What is the case for a second referendum?
There seem to be two ideas:
1. The voters have changed.
2. The voters have changed their minds.
1. The voters have changed.
The idea with this is that in the two plus years since the 2016 referendum, there are young people who are now old enough to vote. Young people generally prefer ‘remain’. Meanwhile, older people have been dying, and older people generally vote leave. Therefore there will now be more people who vote remain then leave and so the result of a second referendum will be ‘remain’.
This assumes that young people will keep the same beliefs as they age. I’m not sure the evidence shows that is true. More likely, as we age our view changes, therefore at some point between coming of voting age and death, we will change from ‘remain’ to ‘leave’.
In other words, a second referendum is unlikely to alter the result. Indeed, as the population is aging it seems that it is more likely that the ‘leave’ vote will increase!
2. The voters have changed their opinions.
Voters of all ages may change their views based on new evidence available to them. The argument for this is that firstly, we were deceived by the distortions (I’m being polite!) presented to us by both sides, and secondly, have now become aware of the immense complications that need to be solved (the Irish border being the most obvious example).
The first point, our deception, I think is just a cry of ‘foul’ even though we saw through it all anyway (just like people complaining about Nic Clegg’s promise of stopping tuition fees when nobody in their right mind would possibly consider he could implement that). Most people I’ve spoken to voted on the basis of immigration and sovereignty, even if they didn’t, and perhaps never will, understand all that this entails. They simply wanted to stop people squeezing their wages and housing opportunities, or seemingly increasing NHS demand.
The second reason, the immense complications and therefore distractions from the normal running of the country, is perhaps something most didn’t consider, and is the only real argument for a second referendum. However,
there was information available about the sort of complications that might ensue, namely from the discussions that came with the Scottish independence debate, and the case of Czechoslovakia. Frankly I’m not sure people care too much about this as long as their on the ground concerns (immigration etc.) are dealt with. Surely it is for our MPs to sort this out.
The Case Against a Second Referendum
The damage to any faith we have in our democratic system. It will look like ‘we have just voted on something and the powers that be don’t like the result, so we must try to get the ‘right’ result this time’.
We are not a country that uses referendums regularly, and then only on very important issues (e.g. our democratic methods or the countries structure):
https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/ ... in-the-uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Only three referendums have been repeated, the ones for the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies, in 1979 and 1997, with a changed result, and for membership of the EU, in 1975 and of course 2016. If we are going to become a country like Switzerland, who have what they call ‘direct democracy’, then fine, but we are not:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
My conclusion is, using the above reasoning about voters changing, or changing minds, and the possible damage to our democracy of not implementing the 2016 referendum’s choice, we should not have a second referendum.
We have given our instructions to our leaders and it is for them to carry them out. If our democratic system as currently set up can’t do that, we need another system. ‘They’ managed to get us in. Now they can get us out.
This user liked this post: dsr
