Not that I can preach from any position because our own electoral system is extremely flawed but isn't the problem in the UK that your General Elections are too like referenda. First past the post means a black and white outcome except on the rare occasions where a hung parliament results.
Leave or Remain was always a daft question to ask the electorate because no one really understood what Leave meant. Or at least there was a lot of ambiguity in what Leave might mean. If not we would not be hearing any debate over a hard or soft Brexit, staying in or leaving the Single Market or the Customs Union etc.
It is just as easy, especially given the polls in advance of the referendum, to argue that many of those who voted Leave were doing so as a Protest Vote at the time and given the relatively small majority it could easily be that such voters swung the final decision.
Just as it is easy to argue now that many of those who voted Labour did so in protest at the Government's 'handling' of Brexit, and/or the calling of the Election in the first place. I accept Brexit was not a campaign issue in itself, save to the extent that May wanted to have a greater mandate to negotiate what she saw as the right version of Brexit. What better way to protest than to weaken her hand! Did anyone really expect Corbyn to get a majority?
But just as Brexit disenfranchises the 48% who voted Remain, ftpt disenfranchises those who voted anything other than the winner and in most cases the winner gets significantly less than 50% of the vote.
All this is great for debates on message boards but it doesn't say a lot for democracy.
One final point. It just so happens that the DUP hold the balance of power with their 10 seats. That is an accident of the result in the Election. They were pro-Brexit but probably more aligned to a softer version because they don't want to see an Irish Border. But equally they were always opposed to a Brexit that would result in a special status for Northern Ireland. It's a hard one to reconcile but that never stopped a Northern politician. But to my mind it is their stance that will dictate whether the Brexit that is negotiated will be hard or soft. The vote for Labour diminished May's authority to this extent only.
Which to digress, leads me to my final point* - is not May's authority diminished to such an extent that the only reason she has held on to any power, because no one now wants the poisoned chalice of being PM with a minority government having to negotiate an impossible deal that will be roundly criticised by virtually all concerned?
*oops - two final points - sorry and apologies this was so long!
Last edited by Lar d'Arse; 06-14-2017 at 02:14 PM.
Goos to see you here, Lar. Lot of points there.
Yes, I am not a fan of FPTP because it renders many voters' decisions utterly meaningless, and a party can have 20-25% of the vote and have close to zero seats in parliament. The advantage of FPTP is that it gets government majorities and then at least someone is in charge and can get on with it. So I completely disagree with you that our GE is like a referenum because in the latter very vote actually counts. If you lose, too bad, but how many points do you get losing a football match 5-4?
What people meant by Leave was to leave the EU. Not stay in it and pretend to leave. They wanted some or all of:Leave or Remain was always a daft question to ask the electorate because no one really understood what Leave meant. Or at least there was a lot of ambiguity in what Leave might mean. If not we would not be hearing any debate over a hard or soft Brexit, staying in or leaving the Single Market or the Customs Union etc.
1) Return of legislative power to an democratically accountable government in Westminster, rather than an unelected and unnacountable Commission in Brussels and Luxumbourg.
2) Control of Britain's borders. Optimisation of immigration levels.
3) End to the huge net contribution to the EU.
Soft Brexit (which was never mentioned before the referendum) is unlikely to allow any of these, as the single maket prohibits the first two, and the countries that benefit from the third do not wish to give that up.
'Easily' assuming that peoples' votes were for some spurious reason that should be discounted is not very democratic. One might just as 'easily' argue that many people who voted remain did so because all their friends were and because they were being told to do so by almost the entire political establishment. Should we subtract those votes too?It is just as easy, especially given the polls in advance of the referendum, to argue that many of those who voted Leave were doing so as a Protest Vote at the time and given the relatively small majority it could easily be that such voters swung the final decision.
And if Remain had won by a narrow margin? Would you be arguing in favour of some kind of Brexit to represent all the leavers who would have narrowly been disenfranchised? I suspect not.Just as it is easy to argue now that many of those who voted Labour did so in protest at the Government's 'handling' of Brexit, and/or the calling of the Election in the first place. I accept Brexit was not a campaign issue in itself, save to the extent that May wanted to have a greater mandate to negotiate what she saw as the right version of Brexit. What better way to protest than to weaken her hand! Did anyone really expect Corbyn to get a majority?
But just as Brexit disenfranchises the 48% who voted Remain, ftpt disenfranchises those who voted anything other than the winner and in most cases the winner gets significantly less than 50% of the vote.
All this is great for debates on message boards but it doesn't say a lot for democracy.
Remainers have ben very well represented, I think. They have been represented by basically the entire ruling class. Campaigning before the referendum for remain were: The leaderships of the three main parties. 80% of MPs. All the heavyweight newspapers (and both of the free tabloids available in London). All of the capitalist and financial class - the IMF, World Bank, CBI. The EU. The POTUS of the day threatened Britain. The academic class. The celebrity and luvvie classes.
The Irish border is a tricky one, yes. Unionist parties have done deals with governments before, including Callaghan and Major.One final point. It just so happens that the DUP hold the balance of power with their 10 seats. That is an accident of the result in the Election. They were pro-Brexit but probably more aligned to a softer version because they don't want to see an Irish Border. But equally they were always opposed to a Brexit that would result in a special status for Northern Ireland. It's a hard one to reconcile but that never stopped a Northern politician. But to my mind it is their stance that will dictate whether the Brexit that is negotiated will be hard or soft. The vote for Labour diminished May's authority to this extent only.
Which to digress, leads me to my final point* - is not May's authority diminished to such an extent that the only reason she has held on to any power, because no one now wants the poisoned chalice of being PM with a minority government having to negotiate an impossible deal that will be roundly criticised by virtually all concerned?
*oops - two final points - sorry and apologies this was so long!
And finally, Mr Corbyn seems to want to be PM, though I would not welcome a coalition with the SNP and Lib Dems. Oddly enough, Corbyn has spent two years being savaged by many of the same people who have been savaging the Leave decision and the voters who made it. And now Corbyn's gains are being used as an excuse to cancel the referendum result, by attempting to deploy the fake Brexit known as Soft Brexit.
Quite right. And losing does not "disenfranchise" your team either, does it.
Whatever happened to the underpinning principle of collective responsibilty? It's almost as though the whole "fourth place is like a trophy" malarkey was actually dangerous snowflakery and if your side doesn't win, the result must be somehow illegitimate.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
Lot's there to reply to Ash.
Not sure I accept your differentiating between every vote counting in a Referendum and not in a GE. Ask any MP in a marginal constituency and they will say that every vote counts. If the Brexit vote had been 65-35 either way then the same principle applies. The losing voter's vote is largely meaningless. You'll forgive me if I ignore your football match analogy.
You have very kindly outlined what your understanding of what voting 'leave' meant. I have no doubt that many agree with that point of view. But I also have no doubt that there are people who voted leave who thought differently. I may have phrased it poorly when I said no one really understood what leave meant. It would have been better to say it meant different things to different people.
I completely accept that it is irrelevant why people may have voted the way they did and whatever the reason does not make their vote less valid. I was saying that some referenda, and indeed elections are decided by what might be described as protest votes.
If Remain had won surely none of this debate would be happening. If it had been a narrow victory it would have been hailed by Europe as a resounding victory for the 'European Project' but people like Farage (if not the man himself) would be arguing that you cannot ignore the votes of 48% or so that voted to leave and that these voters are being disenfranchised if their views are not at least taken on board such that the EU would require some serious introspection as to whether it needed reform etc. [I suspect incidentally that UKIP would have won more than 1.8% of the vote in the recent GE too.]
My point regarding the DUP was that it was them who will cause Brexit to be as 'soft' as it now appears may be the case. This is just an accident of the numbers not because the DUP or the Tories have any particular political affinity. [I accept that official name of the Tories may contain the word Unionist in some shape but if they even had any even tenuous link with any party in the North it was with the UUP who have now been obliterated. I may remind you that it was the Rev Ian Paisley who established the DUP in NI only in the 1960s and they have probably never really seen eye to eye with the Tories politically].
Fun Fact: Rev Ian Paisley is an anagram for "VILE IRA PANSY"
I'm always mystified by this assertion that people who voted Leave didn't know what Leave meant. It's always said as if to suggest Remain voters knew exactly what Remain meant - when they knew no such thing.
Most Remain voters feared change and on the whole preferred the status quo. In fact, they'd have got a reinvigorated EU glorying in their endorsement and treating it as a mandate to drive through ever closer Union and the gradual drift of more and more powers to Brussels. That is not what most Remain voters wanted, but that's what they'd have got.
They also would have seen the question of a referendum on membership kicked into the long grass for another generation, with the matter being seen as settled. We had one chance to stop that happening and thankfully, we took it.
Do you even know what 'leave' means today? I clarified that what I should have said was that 'leave' meant different things to different people. I still believe that. If it was clear before the vote why is there even any debate about what it should mean now?
I accept what you say would have happened had remain won and said as much.