Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

14748505253135

Comments

  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    ... I think that had something to do with her being a woman; certainly our last Prime Minister was more often called "Theresa May" than simply "May". But even the late Baroness was referred to as "Thatcher" regularly, whereas "Johnson" is quite rare. (Unless I succeed in my one man campaign to change the way the nation speaks!)
    I agree. I do my best not to use 'Boris'. People are encouraged to call him 'Boris' because it makes him sound cuddly, fun, a great guy, one of us. He's not. 'Oh, he's just being 'Boris'. No, he isn't, or if he is, that doesn't mean anyone should like what they see. Nor has he 'taken one for the team'. That's all a complete illusion.

    For me, he's Mr Johnson, Johnson or de Pfeffel.


  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Alan , I think you are confusing 2 issues. The first, on which the voters gave their opinion, was do you want to leave the EEC or remain. A clear majority of those who voted said that they wanted to leave. Some possibly had voted agains joining 40 years before, others may have swallowed Farrage's sillinesses.

    The next issue was to decide the terms upon which leaving was to occur. That, with all its technical details, was left for the government to negotiate with the EU. It did so, put the question back to the legislature, and got a majority vote there.

    The UK government was under no obligation at all to hold the first vote. It possibly did so out of cowardice, but it did and received an answer - we want to leave. I'm prepared to bet good money that those who voted in favour of leaving were basically unconcerned with the methodology, but only with the end result. I don't see at all how you can call the process undemocratic.
  • The obligation, such as it was, was that the 2015 Tory manifesto said they'd hold a referendum.

    It was undemocratic because the people didn't have a say on the terms of leaving. At present Johnson is set on a course of a no-deal Brexit, not even allowing that the current circumstances require an extension to negotiate a deal acceptable to the UK and EU. Parliament has repeatedly voted that no-deal is the one option that is not acceptable. That leaves the democratic options as: negotiate a deal or don't leave the EU at all. Which, of course, leaves a massive amount of space to manoeuvre in working out an acceptable deal ... but not in the next few weeks.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    But the people's vote on the actual terms of leaving was not required by any UK law - indeed, IIRC, their vote to precede the negotiations was not required either. I'd say it was democratic on the basis that the representatives chosen by the people did approve the result and by a significant margin. That margin was a result of the Tories' success at a general election in which leaving the EU was probably the major issue. In many ways, that election served as the sort of referendum on the negotiated terms of which you write.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    But the people's vote on the actual terms of leaving was not required by any UK law - indeed, IIRC, their vote to precede the negotiations was not required either. I'd say it was democratic on the basis that the representatives chosen by the people did approve the result and by a significant margin. That margin was a result of the Tories' success at a general election in which leaving the EU was probably the major issue. In many ways, that election served as the sort of referendum on the negotiated terms of which you write.

    The problem there is that the majority of voters voted for parties that opposed those terms (just barely).
  • Gee D wrote: »
    But the people's vote on the actual terms of leaving was not required by any UK law - indeed, IIRC, their vote to precede the negotiations was not required either. I'd say it was democratic on the basis that the representatives chosen by the people did approve the result and by a significant margin. That margin was a result of the Tories' success at a general election in which leaving the EU was probably the major issue. In many ways, that election served as the sort of referendum on the negotiated terms of which you write.
    I agree, by law the 2016 vote was not needed. So, therefore the democratic approach would have been for Parliament to sit in 2015 and, rather than debate holding a referendum, debate whether the UK should Leave the EU or Remain. Any guess what the result of such a vote in Parliament would have been? Probably somewhere around 80% in favour of Remaining in the EU. There wasn't any other basis for a democratic decision; the Tories had won a narrow majority on a pro-EU membership manifesto, I can't recall what exactly were in the other party manifestos but only UKIP were standing on a definite anti-EU manifesto (but, even if the referendum commitment by the Tories hadn't taken the wind from their sails, UKIP were unlikely to win more than a handful of seats and could have easily come up without any MPs).

    By convention, once the government and Parliament have approved a significant constitutional variation (eg: devolution) this is subject to approval of the people in a confirmatory referendum. Which is very different from a vote before either the government or Parliament have considered the issue at all.

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited April 2020
    That may well be so, but there was no requirement that it be done. In any event, I don't think a referendum on the terms which you suggest would be very practical. Referendum questions here - and referendums are necessary for federal constitutional changes are necessary as are some in NSW (don't know details of other States but they have been held) - are in very general terms: do you approve of the proposed constitutional change set out in the X Act.

    A final comment: the election results, the question of leaving the EU being a major issue, showed a pretty strong vote in favour of leave candidates.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    That may well be so, but there was no requirement that it be done. In any event, I don't think a referendum on the terms which you suggest would be very practical. Referendum questions here - and referendums are necessary for federal constitutional changes are necessary as are some in NSW (don't know details of other States but they have been held) - are in very general terms: do you approve of the proposed constitutional change set out in the X Act.

    That's actually very specific. If you read the act you get to see the precise wording of the constitutional change.
    A final comment: the election results, the question of leaving the EU being a major issue, showed a pretty strong vote in favour of leave candidates.

    No, it didn't. It showed a slight vote in favour of remain and 2nd referendum candidates. The leavers were in a large but distinct minority. It's just that the largest leave party hoovered up almost all the leave votes while the smaller remain parties decided the best way to achieve their goal was to attack the larger 2nd referendum party and split the vote.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    In any event, I don't think a referendum on the terms which you suggest would be very practical. Referendum questions here - and referendums are necessary for federal constitutional changes are necessary as are some in NSW (don't know details of other States but they have been held) - are in very general terms: do you approve of the proposed constitutional change set out in the X Act.
    That is, of course, the form of every UK referendum before Cameron (and, the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum); asking the people if they agree with either an Act of Parliament or (for the original EEC referendum and the GFA vote in Northern Ireland) whether the UK should agree to an international treaty. It's the sort of referendum I've been calling for as the ideal. The other options are the sub-optimal versions that Cameron could have called having made the commitment to hold a referendum in the 2015 manifesto (alternatively take the far-from-unheard-of option of simply not doing something that was in the manifesto).
    A final comment: the election results, the question of leaving the EU being a major issue, showed a pretty strong vote in favour of leave candidates.
    Except, it didn't. Of the parties standing on an anti-EU platform they returned 13% of the vote (and 9 out 650 MPs - 8 of which were DUP where their position on the EU may not have been the most significant reason people voted for them). Of course, some Conservative candidates were anti-EU even though they were standing for a party with a pro-EU manifesto (which raises the question of whether people vote for the candidate or the party they stand for). Leaving the EU was not a major issue in the 2015 election.

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    I was treating the Tories as a Leave party, that being the policy of the governments before and after the election. Of the huge post-election majority, did any vote against the legislation, or abstain? I can't now recall.

    Arethosemyfeet - the problems of both a flawed drawing of electorates and of inequalities in their size may have affected the result, but the real problem was the loss of seats which should have been Labour.
  • No the real problem is that only a small minority actually want Brexit.

    The majority of people who voted for Brexit really don't want it. This is born out by various opinion polls and focus group work. It's probably less than 10% of the population actually want what Brexit really is. They've been successfully sold a series of lies about what they were voting for.

    There are several guilty parties in this massive electoral fraud but it's very difficult to argue that one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is not a major culprit...

    AFZ

    P.S. Happy to provide references for above but it'll take me a little while and I'm meant to be working... :wink:
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited April 2020
    Except it wasn't a simple question - it was a very complex question posed in a simplistic manner.

    I don't think it's accurate to say the question was complex. Rather, the potential implications of one answer to the question were very complex.

    And there was no process for working through all those implications before getting people to answer the question. Nor a capacity for further stages.

    But it's still, like many things, essentially a yes or no question. We all deal with this in our own lives all the time. Questions that only have a couple of options, such as whether to stay in a job or leave it, but where there are heck of a lot of factors to consider and information to evaluate if you want to have a satisfactory process leading to the ultimate answer of Yes or No.

    But I agree with all the observations people have made about how we usually set up referendum questions, which mostly have to be boiled down to simple options on the actual ballot paper, so that those simple options are more meaningful.

    The whole Brexit problem is that none of the powers that be expected the populace to pick the complex answer.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    I was treating the Tories as a Leave party, that being the policy of the governments before and after the election.
    No, the Tories have become a Leave party, as a result of the referendum giving the pro-Leave faction within the party the upper hand (if the 2016 vote had gone the other way then the pro-leave factions would have largely collapsed and they'd have remained a pro-EU party). That change to being a Leave party has happened over the last few years. It's a point of much difficulty for the Conservative activists I know locally - they support the traditional Tory policies of low tax, low government spending, free-market low regulation economics (and, being in Scotland, Unionism) but still support EU membership, and they have quite a low opinion of Johnson. It's not even clear to what extent the Tories were a Leave party under May, it's really been the influence of Johnson that's sealed that identity. Certainly the Tories were not a Leave party in the 2015 election.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    No, not in 2015, when there was no party position. Things moved on from there. I was referring to the events in 2019 and in particular those when May lost the confidence of her party. From then the Tories were, as you say, a leave party. Otherwise as Orfeo sets out.

    alienfromzog - only 10% wanted to leave? It is hard to square that with the results in the referendum, let alone the election results in 2019.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    No, not in 2015, when there was no party position. Things moved on from there. I was referring to the events in 2019 and in particular those when May lost the confidence of her party. From then the Tories were, as you say, a leave party. Otherwise as Orfeo sets out.

    alienfromzog - only 10% wanted to leave? It is hard to square that with the results in the referendum, let alone the election results in 2019.

    It becomes easy once you realise that most leave voters believe that leave and its consequences are massively different from reality, largely because they've been sold utter lies about what the EU is and what it does.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    No, not in 2015, when there was no party position. Things moved on from there. I was referring to the events in 2019 and in particular those when May lost the confidence of her party. From then the Tories were, as you say, a leave party. Otherwise as Orfeo sets out.

    alienfromzog - only 10% wanted to leave? It is hard to square that with the results in the referendum, let alone the election results in 2019.

    It becomes easy once you realise that most leave voters believe that leave and its consequences are massively different from reality, largely because they've been sold utter lies about what the EU is and what it does.

    Exactly.

    You can break this down a lot of ways but there has never been a majority in favour of leaving regardless of cost. Probably the easiest to demonstrate is the very big chunk of leave voters who believe(d) that leaving would mean they would be better off economically. The data was pretty clear in 2016, in 2020 it's almost unequivocal that they will be worse off.

    I haven't even got to the £350m/week...

    It's difficult to be precise but the majority of people who voted leave, voted for a mythical world not the one they're getting. As I said, that constitutes a massive electoral fraud (morally). And our current Prime Minister was one of the main architects.

    AFZ
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited April 2020
    Gee D wrote: »
    No, not in 2015, when there was no party position. Things moved on from there. I was referring to the events in 2019 and in particular those when May lost the confidence of her party. From then the Tories were, as you say, a leave party. Otherwise as Orfeo sets out.

    alienfromzog - only 10% wanted to leave? It is hard to square that with the results in the referendum, let alone the election results in 2019.

    It becomes easy once you realise that most leave voters believe that leave and its consequences are massively different from reality, largely because they've been sold utter lies about what the EU is and what it does.

    Which does not mean only 10% wanted to leave. What it is, is a claim that had they known all the facts, only 10% would have wanted to leave.

    You can't rewrite history to claim that only 10% wanted to leave on the basis of what arguably should have been true but wasn't.

    I have to say, the Ship sees a lot of this kind of confusion between what people think Brexit history should have been and what it actually was.
  • There was a percentage of the Leave vote who were registering a protest vote against the Government, I knew several people who did that and were horrified when the result for Leave was voted through. The opinion polls were blithely assuring everyone in the run up to the referendum that Remain would win, and the majority to Leave was a horrible shock to a lot of people, including Cameron, hence him falling on his sword. London and the cities were confident of Remain, leave voting friends I know live in York, for example, and York voted Remain. I live and worked in Leave voting areas and wasn't so confident the opinion polls were right.
  • [And on those non-existent foundations the government under May and Johnson have built an entire edifice of nation-destroying fascist policies that I'm sure the vast majority of the UK population would have rejected had they known that that was what the Leave option would mean.

    The vast majority of the UK population didn't reject those policies four months ago when they were a reality, so what makes you think they would have done so four years ago when they were just a possibility?
  • orfeo wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    No, not in 2015, when there was no party position. Things moved on from there. I was referring to the events in 2019 and in particular those when May lost the confidence of her party. From then the Tories were, as you say, a leave party. Otherwise as Orfeo sets out.

    alienfromzog - only 10% wanted to leave? It is hard to square that with the results in the referendum, let alone the election results in 2019.

    It becomes easy once you realise that most leave voters believe that leave and its consequences are massively different from reality, largely because they've been sold utter lies about what the EU is and what it does.

    Which does not mean only 10% wanted to leave. What it is, is a claim that had they known all the facts, only 10% would have wanted to leave.

    You can't rewrite history to claim that only 10% wanted to leave on the basis of what arguably should have been true but wasn't.

    I have to say, the Ship sees a lot of this kind of confusion between what people think Brexit history should have been and what it actually was.

    I think you're making a distinction there without a difference because it's not that people want to leave the EU. It's that they want to be better off. This kind of difference in 1st and 2nd order autonomy is what I was exploring here. This is not a rewriting of history but an example of why a poorly-thought-through referendum (especially in the context of our entirely useless electoral laws) ends up with a perverse result. Both in terms of good policy (it isn't) and ironically in terms of the democratic validity of the outcome. And that's just the referendum result in itself. The contortions that have then been applied to make the result mean only what certain people want it to mean in direct contradiction to what was said in the campaign are an astounding affront to democracy.

    AFZ
  • There was a percentage of the Leave vote who were registering a protest vote against the Government, I knew several people who did that and were horrified when the result for Leave was voted through. The opinion polls were blithely assuring everyone in the run up to the referendum that Remain would win, and the majority to Leave was a horrible shock to a lot of people, including Cameron, hence him falling on his sword. London and the cities were confident of Remain, leave voting friends I know live in York, for example, and York voted Remain. I live and worked in Leave voting areas and wasn't so confident the opinion polls were right.

    Yes, a couple at Our Place - loyal LibDems for many years, through thick and thin, voted Leave, and have since told me that they regret that decision...
    :grimace:

    Bit late now, though...



  • [And on those non-existent foundations the government under May and Johnson have built an entire edifice of nation-destroying fascist policies that I'm sure the vast majority of the UK population would have rejected had they known that that was what the Leave option would mean.

    The vast majority of the UK population didn't reject those policies four months ago when they were a reality, so what makes you think they would have done so four years ago when they were just a possibility?
    43% voted Conservative in December. Even if all those were also voting for the deal Johnson was promising for the end of this year that's still a a long way short of the vast majority of votes cast (much less the UK population on a 67% turnout). Besides, if that was a vote in favour of the promised deal, were those people really voting for the no-deal we're heading for?

  • One of my problems with the Brexit 'democratic' argument is that out of the four voting nations, two nations voted remain. But because we are, in terms of population, numerically inferior to the two who voted leave, we - those two nations - don't count. To me, right there, democracy demonstrates its very limited usefulness - indeed its potential harmfulness - under certain circumstances. England and Wales decide how Northern Ireland and Scotland are to live their lives for the next umpty ump years. Mmmm. Democracy. Mmmm.
  • [And on those non-existent foundations the government under May and Johnson have built an entire edifice of nation-destroying fascist policies that I'm sure the vast majority of the UK population would have rejected had they known that that was what the Leave option would mean.

    The vast majority of the UK population didn't reject those policies four months ago when they were a reality, so what makes you think they would have done so four years ago when they were just a possibility?
    43% voted Conservative in December. Even if all those were also voting for the deal Johnson was promising for the end of this year that's still a a long way short of the vast majority of votes cast (much less the UK population on a 67% turnout). Besides, if that was a vote in favour of the promised deal, were those people really voting for the no-deal we're heading for?

    You said the vast majority would reject the policies that have been introduced as a result of the Brexit Referendum result. Disproving that claim does not require me to demonstrate that a vast majority voted for them.

    Even if we consider the 53% who voted for parties other than Conservative to be rejecting the policies in question (which is unlikely given the presence of the Brexit Party and UKIP), that is not a vast majority. Case closed.
  • According to BBC (link)
    Conservative - 43.6% -
    Labour - 32.2%
    Lib Dem - 11.5%
    SNP - 3.9%
    Green - 2.7%
    Brexit - 2%

    So Pro-Brexit - 45.6%
    against Brexit - 50.3%

    I'm not convinced the case is closed

  • [And on those non-existent foundations the government under May and Johnson have built an entire edifice of nation-destroying fascist policies that I'm sure the vast majority of the UK population would have rejected had they known that that was what the Leave option would mean.

    The vast majority of the UK population didn't reject those policies four months ago when they were a reality, so what makes you think they would have done so four years ago when they were just a possibility?
    43% voted Conservative in December. Even if all those were also voting for the deal Johnson was promising for the end of this year that's still a a long way short of the vast majority of votes cast (much less the UK population on a 67% turnout). Besides, if that was a vote in favour of the promised deal, were those people really voting for the no-deal we're heading for?

    You said the vast majority would reject the policies that have been introduced as a result of the Brexit Referendum result. Disproving that claim does not require me to demonstrate that a vast majority voted for them.

    Even if we consider the 53% who voted for parties other than Conservative to be rejecting the policies in question (which is unlikely given the presence of the Brexit Party and UKIP), that is not a vast majority. Case closed.
    Well, I don't particularly need to prove anything. We can all agree that we don't actually know what percentage of voters would vote for either the hypothetical deal that Johnson promised (but didn't specify) in December or the no-deal he's leading us towards. Because, no one has actually asked the voters of this country to answer either of those questions. We were asked a question in 2016 on which those proposing Leave were disagreed about what they wanted - it's quite possible that many voted for a Norway like option remaining in the single market and customs union, because there were prominent members of the Leave campaigns telling us that that was what we were going to get. Heck some may have actually believed the NHS would get another £350m per week and voted for that, despite the numbers coming no where near adding up (unless, of course, the Chancellor opened the purse strings and found that from somewhere other than monies related to the EU), and were always going to be closer to the UK government being £350m per week worse off than having an extra £350m to play with.
  • According to BBC (link)
    Conservative - 43.6% -
    Labour - 32.2%
    Lib Dem - 11.5%
    SNP - 3.9%
    Green - 2.7%
    Brexit - 2%

    So Pro-Brexit - 45.6%
    against Brexit - 50.3%

    I'm not convinced the case is closed

    Do you think 50.3% constitutes “the vast majority”?
  • Alan, are you talking about the specific Brexit deal we will (or won’t) end up with, or are you talking about “an entire edifice of nation-destroying fascist policies”? You can’t keep switching from one to the other depending on which suits what you’re saying right now.
  • Alan, are you talking about the specific Brexit deal we will (or won’t) end up with, or are you talking about “an entire edifice of nation-destroying fascist policies”? You can’t keep switching from one to the other depending on which suits what you’re saying right now.
    Well, they're related concepts. The "edifice of nation-destroying fascist policies" includes Brexit (though, a very soft Brexit that retains all the good things of EU membership such as customs union, single market, freedoms of movement, common regulations, protections for workers and environment, consumer rights etc may only be mildly damaging to the nation rather than destroying). We can also add into that "hostile environments" for immigrants and those seeking access to welfare, systematic dismantling of public services, letting oligarchs living in tax havens overseas run the country, throwing democracy under a bus emblazoned with lies, squandering billions on obscenities such as renewal of Trident ... in fact the majority of what the Tories have been doing for the last decade.
  • Anselmina wrote: »
    One of my problems with the Brexit 'democratic' argument is that out of the four voting nations, two nations voted remain. But because we are, in terms of population, numerically inferior to the two who voted leave, we - those two nations - don't count. To me, right there, democracy demonstrates its very limited usefulness - indeed its potential harmfulness - under certain circumstances. England and Wales decide how Northern Ireland and Scotland are to live their lives for the next umpty ump years. Mmmm. Democracy. Mmmm.

    That would be because we never got around to federating the Union. I feel sorry for Gibraltar - they have crap representation in the Westminster parliament, are physically attached to Spain, and voted 92% remain.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    ple of an election. In the seat of Upper Upwick, Bloggs gets 28418 votes, while Juggers gets 28417. Multiple recounts confirm that result. Bloggs is the new member. How is that different to the result of the referendum?

    To be fair, Bloggs would have to win by 28418 votes to 26348 to replicate the margin of the referendum. With a majority of about 2000 votes, Bloggs would certainly not consider that they held a safe seat.
  • Well, we've twice had the opportunity to replace Bloggs in the years since the referendum. Apparently an opportunity to replace the referendum decision would be undemocratic.

    Although you can read the Conservative victory in the recent election as at least tenuous support for maintaining our current shambolic trajectory.
  • TelepathTelepath Shipmate
    The way the Leave campaign was conducted - not well, according to a criminal standard of proof, but that's OK in modern Britain - bears no relation to what we're actually getting. We're getting a crash Brexit at the end of the year with food and medicine insecurity, among many other consequences both foreseeable and not (will I need to use those water purification tablets I bought to dissolve in rainwater cos there might not be reliable fuel? who knows!).

    Combined with travel restrictions globally which will still be in place, there is nothing any ordinary individual can do to escape any of this. I have another country of citizenship to which I could theoretically move, though not without impoverishing myself in ways I wouldn't likely recover from. But even that option is off the table for now.

    But by the December election, I don't think anyone could reasonably say they didn't know what they were getting. Anyone not in possession of the facts by then was unreachable, whether because of apathy, or ignorance of source credibility.

    It seems obvious that the majority of voters in the December election either wanted the current Government or didn't care. It follows that whatever the current government is doing, they either welcome it or don't care. Full stop, case closed. I don't say all of them necessarily want Brexit, but a large enough minority either want Brexit or don't care about the consequences, and in general are happy for Boris to pursue Boris-related ends for Boris's benefit, whatever they are and by whatever means necessary.

    I also think that people with low or no standards are, rather realistically, not held to those standards. I've seen the argument by a pro-Boriser that they trust Boris to pursue his own ends ruthlessly, whereas Jo Swinson was undemocratic for promising to Revoke if elected.

    Before you start: I'm not arguing the merits of Jo Swinson, though I do think that campaigning on a clear promise of "I will revoke if my party wins, regardless of any referendum result" is not undemocratic because a) the outcome depends on voting for her party or not and b) a Lib Dem victory could only ever result from a historically unprecedented huge gain in the vote share such that you'd have to say "guess a majority wanted to revoke, then". But that's just my opinion - the point is, Swinson's stance was morally defensible whether or not one agreed with it, but the pro-Boriser was against her because she fell below a standard, whereas the pro-Boriser counted on Boris to observe only the standard of his own self-interest; presumably Boris could only let this voter down by losing his resolve (probable, and I doubt he'd actually lose supporters over that) or committing some wanton act of altruism (scream scream clutch pearls shock horror yes I do think he could lose supporters if he picked the wrong act of altruism). Only if you have standards can you be canceled for breaching standards.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Gee D wrote: »
    ple of an election. In the seat of Upper Upwick, Bloggs gets 28418 votes, while Juggers gets 28417. Multiple recounts confirm that result. Bloggs is the new member. How is that different to the result of the referendum?

    To be fair, Bloggs would have to win by 28418 votes to 26348 to replicate the margin of the referendum. With a majority of about 2000 votes, Bloggs would certainly not consider that they held a safe seat.

    I appreciate all that, but what I was saying is that a majority of 1 vote is all a candidate needs.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Anselmina wrote: »
    One of my problems with the Brexit 'democratic' argument is that out of the four voting nations, two nations voted remain. But because we are, in terms of population, numerically inferior to the two who voted leave, we - those two nations - don't count. To me, right there, democracy demonstrates its very limited usefulness - indeed its potential harmfulness - under certain circumstances. England and Wales decide how Northern Ireland and Scotland are to live their lives for the next umpty ump years. Mmmm. Democracy. Mmmm.

    That would be because we never got around to federating the Union. I feel sorry for Gibraltar - they have crap representation in the Westminster parliament, are physically attached to Spain, and voted 92% remain.

    Exactly. As the UK isn't a federation, choosing to divide up the vote based on what 'nation' it came from isn't actually germane to the outcome. Whereas in Australia, a referendum needs a majority of votes in a majority of states in order to pass.

    I'm fascinated at how often people do this, either subdivide nationwide votes, or nationalise votes that weren't done on a national basis (such as caring about the national vote for the House of Commons or equivalent when in fact there are several hundred completely independent MP elections going on).

    All it proves is that you can get a different outcome if you change the rules. Which is a fairly trite observation. But people constantly make it as a way of questioning an outcome based on the rules that were actually in place.

    Sure, I can argue that Nadal beat Federer instead of the other way round by counting the total number of points won in a match instead of using the actual scoring system in tennis...
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    As for "protest votes"...

    I'm sorry, but if people decide to answer a different question to the one they're actually asked, when half the time one of the things those same people disliked about politicians is how politicians don't answer the questions politicians are asked, I have precisely zero sympathy.

    If you have a question on a ballot paper and knowingly don't try to answer that question, but then say you care about the outcome, you're an irresponsible idiot.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Exactly, and you can't complain about the result either.

    The double majority test has caused the loss of several referendum questions. In a way, I can understand the reason for it 120 years ago, but by now that time has long since gone; we should now be looking at diminishing the importance of the States (then you think of how the Premiers are really doing a lot of the work in the present crisis (and the bushfires also) that's really should be Morrison's but which is beyond him).
  • Gee D wrote: »
    I appreciate all that, but what I was saying is that a majority of 1 vote is all a candidate needs.

    But what does that have to do with the price of eggs?

    In the case of an election, you have to pick one winner - that's how they work. Sometimes, that means you toss a coin or draw a card to see which candidate wins.

    The referendum wasn't an election. The referendum was a measure of public opinion (albeit with a bunch of caveats surrounding the lack of clarity about what Brexit would look like), and the answer it gave was that the public was fairly evenly divided. Yes, Brexit won, by a small but clear margin, but the strongest information was that there was no clear consensus about what we should do.

    @orfeo yes, I agree with you about idiots who vote for something they don't want, and then claim that they only did it as a protest and didn't really mean it. I have often used exactly that language to refer to right-of-party Labour types who nominated Mr. Corbyn because they thought they really ought to have a socialist on the ballot to make it look better when their candidate won, and then complained bitterly when the party membership voted for Mr. Corbyn by a wide margin. I'm happy to use it about people who voted for Brexit but didn't really mean it as well.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited April 2020
    Gee D wrote: »
    Exactly, and you can't complain about the result either.

    The double majority test has caused the loss of several referendum questions. In a way, I can understand the reason for it 120 years ago, but by now that time has long since gone; we should now be looking at diminishing the importance of the States (then you think of how the Premiers are really doing a lot of the work in the present crisis (and the bushfires also) that's really should be Morrison's but which is beyond him).

    That's a whole massive question about whether Australia should be a federation. There's no doubt that changes in technology and transport have made the situation very different, but as to whether people still feel a strong connection to a State culturally... look, I don't know. I don't actually get to live in one. Though I certainly feel a strong irritation towards any system that assumes I live in New South Wales. Even if the border is only about 10 minutes drive for me.

    (Whether that work should be Morrison's is begging the question to some extent. I'm grateful that he understands that these things are not his responsibility under current arrangements. It was messier with the bushfires.)
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Gee D wrote: »
    I appreciate all that, but what I was saying is that a majority of 1 vote is all a candidate needs.

    But what does that have to do with the price of eggs?

    In the case of an election, you have to pick one winner - that's how they work. Sometimes, that means you toss a coin or draw a card to see which candidate wins.

    The referendum wasn't an election. The referendum was a measure of public opinion (albeit with a bunch of caveats surrounding the lack of clarity about what Brexit would look like), and the answer it gave was that the public was fairly evenly divided. Yes, Brexit won, by a small but clear margin, but the strongest information was that there was no clear consensus about what we should do.

    As to your first paragraph - you've really answered it in the last sentence I've quoted from your post. While there was that preference for leaving, it was not a clear consensus. Nor could there be, if by consensus you mean a general agreement. Given that clear majority in favour of leaving, it would have been next to impossible for any UK government not to proceed to negotiate a withdrawal.
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    We seem to be retracing old paths here. What is rather more interesting is the muddle the government has got into over the purchase of medical equipment. The high Foreign Office official was at least under the impression that the decision not to participate in the EU scheme was political, that has been denied and he has retracted. Matt Hancock says the UK has now joined the scheme, the EU has told the BBC that is not the case and no application to join has been received from the UK. Either there has been a total misunderstanding, or a breakdown in interdepartmental or international communications, or Hancock is lying, or he has been misled, or someone in the government machine is deliberately obstructing cooperation with the EU. My money is on the last. The question is, who?
  • Following that question and answer session the FO official, Sir Simon McDonald made an apology, which is apparently very carefully worded to only apologise for part of the allegations made link
  • Alan, are you talking about the specific Brexit deal we will (or won’t) end up with, or are you talking about “an entire edifice of nation-destroying fascist policies”? You can’t keep switching from one to the other depending on which suits what you’re saying right now.
    Well, they're related concepts. The "edifice of nation-destroying fascist policies" includes Brexit (though, a very soft Brexit that retains all the good things of EU membership such as customs union, single market, freedoms of movement, common regulations, protections for workers and environment, consumer rights etc may only be mildly damaging to the nation rather than destroying). We can also add into that "hostile environments" for immigrants and those seeking access to welfare, systematic dismantling of public services, letting oligarchs living in tax havens overseas run the country, throwing democracy under a bus emblazoned with lies, squandering billions on obscenities such as renewal of Trident ... in fact the majority of what the Tories have been doing for the last decade.

    ...and which 43% of the UK electorate (or that part of it that cared enough about the outcome to actually make their opinion known) voted for at the last election. Thus making your claim that the "vast majority" would reject it demonstrably false.
  • Well if 52% was considered a ringing endorsement in 2016, why shouldn't 57% be considered a sufficient majority against in 2019?
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    @Eirenist said -
    .... or someone in the government machine is deliberately obstructing cooperation with the EU. My money is on the last. The question is, who?

    All of them?
  • Gee D wrote: »
    As to your first paragraph - you've really answered it in the last sentence I've quoted from your post. While there was that preference for leaving, it was not a clear consensus. Nor could there be, if by consensus you mean a general agreement.

    I just posted that the two other referenda that the UK has had delivered a firm result with a 2:1 vote split (in favour of the EEC, against the AV). There are many other questions on which the UK public would deliver a similar firm statement.

    But there's a fundamental difference between an election and a referendum question. An election has to end with a winner. You can't just not have an MP for Upper Whosit, because the people were evenly split on their favoured candidate. But it's quite reasonable to answer a question with "we don't know", "we need more information to give a sensible answer" and so on.

    (As usual, of course, the answer to the question "what should we do next" is "well, I wouldn't start from here...")
  • TelepathTelepath Shipmate
    The referendum should have been conducted differently, but it wasn't, and those who conducted it are now in power with a "thumping majority" - of seats, not of the vote share, but that's how it works.

    Whatever percentage of the voting public, voted for this ghastly array of people who came out wrong: they either like those destructive policies, don't understand them, or don't care. Nor apparently did the rest of us care enough to outvote them. It wasn't all our fault - the opposition parties couldn't see the urgency of the situation enough to form an alliance despite a smattering of agreements in individual seats, whereas the Tories and Fartage could.

    Someone once said there are far more humanitarians in the world than villains, but the villains are a lot more focussed in what they do. I think that's the explanation here.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    The fundamental point is that getting lots of people to vote for you, doesn't somehow legitimate a sow's ear into a silk purse. That's the fallacy that underlies the quite a lot of people's brains and mouths claim 'democracy' is about.

    Even if it's 'democratic', if he's a sow's ear, he's still a sow's ear.
  • Potus the Trump (the Fount of all Truth) has given it as his opinion, following a phone conversation with Our Beloved Leader, that Johnson is 'ready to go' - presumably meaning 'resign from office', rather than 'leave this vale of tears forever'.
    :cold_sweat:

    The Torygraph, OTOH, says OBL is ready to get back to his version of 'work' on Monday...
    :confused:
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    I fear that when the Great POTUS says Johnson is 'ready to go', he means 'rarin' to go'.
Sign In or Register to comment.