MrChris wrote:
Cras wrote:
MrChris wrote:
Was it wrong to have a referendum then? Given that the majority of the country both (a) wanted one and (b) wanted to leave the EU?
Yes. On the simple premise that I've mentioned before - it's always wrong to have a referendum. Unless you're naming a boat.
But why, though? What's wrong with democracy? Yes, some things don't work with referendums ( if you're giving a choice no one wanted, why end up with A or B - e.g. AV), but this was a very simple yes/no question on something that lots of people wanted to put to bed one way or the other, and of course the Tories had it in their manifesto and they got elected.
We have a democracy. A representative democracy. We have an entire caste of politicians, backed up by an army of civil servants and legal experts, whose exact job is to understand complex political, social, and economic issues in order to be able to vote on them from a position of educated understanding.
Who in the general public has the inclination, let alone the time, to get properly, deeply educated on an issue of the size and scope of EU membership before voting on it? Few, I'd imagine, and I'm counting myself in the 'not I' category.
I think we're ably demonstrating right now that the majority of things that people would have wanted when voting in this most recent referendum aren't things that are able to be achieved.
*Freedom from regulation - NOPE
*Reduced EU migration - NOPE
*Not paying millions in fees - NOPE
So that's a load of reasons immediately cancelled out. And spending time looking into the deals that current non-EU EEA members have would have made that clear in advance. But few people have the time or inclination to actually properly research such implications - which is why we hire politicians, supported by the civil service, to do so.