Goos to see you here, Lar. Lot of points there.

Quote Originally Posted by Lar d'Arse View Post
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.
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?

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.
What people meant by Leave was to leave the EU. Not stay in it and pretend to leave. They wanted some or all of:

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.

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.
'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?

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.
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.

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.


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!
The Irish border is a tricky one, yes. Unionist parties have done deals with governments before, including Callaghan and Major.

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.