so tricky to gage the public view on Brexit now that No Deal seems the most likely outcome. The DM comments would have you believe that No Deal was what we voted for all along. There a #remainernow campaigns on Twitter that argue that No Deal was never what anyone voted before. There are original Remainers that claim we have been treated so badly by the EU that they would now vote to Leave.

I still think Leave would win, but I think this would be split between Deal and No Deal giving Remain a majority.

But Brexit with a Deal and No Deal Brexit are seemingly two different factions now, so how else can any government democratically get around this?

Thoughts?

@Timtamtom on 05 June 1975 the UK held a referendum on whether to join the EEC

You're trying to manipulate the vote by splitting the Leave options and having only one Remain option. You would be as well offering option 1: Remain. Option 2: REMAIN (but in upper case).

If there was another referendum, it would need to be a choice between Leave and Remain. Then a second section saying if Leave - deal or no deal.

I read an article from John Curtice that said the number of people who want a second referendum is about the same as the number of people who want no deal. That raises interesting questions about legitimacy.

I'm not offering that as a reason why we shouldn't observe the result of the last referendum timtamtom, I'm countering the argument that the result would be the same because not many people have changed their minds. The reason why we shouldn't implement the 2016 result is that the winning side broke electoral law. No other reason is needed. To protect our democracy, we cannot respect it.

But that was a vote to join. We had one vote to join decades ago and we had and should only have one vote to leave. That doesn’t make 2016’s referendum a ‘second referendum’ in that sense because it was asking a completely different question

Both questions essentially asked the same thing: do you wish to be a member of the EEC/EU?

The difference is though that the 70s one was a vote to join something. We joined it, we were in it for a long time and then we were given the choice to leave. The majority chose to leave.
You can’t compare that to not getting the answer you wanted in 2016 and calling for another vote to get your way.

I'm not of the view that the 70s referendum bound us in perpetuity, but I think it might be useful to hear how long people feel is acceptable before another referendum can be called. Because trying to pretend there's a substantial difference between the two when they both concerned our membership is angels and pinheads stuff really. By that argument, if we leave, we can have another referendum on rejoining the day after, because after all it's asking a different question.

One vote to join and one vote to leave (although the questions were phrased the same/similarly on paper) is fair.

You can’t have referendums every few years. It should be one to join and one to leave. That way it’s full circle.

I’m sure if remain had won, you wouldn’t be best pleased at the thought of another vote...but then you’re all the same aren’t you

The difference is though that the 70s one was a vote to join something.
No it wasn't. We had joined already - the 1975 vote was remain/leave.

Ok we should leave (as the referendum said) and then in 40 odd years, remainers can have another vote

@Timtamtom on 05 June 1975 the UK held a referendum on whether to join the EEC

Incorrect - that was a remain/leave.

I think the GE in October is likely to be like a rerun of the referendum with those wanting to leave voting Torys or Brexit party. Those wanting to remain voting for Lib dems or Labour (assuming Labour are offering an option to remain).

The 1975 question was
Do you think that the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community (the Common Market)?

It isn't the answer of the 2016 referendum that's the problem, it's that it was illegally obtained. Do you really want this country to continue down a path where the corruption of democracy is ignored?

Apologies @familycourtq - my attention isn't fully on this thread

What we need is to return control to our representative democracy - set aside the 2016 referendum, stick Cameron in the stocks for allowing it to happen and promise not to use referenda again. MPs can then stop banging on about 'the will of the people' before pursuing self-harming policies and do their job unimpeded.

You want brexit? Vote the brexit party into power in parliament.

As your grandmother would have said
“Measure twice cut once”
Clearly 3 years later there is no logical reason no to have a second referendum with the benefit of hindsight if what leaving will mean.
Alternative/ preference style with remain Teressa may deal and no deal as options, you get 2 votes. If any options gets 50% of first choice votes it wins, if not then the third place option is eliminated and the second votes get split between the other to to give you a majority decision.
Incidentally when it comes to major no way back constitutional changes like this or independence votes it should have had a higher threshold say 60% to avoid the problem that you could re run the referendum and have a different result after a short period.

Do you really want this country to continue down a path where the corruption of democracy is ignored?

The responses from the Leavers in this thread make it pretty clear that they don't have a problem with it. One can only hope they're unrepresentative.

@CornishMaid1 I think you're missing the point slightly. Voting for a politician party is not a referendum. We stayed in the EU based on a vote for ~50 years without knowing for certain what was going to happen (based on what the public was told at the time), so if we're being fair, really, we should leave (as what was voted for) for the next ~50 years and have a revote then, don't you think? You can't just revote whenever you get the answer you don't want - take the Scottish referendum for example - it's now beyond a joke!

Why do people keep saying they think people want a second referendum because they didn't like the result of the first one?

I want a second referendum because:

-one side of the first one was found to have broken electoral law and it would have been re-run had it not been "advisory"
-the first one targeted voters using illegally obtained data making promises it couldn't and didn't keep deliberately to sway them
-the first one didn't establish a clear mandate for how to leave

So overall, it's got nothing to do with whether I liked the result or not. I want a second one because the first one wasn't robust enough to take the UK on this one way car crash of a debacle and I want to stop wasting more money second guessing what people now want.

It beggars belief that so many people are prepared to overlook just how weak the results of the 2016 referendum are.

What @BonnesVacances said

@MerryChristmasHarry it almost beggars belief that so many people don't care. The trouble with that attitude is that when it happens again but gives an advantage to the other side on an issue they do care about, it will be far too late to make a difference.

I will say for the general public that our political class haven't set much of an example. Most of them, even the Remainers, have failed to spell out that the referendum lost legitimacy as soon as the rule breaking was discovered. Too afraid to tell people what they didn't want to hear.

Yes, the lack of honesty all around is unnerving. But not wanting to hear this isn't the same as not needing to hear this, I wish more politicians could grasp that

Very true. There has been a great deal of cowardice on show in Parliament from 2016 until yesterday.