The British government has pointed out that there will not be a re-run of the Brexit referendum. No, not even after 4.1 million people signed an e-petition asking that one be allowed. On rather the same basis that England don’t get a replay against Iceland on the grounds that the winning margin wasn’t more than 2:1 or whatever.
The referendum was well known in advance, there was a decent amount of campaigning, people were asked a simple yes or no question and the people have spoken. There are three interesting things that can be said about that petition though.
Supporters say there should be a second round because the historic vote was so close and the the turnout less than 75%.
It’s the most signed petition of its kind since the scheme was introduced in 2011.And typically, petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures are considered for debate in parliament.
There have been referendums where turnout and majority to be effective were pre-specified in the relevant legislation. One of more of the Scottish referendums I think, possibly one of the earlier Welsh ones as well. There were no such pre-specifications here and to the retrospective attempt to add them has been, rightly, rejected.
Of course, it should be stated here that I might be every such a little bit biased as it was my side that won:
Demands from more than four million people for a second referendum on European Union membership have been rejected by the Government.
A petition on the Parliament website called for the Government to hold a second referendum because less than 60% of the vote was in favour of Brexit and the turnout was below 75%.
Some 4.1 million signatories have backed the call for a fresh vote, but an official response from the Foreign Office stressed that the referendum was a “once in a generation” vote and the decision of the electorate on June 23 had to be respected.
One rather important reason for no re-run is who has all the money? Remain would be able to call, in any second campaign, upon the resources of the European Union and the British Government. Leave would have to go around the private sector again and it was hard enough raising the cash the first time.
Equity would therefore indicate no re-run anyway. Which leads to our first interesting thing. This petition was set up by a Leave activist in the first place, before the result was known:
The petition was set up by William Oliver Healey, an English Democrat activist who supported Brexit and was concerned the vote would be for Remain.He has since said it was “hijacked” and tried to distance himself from the campaign after it attracted millions of Remain voters.
We English tend to call that sort of thing “getting your retaliation in first” and in this case it rather backfired. The second thing is that not all of those signatures seem to be valid:
The petition, which was started by leave activist William Oliver Healey in May, when polls suggested remain would win, has been the subject of controversy after it was discovered that thousands of signatures were fake.
Quite so. It’s well known that 4Chan joined in the fun and there’s credible reports that well over 1000% of the population of the Vatican added their names to the petition. Including at least five dead Popes.
Which brings us to our final thing we can say about this attempt to have another referendum. No, we’ve just voted to leave, recall? Rerunning a referendum when you don’t like the result is what the European Union does as, variously, the French, Dutch, Danes and Irish have found out.
Get a no, or a leave, thus change the question a bit, run it all again and claim victory while ignoring the first result. That’s what the EU does and that’s the system we’re leaving, right? So what better way to leave than to actually stand by the results of the first time of asking the question?
But again, worth noting that my side won so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
By: Tim Worstall (Forbes).
Photo: Irish Times.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations &
Research Unit, FLAGSHIP RECORDS.
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