UKH

How impressive and persuasive it was to see such a huge turnout for yesterday's march. People from all walks of life, of all ages and all professions coming together for what must surely be the most peaceful protest of its size ever to have taken place in the UK.

And the cause? Simply an opportunity for people to affirm that the meaning of Brexit, once the best minds of the Government have achieved their best negotiated outcome, is broadly in line with referendum voters' expectations three years earlier.

Democracy in action.

Or the biggest hissy fit in history.

Meanwhile, in Manchester...
https://twitter.com/danhett/status/1053671102021541888/photo/1

It’s so pathetic to describe sensible people’s deep and entirely rational concerns about the future of the country as a “hissy fit”. 

I agree wholeheartedly but can you acknowledge that 17.4 million people are not all ignorant, ill educated, racist bigots? 

Al

Can you acknowledge that 17.4 million people had little or no idea what their voted intention would end up looking like in practice? Still don't, actually, but the oft-promised sunny uplands seem to have been ruled out as a possibility.

Perhaps not 17.4 million but yes, of course I can acknowledge that.  There you are, I've been honest, so what about my point?

I can't speak for Yanis Nayu but for my part I don't think I've ever referred to Leavers as ignorant, ill educated, racist bigots, or anything along those lines.

It's quite clear that a proportion of those voters will have been unduly influenced by lies spread on social media, but people are only human and can only respond to the stimuli they receive.

Of course there will be an element of any society that is ignorant, or ill educated, or racist, and I suppose some of these will have voted Leave, but to tarnish the whole Leave movement with that brush would be wrong, when so many of them will have voted in the hope of a positive outcome. The question now is ... is that promise of a positive outcome still on the table, or has it proved to be an impossible dream?

There's a very good way of finding out, one that leaves everyone in no doubt about the informed 'will of the people' once outcomes are known, and that's why people were marching yesterday.

A genuine question, I haven't even followed the news on this yet - having had a gutfull of everything Brexit. But.

Is it logical to presume that all the people marching that want a say in approving the final Brexit agreement are only those that voted for Brexit?

All those that voted remain obviously can't approve of any Brexit agreement, so no point in marching?

Would you have been in favour of second referendums back in the 80's and 90's?  After all we were equally mislead then and may have voted differently in 1975 if we knew then how things were going to turn out.

Not just in social media!

Over the years there's been a whole host of misquotes, half-truths and downright lies published in certain parts of the press in order to deliberately tarnish the image of the EU.

After all, weren't our European chums trying to ban the British banger? (this was in response to an EU ruling on types of mechanically-recovered meat allowed in food products - it was designed to raise the quality and halt the spread of CJD and the like)

And didn't they try and ban our lovely barmaids from showing any cleavage? (EU produced a directive on PPE which said employers must ensure that people working outside were adequately protected from the sun)

Then there's all the stuff about banning bagpipes (!), not allowing butchers to give dogs bones, making trapeze artists wear helmets ( https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/bagpipes-and-several-other-gripes/ ), all of which weren't true.

But over time the effect of all this has turned many against the EU - after all, if something is said often enough it becomes truth! 

IMO marches are not necessarily a good indication of the true depth of feeling on a specific issue.  Quite often when interviewed many marchers express extreme ignorance and sometimes are marching for a totally different reason. The referendum on the other hand, although simplistic gives a clear indication that the majority of those who cared wanted out.

Of course the majority of those marching will have voted Remain, or perhaps not voted due to complacency, but definitely there were some who voted Leave and now regret what that choice now means for our future. How many of those there were in the march is impossible to know.

But also you need to remember that opinion can theoretically shift both ways, and from time to time I do hear rumours that real people (rather than just the numerous bots) may have shifted to Leave. So the People's Vote would be effective in making sure that it wasn't only a shift from Leave to Remain that was being recognised, but rather the current will of the majority of the electorate once people better know the implications of each possible path, without the misleading lure of impossible paths.

So should we keep having them ad-infinitem?  How many is enough?  If there was another and it voted remain would I be equally justified in campaigning for yet another or would you be against that because you had finally got your way.  Seems like a path to madness to me.

I don't remember the details of those referenda, so I couldn't say. I don't see how it's possible to state that "we were equally mislead [sic]" as the situations were very different, and I don't remember the Electoral Commission previously reporting a whole campaign to the police for illegal practice. (Not that the Met are doing anything about it - 'too politically sensitive', apparently).

But, more widely, democracy is not about winners and losers, it's about fairness. People in 1975 who voted to Remain knew what they were voting for - we were already in the EC and could experience it first hand. Treaties that have been passed in subsequent decades are a different matter entirely and, while I'm not sure I would agree that referenda should have been required each time, the gripe for those who didn't agree was rightly with the government at the time in choosing to rely on our legal system of parliamentary democracy, rather than with the outcome of a referendum a decade or more earlier.

No we didn't.  We thought we were voting for close economic trading ties, which I would still agree with.  We were promised, faithfully, it was no more than that.  Even when concerns were raised especially with the follow up treaties we were assured it was ONLY about trading.  It was all lies so I will not take lectures from people who were not around at the time about misleading facts.  THIS is why most older people voted leave, they directly experienced the duplicity of the EU and our own government.

Until they get the "right" result according to Juncker, Tusk, Barnier et al.

IIRC the Irish upset the apple cart by initially rejected the imposition of the European currency. They were then made to vote again.

You're absolutely right about voter ignorance, which is why the referendum is a tool that should be reserved for the most serious of constitutional issues. But when it is used, it must be absolutely clear what the implications are of voting either way for the foreseeable future. That wasn't the case in 2016 but will be the case once the shape of any deal/no deal outcome is known. That's precisely why a People's Vote will determine the genuine wishes of the UK people in choosing between two known outcomes. It isn't about winning and losing; it's about seeking the informed opinion of the electorate.

Who forced them to change the outcome the second time? Surely they could have voted against it as many times as referenda were presented to them, were they to have still been convinced that was the best thing to do.

Edit: Just like you will be able to vote Leave again in the People's Vote. Nobody's forcing people to change their minds - just recognising that it's likely that people may have done, given that the outlook is notably different now to what it was in 2016, and making sure such a momentous Constitutional change has the genuine democratic backing of the people.

You are making the mistaken assumption that people will be better informed.  Some will but many just cannot be bothered and that goes for both sides.  People will vote on gut instinct I'm afraid.  My gut instinct still says we will be better off out.  We could argue about the current mess and the economic consequences until the cows come home, it's all meaningless as even the "experts" can't agree but the bottom line for me is political democracy and sovereignty which in the longer run is more important.

You seem to overlook the possibility that europhiles are just as capable of propagating lies, be they about currency, membership or whatever,  as anybody else and to do so to suit their agenda.

There was one lass on Radio 4 interviewed whose family lives in Germany, by her hysterics you’d have thought a new wall was being built in Berlin..

A 'people's vote' would not be a re-run of the referendum.  The leave/remain question was obviously very simplistic and campaigners for 'leave' were promising a variety of mutually contradictory things as well as other things that it is becoming increasingly clear were just never a possibility.  A second poll would be (at least, should be) a vote on the actual, specific deal that is proposed. 

(Assuming there actually *is* one by then - as one of the placards at the demo said: "Even Baldrick had a f*cking plan!")

Let's say we're all in a restaurant together.  The original referendum was "Shall we order the pizza, or the pasta?"  A second vote would be "Shall we accept the shit sandwich that has turned up instead of our pizza, or send it back?"

I think you'll find that almost all of the 'experts' agree very closely!

But if your point is that people vote unthinkingly and without care for being informed, then what is the legitimacy of the 2016 outcome? I happen to disagree that people were not informed or not interested, rather that many sources of information too often were dishonest. People's 'gut feeling' doesn't come out of nowhere, it's a result of every stimulus they've been subjected to, and every fact or lie they've been presented with, accepted, questioned or refuted.

The same will certainly be a big factor too in the People's Vote, but I'm an optimist and would like to believe that, now the mechanisms of these untruths are better understood, they will have less effect on the overall outcome.

Indeed, but as campaigners for 'remain' in the referendum were essentially campaigning for the status quo, they could hardly come up with whoppers like some of the shite the 'leave' campaign were pushing.  (And, let's not forget, breaking electoral law while they were at it, to campaign illegally using large amounts of money coming from who knows where.)

The absolute shit-show we're seeing at the moment already seems a lot like some of the predictions that were dismissed as mere 'project fear' scaremongering.

Marches are probably of marginal importance (Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell taught me that in 2003).  But something seems to have emerged in the lead up to this one ...

I'm probably slow on the uptake, and maybe this has been a central discussion about Brexit for a while now. I largely stopped following the news on Brexit as all the discussion seems to be pointless if we don't get another vote once a real idea of what is on offer is known. 

But what seems to have bubbled up is the complete schism on the side of Brexit.

I don't know who stands where on it.  As I recalled, you were either for Brexit, or against it.  Everything we have been presented since the referendum is a form of Brexit, and obviously deeply unsatisfactory to remain voters. 

But a massive split seems to have happened in the side that has supposedly got what it wants.  It may even be stronger than the split which exists between Remain and the Leave-but-stay-in-the-EEC-be-like-Norway camp.  Farage and Co. want a leave at all costs, while a possible majority of Leavers don't want that at all.

If Twitter commentary is anything to go by, Leave is tearing itself apart, claiming a democratic mandate when maybe only 25% of the referendum voters would prefer what is on the table to remaining, and are virtually threatening mass unrest if they (a tiny minority) don't get their way.  This is where the bigger hissy fits are appearing.

Your perception.

Can you all at least be honest and call it a second referendum.  Calling it a peoples vote is a bit pathetic and quite telling. And if the vote is as close, either way, what then? 

To be fair, given the social and economic upheavals of recent years I think it is quite understandable the disdain for "experts" and a belief in the we-can-go-it-alone approach.  So maybe not dishonest but far too much optimism.

What is emerging now would, I suspect, shake that self-belief in a large number of people.  If just 1 in 25 Brexiteers (or 1 in 10 non voters) has had a change in heart as a result of Brexit camp's chaos and felt safer with leave, this would completely overturn the result.

That doesn't seem unlikely to me.  Being denied a vote on this and charging ahead regardless seems far more reckless than anything David Cameron did.  We have the polls, the information, the experience and the evidence that this is going massively tits-up, but we're ignoring it.

Let's be really honest and call it a third referendum.

There was one in 1975 which voted to stay in.

There was one a couple of years ago which voted to leave.

That makes it one all. Decider anyone?

Given that we've had one referendum recently, it undeniably can be described as a second one. That's just arithmetic progression. But to imply that it's an identical re-run of the earlier event, that the options remaining on the table (particularly the implications of those options in terms of our relationship with other countries) are the same as in the previous referendum, would be highly misleading.

A good start would at least be to make this one binding.  

A vote between Remain, Chequers, or hard-Brexit is obviously logical, but by splitting the exit vote does seem a bit unfair. 

So perhaps an STV vote, which I imagine would end up strongly Remain, with Chequers as the second most popular. In a second round vote, I really don't know what the result would be.  

Farage was right about one thing though - a 52/48 outcome in either direction still leaves it as unfinished business.  Requiring a 55% win seems a push but may be necessary.

2061

You recall wrongly. The Irish rejected the Nice treaty. Politicians then went away and made further agreements about Europe and Ireland's place in it that assuaged Irish voters' fears, and a second referendum was held that came out with a large majority.

Denmark and Sweden had referendums that rejected the Euro. Denmark and Sweden do not have the Euro as a result.

At this rate, probably, yes.

Interesting that you choose to juxtapose a march against Brexit with an EDL march in the same thread so you can conflate being a leaver with being a racist bigot.

Nice work, but its wearing pretty thin and isn't exactly winning hearts and minds, but then remain camp has been a text book example of how to lose friends and alientate people since the start of the referendum campaign.

Given non stop lecturing by remain voters I'd wager that another vote will have the same outcome. Careful what you wish for.

Unfortunately I have to disagree with you. Anti EU conditioning has been going on for a very long time. And as my brother said to me over lunch  "This isn't about money, this country is a monarchy and all authority comes from that. We have developed institutions that have served us well for hundreds of years ... etc."

Hence f*** business etc.

This is long planned.

Thanks for the reply.

Personally I voted remain and was horrified to wake up in the morning and found that I had "lost". But since then I've felt we need to get on with it and not dither. I still retain a (possibly misguided) faith in British business and populace to cope with all problems in front of them.

But I have never felt I have say in in the end result of Brexit, only those who voted should. 

If there is to be a vote of approval, how big a majority must there be for it to be passed? After all, one of the big c**k ups of the referendum was not stipulating a minimum % of votes to win, so we had a very close result and arguments ever since.

This could all keep on running, which worries me more than anything else.

The outlook is no different now, some people didn't bother to research that outlook in 2016, what makes you think people will bother if we vote again?

There never was a fecking pizza, if people wanted to believe that there was one in 2016 will they really have changed their minds now?

Here's an insurgency scenario though that feels like where we may be:

The leave campaign paints a picture of easy deals and huge success if we Brexit.  Not lies.  They honestly believe it (as the placard went "Like when Geri Halliwell thought she was so popular she could go it alone").  And many of the public, proud of their country and believing these experienced and confident politicians and experts knew their stuff, went with it.

So we get a vote for a successful Brexit.  A vote for prosperity, uninterrupted trade, better living conditions, a step up for Britons.

Except that this Brexit is really a Trojan Horse.  A large number of Brexiteers don't care for that at all.  They are fervently against the EU and all it embodies.  They want out from everything, even if it dumps living conditions, screws business, and causes economy-wide suffering.  As long as they are sticking it to the people they hate, then it is worth it.  

Their version of Brexit is very different and they were probably well aware it didn't have enough support to win the referendum.  So what they want was presented as much more moderate. 

But now that Remain has been knocked out it becomes a battle between them and the more mainstream Brexit lot.  The later are barely hanging in there though.  They have May on their side, and other notables.  But the hard-Brexiteers would happily see them crushed in order to have their own version.

It somewhat reminds me of Syria.  Anti-government figures, seeing their cause as a just battle against an authoritarian regime, who have to fall in with violent jihadis to have a hope in hell of winning...and then they are crushed by the jihadis themselves.

Seems worthy of another vote to me, no matter how set-in-stone you feel the first one was.  The goalposts have moved and we're surely heading for a Brexit that very few people want.  And if that goes ahead I think you will most definitely have things rumbling on for decades after.

The difference this time is that the Leave campaign(s) won't be able to pretend that some form of tasty Pizza (or should that be 'cake') is still on the take away menu (i.e. that we could still be in the Single Market and/or Customs Union or that worldwide lucrative trade deals will be easy), as the ingredients of May's offered dish will be known. Yes, some will keep their heads firmly in the sand, but unless we have another very successful campaign of misinformation, polls suggest that most would turn their noses up at the muck on the plate and say 'No thanks'.

Of course they’re not, although I’d be lying I’d I said leave voters weren’t significantly represented among people with those characteristics. I think:

The right wing press had scapegoated the EU for so long, the negative opinions of it were entrenched in the public consciousness.

There was concern about immigration (both among racists and non-racists).

There was no sensible, balanced, informed debate about these two issues above because it didn’t suit the agendas of those running the predominantly right wing media, specifically Dacre and Murdoch. 

Powerful, self-interested people wanted us to leave for their own selfish ends. The forthcoming EU tax avoidance legislation would almost certainly have played a part in it. 

Unfortunately, the two politicians with the most charisma were behind the leave vote. Johnson for self-serving political ends and Farage for financial ones. 

People were sick of austerity and the electoral system which disenfranchised them. The referendum gave them a chance to give the posh boy run government a bloody nose.  The tragic irony is that the same people will suffer from Brexit as suffered/are suffering from austerity. 

The opposition leader was no fan of the EU (but for different reasons) and barely campaigned on the Remain side.

Some people, especially the elderly, have a nostalgic view of Britain’s place in the world and thought Brexit would facilitate it. It won’t of course. It will diminish our place in the world in all conceivable senses.

There were several different views on what Brexit would actually mean. I’m not sure anyone can say that they really knew what they were voting for. 

We were lied to on several important and relevant factors, in a campaign which broke electoral rules, which clearly affected people’s decision on how to vote. 

The Russians played a part in influencing the referendum, because a weakened EU and a weakened Britain suits their strategic aims. 

I think that covers it. 

Gordon Brown's view is that there won't be a vote in the next few months but negotiations will continue past the next General election. If that is the case Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP will promise a second vote on the terms of the deal with option of rejecting the terms and remaining in the EU as one of the options.

Let's see. We live in interesting times .

I was on the march yesterday.

It was a fantastic day. Great weather, great atmosphere and very friendly. There were so many many that I wasn't able to get anywhere near Parliament Square but I didn't mind.

There was a real sense of unity, and all opprobrium was spared for the politicians who've brought us to this crazy juncture. Whatever happens from here, something amazing and positive was achieved yesterday, and I'm proud to have been there on the march.

It's been running both ways in equal measure. For example, calling a peaceful march of people expressing their political opinion a "hissy fit".

Brexit protagonists are behaving rather like conmen who have got their mark to agree and are near to closing the deal...

Trying to top their mark thinking through the consequences, pressure that they have already agreed something and that can't be gone back on... no cooling period, undermining confidence in judgement.

So far, so understandable, but the Labours enthusiaim to help ™ avoid any reconsideration is really odd.

Saint Jez of the allotment is a leaver through and through. He doesn't care about the damage a disorderly brexit will do, because he'll be able to blame the Tories.

If people did reject the offer that was available do you think that the desire to leave the EU will evaporate or that we will be back in the same place with demands for another referendum dominating our politics again?

Rejecting thhe deal is one thing, rejecting the fundmental idea fo Brexit is a bigger ask for many. I meet plenty of people who voted leave and would still do the same even if there is no deal, plenty of people who voted remain and would still do the same and  a worrying number of people who voted remain and would now vote leave because they believe that the EU are stitching us up in the negotiations, sadly I can't think of a single friend or acquaintance who has said that they voted leave and would  vote remain if the referendum happened again.

Polls have fecked it up before and I can see no reason to trust them on this issue.

I don't like where we are but it's bloody hard to see a graceful way out of the whole mess that will minimise the damage on any meaningful way

If the People reject the best outcome that's been possible to achieve, then of course we'd be back where we started, as that would indeed be the democratically expressed will of the people once the implications of both options were clear. No doubt there would be a lot of people insisting that it could all have worked out ok, if only ... 

But by definition in that case, those who reject the best achievable Brexit would be in the minority, so it would fall to those who still insist that Leaving would be in the country's best interests to convince the government that once again circumstances have changed to the point of meriting a further referendum to determine whether this is indeed reflected in public opinion.

At the moment, all polls suggest a majority for Remain, and the soon-to-be-known 'deal' outcome makes the situation very different to that in 2016. If we get to Remain after a People's Vote, and if convincing evidence emerges later, for whatever reason, that a majority of people support a largely knowable Leave outcome, then democracy would suggest that the People are once again asked.

If there us a second referendum then there should be three options:

Accept the sea.

Reject the sea and leave the EU anyway.

Reject the deal and remain in the EU.

The referendum would need to be by transferrable vote so you get a second choice in case there is no clear majority e.g. I want the deal but if that's not popular then I want to leave without one.

That would cover all options fairly. I really don't see a problem.

That would presuppose that May (or her replacement) would have an agreed deal option to be voted on. At this stage, that's a long way from certain.

Personally, I'm disappointed that the remainders can't muster a coordinated campaign to get 19 million signatures on one of those government petitions to call for a halt/new vote on Brexit.

Surely there are now 19 million people in the country that would rather stop this non-sense now...

Or that a vote wouldn't happen until everything is agreed, there's a GE and then a referendum.

If a vote happened before that apparently 95% of the agreement is known presumably the other 5% is the Irish border which, to be brutally honest, isn't the main concern of the vast majority of the electorate. Certainly there should be a pretty clear picture of what a post EU UK would look like and if there isn't them that's an argument in itself for either calling the whole thing off or having another GE to get a new PM because this one has failed in the only task of any consequence that her government have undertaken.

Weird. You and I live with the consequences just the same as a leave voter, the vote wasn't to utterly disenfranchise half the population in perpetuity, it was to leave to EU (for any number of reasons, some more reasonable than others).

The only reasonable course of action for a ratification referendum would be to employ the same rules as the initial one to proceed, if the same electorate still wants what they can actually have then they should have it, if they don't it shouldn't be forced upon them.

This will keep running either way, IMO we're facing at least a decade of firefighting before this is remotely settled.

jk

Great, as I feared. I shall go into deep hibernation with our tortoises and wake up in 10 years time when I'm 75. It may all be mended by then!

Not for one second. That's fine, if someone wants to work up a concrete plan for leaving that does not harm us or does so in a way we consent to in exchange for something real and deliverable then they absolutely should build public support and political pressure for that.

No they wouldn't, not if they actually knew and understood what that meant for their families and their communities. People have been lied to, told 'no-deal' will be fine. It won't, it is the end of Britain as we have known it and it would take years to partially repair the political and economic damage done by even a couple of months living through that kind of crisis.

Two years ago in my gliding club there was barely a voice for remain around the lunch table. These are mainly though not exclusively northern old boys with a bit of money, lots of ex-forces, this was the brexit of nostalgia, about not being told what to do by anyone, about Britania ruling the waves. It wasn't what was actually on offer. These days bar couple of outspoken UKIPers (turned For Britain or whatever the latest hardline splinter is called) there isn't a pro brexit peep out of them, I'm sure some still do quietly but all the bravado has all gone replaced instead by complaints about how it isn't going to plan, how it's harder than expected, how euro prices (holidays, gliders) have gone up, their pensions down, their sunshine retirement plans uncertain. I'd be willing to bet at least a quarter of them have changed their minds to the point they'd admit as much in conversation let alone in the polling booth. If they were representative (they're not of course) 2% would do.

Absolutely not, that's why we'd need an actual referendum.

Obtaining informed consent for what happens next seems to me the best option. We would in any other walk of life where life changing decisions had to be made.

jk

You're not too old for a fresh start, that's the way I'm viewing this.

jk

I had to tune to Radio Scotland yesterday morning to find any discussion as it seemed to have been edited out of R4 News bulletins.  The suggestion was made that perhaps it was too polite and good natured to be effective, a real back handed compliment!

Me too. I'm narrowing down where

Where you there?

No, sadly. I get the impression that an awful lot of people would like to have been there but couldn't make it. My feeble excuse is that I'm working in West Africa.