Second Referendum

[MyNameIsArthur]

If there was a second referendum, how would you phrase the question on the ballot paper? I thought maybe it should be phrased in the following way in two parts but I'm not sure. What do you think?

A) Do you wish for the UK to Remain in the EU or to leave the EU ?

B) If the majority of the UK votes to leave the EU, do you wish for the UK to leave with:

                    1         Theresa May's deal
                    2          No deal

jm90914

I can see your argument however, Mays deal hasn't yet even been voted on, also, despite what Minister after Minister is trying to make out, the WA isn't an end state, its just a wish list and in 2 years time we could be stuck with almost anything, inc a no-deal or a EFTA style arrangement c/w FOM.

Remain needs no explanation and No-Deal is exactly that, we walk away, which is what it said on the ballot paper in 2016, Leave didn;t have any caveats.

Anyway, so long as May is still there, i doubt they'll be a PV, she is the problem now, firm in the belief that its her way or the highway and unable to see the absurdness of her position.

@Nicoand TheNiners
It's all very well saying we've already had that vote but people didn't know the details back then and I bet a lot of leavers will have changed their minds now they see the likely detail of how bad this will be for the U.K.
I am sorry that you didn't know what you were voting for, and you must feel lied to about the EU army. However, as I leaver, I knew exactly what I was voting for: a leaflet was sent to every household by the executive committee of the time, explaining that a vote to leave would mean no customs union, no single market and we would be economical worse off.

There is no evidence to support your theory of many leavers changing their mind In fact there is no consistent support for a PV (2 polls in favour, 2 polls against) which infers either no mind changing or mind changing equal and opposite.

How could you know what you were voting for when it hadn't been negotiated?

jasjas1973

in 2 years time we could be stuck with almost anything, inc a no-deal or a EFTA style arrangement c/w FOM.

That’s a good point.

Every time I think I get this mess straight in my head, something else comes along to remind me how complicated this is...

@Maursh

which infers either no mind changing or mind changing equal and opposite.

I’m inclined to agree. I doubt a significant amount of people have changed their mind (but I’m open minded to it, if I see data that suggests otherwise).

However, I did see polling from YouGov that suggested a big majority for remain vs a no deal exit. It was big margin, and would be hard to explain away as polls being unreliable.

Of course, it would take quite few consistent polls like this to begin to prove that a big chunk of leavers didn’t want no deal, but I think it was interesting enough to at least be part of the discussion.

As I said, I’m reluctant to have a referendum at all (although I can see there may be no other choice).

But may I ask why you think remain shouldn’t be an option? I mean, I get the point that it was already voted for, but if you’re confident that nobody’s opinion is changed then would it really be terrible to include it (i.e remain vs no deal)?

No deal will break the GFA so should not be an option.

Remain lost in 2016 so should not be an option.

Questions should be

Current negotiated deal offered by the government

Renegotiate with the EU

Renegotiate with the EU
No point in doing this as they have said they won't renegotiate and it is another unknown leading to the same problem as before. They've had TWO years to negotiate. It's this deal we have to decide on.

That's interesting, although a vast amount of polling I see has only been conducted online. Since those in the older generation are less likely to be included in the poll and more likely to vote leave statistically, I would suggest online polling results present bias. In addition this is a generation who remember life before the EU and I am inclined to the opinion they are more likely to be in favour of no deal.

I was being a bit provocative when I said that I don't think that remain should be an option. It was in response to all the posts saying that hard Brexit should be off the table and it should be between TM deal and remain. In general, I do not favour a people's vote. For one thing it would take 6 months and delay the process, and for another referenda are very divisive. There is a reason why we handed this decision making power to parliament. What if the new result is 52/48 to remain? Do we have a third go? What if hard Brexit wins, do the remoaners shut up? A PV doesn't really solve and issue, it just creates new ones, in my opinion.

Leave lost in 1975 so shouldn't have been an option in 2016.

See, doesn't work like that does it.

Of course remain "losing" in 2016 doesn't stop it being an option. The situation is different now, the deal is known, implications are starting to show, demographics are changing etc etc etc

Even if the situation wasn't different it should still be an option. If people don't want it they won't vote for it. If they do then they will and if they vote in sufficient numbers that it wins the. It's the most popular option.

It was in response to all the posts saying that hard Brexit should be off the table and it should be between TM deal and remain.

My reasoning is that you can't offer a referendum choice that isn't illegal or possible. You couldn't, for example, say "Would you like TM's deal or would you like everyone in the country to receive £1000 and their own personal slave?"

The situation is different now, the deal is known,

Yes we know much more than we did in 2016.We eventually got the suppressed impact assessments for different scenarios all of which show varying degrees of loss.

However the terms of the trading deal still aren't fully known, only the very fraught road map towards it.

The best Leave argument against a second ref would be that although we only know the proposed agreement for withdrawing. We still don't know the precise proposals for EU trade going forwards, if there will be any.

However it would be a home goal because -it would mean admitting the 2016 vote was for a total unknown and a 2018 vote is for a partial unknown.

Well no, the trading deal isn't known. But what is known now (which the informed already knew but we were few and far between) is the requirement for SM or backstop if we want any deal at all.

Back in the original referendum the Leave campaign deliberately didn’t detail any plans for leaving the EU because they knew it would make it more likely that they would lose referendum.

This little video , 30 minutes long by one of 3 blokes in a pub is worth a look. Grab a tea or coffee and watch, it is only Graham and he gets to the points pretty well.
After watching, try to think of ways that he might be wrong, without involving unicorns and bear in mind he has highlighted jut 8 points.

Abso fucking lutely @1tisILeClerc

@maursh

Managed to find the polling I mentioned and I got it wrong. Sorry about that.

It was deal vs no deal with remain voters included as well as leave voters. That was 65% in favour of deal.

When only leave voters are included it was 41% in favour of a deal, 51% in favour of no deal (and presumably 9% now either remain or “don’t know” since they weren’t mentioned).

Just wanted to correct myself.

Anyway, supplying the link. As I said I’m hopeless at maths and statistics so I may be completely wrong again.

It’s an interesting read.

I must admit, as a remainer I do love the constituency diagram on a three way vote (remain by a landslide), but I don’t seriously condone splitting the leave vote between 2 options. It’d be incredibly unfair, and I’d vote for May’s deal if those circumstances came up (even though I’d rather remain).

yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/12/06/mays-brexit-deal-leads-just-two-constituencies-it-?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=brexit_deal_model

The Conservatives won the election, with 42.4% of the vote versus Labour’s 40%.

The UKs electoral system works on number of seats gained - anything else is a distraction for the easily distracted.

So going by how things are and no other criteria, there are 650 seats in the House of Commons which a party needs to have 326 of in order to have a mathematical majority (the vagaries of Sinn Fein mean it's practically less).

In 2017, the Conservatives won 317 seats - not enough for a mathematical nor practical majority.

To describe such a result as "winning" the election is simply not true.

Given the general pisspoor knowledge most people have about the UKs constitution such nonsense is easily spouted and as easily believed. Like the faux outrage in 2010, when the cerebrally challenged told us that "no one voted for a coalition". Which is true to a degree. But if it's true, then it also follows that no one votes for a conservative government or a labour government either, but merely their local MP.

Remain or leave with the currently proposed deal. No Deal should t be an option because anyone even slightly informed about it knows it's disastrous.

{No Deal should t be an option because anyone even slightly informed about it knows it's disastrous.}
Well there is no excuse for HoC and the government not to know this but there are relatively few acknowledging this.
Whether it is ignorance or deliberate there is no excuse. They are after all taking money from the public to be in charge.

@DGRossetti

I quite clearly said that they didn’t have a parliamentary majority.

They “won” the election process, in the sense that they had more votes than anyone else. However they didn’t “win” a majority in parliament.

But hey, thanks for the vicious lecture, even though it had very little to do with the actual point I was making.

They lost the election and I’m clearly a moron who deserves a massive and patronising telling off.

Enjoy your weekend.

They “won” the election process, in the sense that they had more votes than anyone else. However they didn’t “win” a majority in parliament.

Well that and £2 gets you a lottery ticket ....

I’m conflicted about a second referendum because I don’t think we should have ever had the first one. If it was too complicated to put to a public vote first time around in my view, then how can I argue for a second one to attempt to fix the origin mistake.

I’m conflicted about a second referendum because I don’t think we should have ever had the first one. If it was too complicated to put to a public vote first time around in my view, then how can I argue for a second one to attempt to fix the origin mistake.

I think a lot of people - certainly Remainers - are in the same boat. However, given the spectacular incompetence, cowardice, and sheer fuckwittery of our current shitshower of MPs, it's highly likely they will try to wriggle out of the consequences of the original fuckup, by repeating it.

The problem is that each passing hour makes it harder to turn away from the disaster that no deal would be. The old image of trying to turn a supertanker applies.

I didn't want a referendum in the first place either. When it was announced, I then really didn't want a moron-trap "yes/no" question. And when that was announced, I really didn't want the referendum to be binding.

There is a narrative that Leavers - of all stripes - have had two fucking years to get their shit together. Why is it remainers fault that they consistently and predictably have failed to do so ?

In fact, rather than "remain" not being an option on a second ballot, there's a very strong case to be made that "Leave" should not be there. After all, as they never tire of pointing out (until things go pear shaped) they won. Well they've had the ball for two years so far, and as far as I can see are still arguing over what kit to play in. Maybe it's time Remain had the ball back ????????

Ultimately, whatever - absolutely WHATEVER ensures - there is no way of keeping even a third of the country happy, and more likely we'll end up with around about 50% feeling betrayed one way or another.

As a remainer who was told to "suck it up loser" it's hard to describe how much anger I have with the Leave side as a whole. They really have no excuse for their pathetic failure after failure, having "won" what they wanted.

And if 50% of the country have to feel "betrayed", I'd be quite happy for it to be "the other lot".

If it wasn't so likely to cause death and destruction on a massive scale I would say that the 'crash out' option should be triggered now just to expose how incredibly stupid the Tories really are. Unfortunately the wrong people will die.

I agree @1tisILeClerc . I'm getting into "fuck 'em" territory.