fatslob-:O said:
If a second referendum is intended to be a clarification of the first vote then it does not justify the inclusion of a remain option. "Remain" by all accounts was a very well understood option given the question at hand which was "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?" ... This means that EU membership is not in the deck of cards so while it might be alright to include a customs union, freedom of movement or some other combinations thereof but EU membership itself must be ruled out in it's entirety to preserve the spirit of Brexit ...
Again no EU membership which is what the original question and vote implicated. If you wanted to 'clarify' the will of the people more precisely then only Leave options are on the table as the first referendum ruled out EU membership entirely. It's either no deal, May's deal or a possible opt in for a Norway+/Canada/Switzerland style of deal but nothing else ...
The British people had voted no EU membership so that's the end of it, you got it ? People are divided over Brexit but the vote has already been settled previously for it and there's no turning back to the people. What the citizens might not have a consensus on is how they want Brexit handled and the House of Commons also can't come to agreement either on what kind of withdrawal agreement either which comes first for the EU before any trade deals ... |
Again, you seem to be missing the concept here. The idea is that some people may feel that if they can't have a hard Brexit with no deal, they'd rather not have a Brexit at all, and had they understood that from the beginning, they may have voted Remain. Similarly, Northern Ireland seems to be of the opinion (if I'm understanding things correctly) that they wanted to leave, but ONLY on the condition that it not be a hard Brexit, so they might want to choose Remain as a second option as well, since if they'd known that May would be this incompetent in securing a deal, they might have never chosen leave. Plenty of people might have a Brexit preference, but just want some sort of Brexit, so long as the end result isn't Remain, people like you. And of course, plenty of people might decide that upon closer inspection, leaving doesn't seem so scary after all, and since a lot of the threats have already been baked into the stock market and companies that are going to flee Britain to stay in the EU have largely already done so, Remainers might have a better idea now what sort of Brexit they want if it comes to that, or might have changed their mind and would pick one of the Brexit options as their first choice. But I suppose your fear of people changing their minds is the main reason you're against this. But that seems silly to me, because if they changed their mind, it's because they got new information that gives them a more informed opinion that led them to change their mind. Why should that not be allowed to be reflected in the referendum? It just seems to me like the result of the second, designed as I explained before, would be the most accurate read of the will of the people of the UK. It allows them not only to express their opinion as fully informed as could honestly be expected, but also to indicate preferred conditions of compromise if they can't have their exact way, and indicate preferred conditions on the way Brexit plays out, if it comes to that. It's to me the most honest way to make sure the final policy most closely reflects what the UK would be most pleased with, which seems to me like the point of a referendum.
