Earlier PP raised a good point about him being a leader in the EU and potentially having to give the thumbs up on an extension too - does anyone have more understanding on this?
He doesn't get a vote on whether the extension is granted or not, the other leaders do. Didn't May have to wait in a room on her own for their decision and they took pity and sent her some food?
Even the smallest voluntary society has something in its constitution that says "major decisions that affect the fundamental principles of the Society require a 67% (or similar large value) majority"
If only Cameron had set terms such as this to the referendum then we wouldn't be in this mess.
The results was 51.89% for Leave and 48.11% for Remain, a margin of 3.78% with a difference of only 1.2 million votes between the results. When Johnson and his gang are banging on about The Will Of The People™️ they seem to conveniently forget that it is only the will of 51.89% of the people and they risk massively alienating the other 48.11%. It was too close a result and the majority is not large enough for them to be able to say "this is what the country wants" when actually all it does show is that the country is deeply divided on what it wants.
What should have happened is that the result should have been advisory, delegates should have been sent to EU to discuss it, research should have begun into how a country could go about extracting itself and then information provided to the electorate on whether it was indeed possible to leave. If it was then Article 50 should have been trigger and not before.
What should happen now is that Article 50 is revoked in order to stop the clock, save the money being wasted, and kick the can massively down the road. General Election because one is needed. Time and money is then spent on healing the divisions in the country and addressing the issues that led to the Leave vote in the first place. A cross party delegation goes to Brussels whose sole job is to gradually unplug the UK from the EU over a period of several years so that the transition is as seamless as possible with minimal impact upon jobs, the economy, trade, travel, etc. Once everything is in place to leave then a confirmatory referendum followed by either remaining or Article 50 being re-triggered, depending on the result. As the groundwork to extract the UK would have already been put in place, the two years following this re-triggering would be spent implementing all of those steps already set up rather than two years of arguing.
That's what, IMO, should happen but it never will as it's all turned into a gigantic pissing contest where instead of a Brexit that will appease the majority - leave and remain alike - we have a 'do or die' vanity project Brexit that will only please the most hardline of leave voters.
And I'm calling it now that when it all turns to shit following Brexit, when jobs end and prices rise and we're all significantly more skint, the people who will complain the most are those who have been the loudest in shouting "will of the people" and "leave means leave".