I already agreed with those who have said that the referendum is not an appropriate procedure for this question. That there was no serious occasion for it, and that it was done for essentially trivial internal party political reasons, which have now had these disproportionate consequences. In many countries it would not have been constitutionally possible or under more rigorous conditions. There is as far as I know no serious constitutional jurisprudence or political philosophy behind this innovation of referendums. However in a populist way it is considered “democratic"
(This is not the only change towards a populist notion of “democracy" there has been in recent years in Britain. This same Cameron, wanting to get out of responsibilities re Syria* , has given Parliament a veto over practically any military action by Britain. And in the present isolationist mood of the British public that means there probably won't be any more British military actions. Another populist development is having given the mass Party in the country (both Conservative and Labour) a vote in the selection of party leader and thus in the choice of the person to be Prime Minister, previously a purely Parliamentary matter, getting a bit closer to the American system.)
Now we are where we are, there is no way back. The new Prime Minister has accepted the verdict of the referendum. It is not politically realistic to do otherwise. Sure, what this verdict really is going to mean, that is what relations with Europe will be worked out is still up in the air. It does not depend only what the government wants but of course also on the European counterparts. The easiest thing, and as I mentioned before the natural tendency of political and administrative inertia, is for as minimal change as possible.
And the ideas that have been argued above by a few posters that the referendum should be invalidated because of the various vices, disinformation, and so on, is not only not on politically but I do think it is actually wrong. On this basis instead of a referendum you would have a neverendum. On this basis every General Election result could be called into question. You get into who is to be the Judge and who should judge the Judges? The judges are the voters, the responsibility is theirs. All you can ask is that both sides have the opportunity to present their case and to criticize and question their opponents’. A Party cannot ask for an election result to be overturned on the grounds that their own campaign was inept!
For many of the questions there are no real "objective facts" independent of judgement (which people did call for also during the referendum, a kind of abdication of response their own responsibility for decision). And in the detail I don't believe that what Jonathan and others complain about really stands up. For example the claim that Britain was paying x billion pounds a year to the EU and this could be recovered and devoted to the National Health System if we no longer EU members. (For non-Brits I should explain that the NHS is now the national State Religion, and you cannot present yourself in an election campaign unless you promise to ringfence and devote extra billions to it, so this claim was bound to arise.) Then on the other side it was pointed out that the figure quoted as paid by Britain to the EU was just a one-way transfer, whereas the true net transfer was a figure of around half that. Then this was admitted, but it was riposted that one part of what was given back (the ‘Thatcher’ rebate) was precarious and constantly called into question , and that the rest of it was for projects decided by the EU, that is it was money that came back to us but we had no choice about how to spend it. And so on, there was free debate. You cannot have judges then investigating about whether everybody heard everything that everybody said. Oh and then there is the fact that the difference between x billion and half of x billion is quite meaningless to the average voter, and so whether it is one or the other doesn't matter anyway
And disinformation from the Remain side was just as common. Have you forgotten Project Fear? Was the figure that every family would lose £4,400 put around by Chancellor Osborne and objective fact or not? Or one allegation I found particularly objectionable that was put around by the Remain side – even an organ as respected as The Economist said it at least twice, was (playing into the abovementioned reverence for the NHS) the alarming allegation that we would no longer be able to recruit Doctors and nurses from Europe after Brexit. This is of course not true, and was deliberately ignoring what had been explicitly explained any number of times by the Brexit campaign.
A second referendum is not on, and not justified anyway. Later after negotiations and agreement, if the form of Brexit and the agreement with the EU turns out to be sufficiently different from what people thought they were voting for there could be a moral justification for one, and certainly there would be a clamour. In fact when an agreement happens I am sure there will be someone who calls it a betrayal. But then as the choice will be between that and nothing, I can't see even two years down the line a second referendum being practical politics.
- This then helped Obama paint over his Red Line.
