The "will of the people"

The referendum was advisory, but we are where we are and I have yet to find anyone who voted leave to admit they were wrong.
Asked why they voted leave the answer is either, we can manage without the E.U. or to control immigration. No mention of how we are going to be better off, the Brexiteers “ Canada +++” trade deal is off the table, remember that, they wanted cake and eat it.
If we do leave with no deal we will just have to make the best of it, probably no cake.

I agree that the will of the people is usually nonsense in every context.

It is the will of those who have the franchise (e.g. Tory members in the case of the leadership vote); and the will of those who bothered to turn out and vote.

Quizqueen : Deals can be sorted out during the year after we have left on our terms as an independent country.

1. ”during the year”. Do you really believe it'll take one year to start and finalise all the deals?

2. ”on our terms”. So China, India, USA and all the others will meekly comply with our wishes?

3. ”independent country”. No country is truly independent any more.

It would be interesting to hear what you base your optimism on. I think many of us agree that the last three years have been a mess and our leaders have shown nothing but incompetence. Boris Johnson is now promising that we will be ”the best place on earth” but who can believe him?

The fraudulent referendum was advisory.

Cameron had no right to say the result would be implemented and when he realised that it would be impossible to deliver the undeliverable promises of the Leave liars, he resigned so Theresa May ended up with the poisoned chalice.

Cameron deserves to go down in history as our worst ever PM.

resigned

The referendum was not advisory. DC said it was a once in a life time opportunity and that regardless of the result he would ensure that it was implemented; then of course when he didn't get the result he wanted he resigned.

There's a lot of talk about the fraudulent nature of the referendum in terms of the leave campaign. You can't get more fraudulent than the PM who held it, saying regardless of the result that it would be implemented, that he would lead the country in which ever direction it took, and then reigned.

Don't you remember Farage telling us all in 2016 that a 52:48 result would be "unfinished business"?

It seems to me that the views of the minority in all areas of life are more important now than the majority. Yes, I will be very angry if we don't leave and would be willing to take some sort of action, although not sure what sort at the moment as I am generally law abiding. I am not afraid of a No Deal Brexit because that is the only true Brexit. Deals can be sorted out during the year after we have left on our terms as an independent country.

mich777

There some very articulate and informative posts above yours, explaining why the 2016 results do not apply today so not sure why you're still pondering those results I'm at a loss to understand.

Three years ago 17 million out of a UK population of 66 million voted leave on the basis of all sorts of dishonest statements.

Fraud by the leave campaigners has since been proven in court so that the referendum would have been declared void if it had been mandatory. As it was only advisory that did not happen.

Everything has changed. Since then we have all learned a great deal about the consequences of brexit so that the majority want to remain in the EU and that is why the same fraudsters are against a peoples' vote.

I am feeling very confused about what a majority is and what a minority is!!! Help!

52% voted to leave 48% to remain...which figure is the majority here please????

and 'they' know that - which is one reason they want to rush it through

The very large number of opinion polls since the fraudulent referendum give a far better indication of "the will of the people". still very divided, albeit with a majority who wish to Remain in the EU.

whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/should-the-united-kingdom-remain-a-member-of-the-european-union-or-leave-the-european-union-asked-after-the-referendum/

There is NO collective "will of the people", however grand it sounds.

So much shorter than my long-winded diatribes but yes, you are so right.

It's not ours to choose though. It's parliament's now.

Obviously, they will look at it politically (not democratically) so they get voted in next time but Johnson is just trying to attract the socially conservative (very) lot as that's his base.

I can't see that this will be enough to get him the votes for a majority though. Perhaps they think a spell as the opposition is the best thing for them.

I remember the heated discussions before the referendum and people were claiming that everything would be OK because we'd have a Swiss or Norwegian-type deal with no problem. People seemed to think these kind of deals could be worked out overnight and anybody who questioned them was dismissed as a "Project Fear" supporter.

When people asked questions about EU citizens already in the UK and healthcare for UK citizens in the EU, again they were told not to make a fuss. Everything would be OK because the EU needed the UK more than the UK needed the EU. Everything would work out alright, we were told.

I remember asking somebody "What about Ireland?" and few people even seemed to realise there would be an issue. Again my concern was dismissed.

So who exactly wanted to make a good trading deal with the UK? Well, loads of countries, we were told. The US, for starters, and of course the NHS wouldn't be on the table and our food standards wouldn't need to be lowered.

And so it went on …

The leave campaigners couldn't even agree amongst themselves how they foresaw the future. All the ones behind it all could see was that there would be money pouring into their bank accounts and deregulation and lack of transparency about tax would follow form leaving the EU. More dosh for them!

All they had to do was persuade the hordes that leaving those nasty bogeymen in the EU would mean "taking back control". It really is sad.

There is NO collective "will of the people", however grand it sounds.

Unless there is total solidarity, there is no such as "the will of the people. It's an empty propaganda soundbite.

GillT57 ^ nobody voted for 'no deal'^. But they did, from all the vox pops I have heard at the time and since. whatever was written on the ballot paper, a very large number of people assumed that a leave vote meant that we would just walk out, shutting the door behind us. Some expected us to exit the EU the day after the ballot result was announced.

That was the whole problem with the EU referendum. Nobody on either side had a clue what they were voting for.

"I think there’s a lot of talk about the will of the people now because the referendum result was ignored or subverted by the HoC."

It may have been used to try and say that Urmstongran but it simply doesn't and can't. Even if you agree that this was "the will of the people" at that moment it simply cannot be static. Any view "the people" express through a poll, referendum or election, will change from day to day and hour to hour. It will certainly change over three years.

It has been used as if this is not true; that this "will of the people" is immutable - that is simply a lie, or if we are feeling a little more generous, a misdirection.

It has also been used as if it were the same group all the time. So there has been an attempt to portray this "will of the people" as a singular group. That is not true either. Any group voting for, say, a political party will change construction over time. Even if you got exactly the same outcome it may well not comprise the same people.

Thirdly, as I said in the OP, no expression of the "will of the people" is sovereign. The "crown in parliament" is sovereign in our form of democracy. Hence, if you vote in a particular set of MPs who have a majority which they lose, they cannot stay in power. We do not say "ah well, the "will of the people" voted them in three years ago so they must be allowed to continue to govern". It is parliament via the crown that decides under our rules of democracy.

Parliament had every right to ignore the vote but politically they decided not too. That is politics, not democracy. Parliament set out to carry out their view of what the referendum meant but unsurprisingly they could not agree. That is not subverting the "will of the people" the people are not sovereign, parliament is.

You may not like it and others are certainly trying to subvert our democracy by the misuse of various words but they cannot change the meaning of our democracy.

I think there’s a lot of talk about the will of the people now because the referendum result was ignored or subverted by the HoC.

There has been talk about 'the will of the people' ever since the referendum. It was a phrase that May and her government were very fond of. I realise that rewriting very recent history is very fashionable at the moment. You might lap it up, Ug but Remainers are not easily fooled.

The very worst thing about that phrase is that it it was very popular with fascists in the 1930s.

Can I also remind people that nobody voted for 'no deal'. This was not an option on the ballot paper and many mps assured the electorate that this woujd not happen. Raab is telling lies and anyone who says they voted to leave on the basis of a no deal Brexit is rewriting history to justify the mess that their decision has landed us all in.

Far from ignoring the result of the fraudulent referendum, politicians have spent the last three years trying to deliver the undeliverable promises of the lying leave campaign.

Theresa May made matters worse by leaning over backwards to try to show that, although she'd been a half-hearted Remainer, she had transformed herself into an extreme brexiter, cow-towing to the ERGs and setting out ridiculous red-lines which were mutually exclusive, ie impossible.

The people who have been ignored are the majority of the population who never voted for this brexit nonsense, but are now each £1000 worse off and are still being threatened by the right wing media with a no-deal brexit which would blight the future of our children and grandchildren for years to come..

I think there’s a lot of talk about the will of the people now because the referendum result was ignored or subverted by the HoC.

Phillip Hammond has warned that Boris Johnson risks betrayal of the UK if he allows "unelected people" to force through a no-deal brexit.

He accuses Dominic Cummings of attempting to force through a no-deal brexit by making demands that Brussels "cannot, and will not, accede to ".

Writing in The Times today he claims that suggestions from Brexiters such as Dominic Raab that leave voters were informed before the referendum of the risks of a hard exit is "a total travesty of the truth"

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/philip-hammond-no-10-risks-betrayal-of-uk-with-no-deal-brexit-m2w0003rn