A glorified opinion survey
David Allen Green points out that the Brexit vote doesn’t automatically mean the UK will leave the EU. A referendum does not invoke Article 50. David Cameron did not invoke Article 50 on Friday. Green thinks that means it may never be invoked at all.
The referendum on EU membership was advisory not mandatory. It was deliberately drafted by Parliament not to have any legal consequences. (The last UK-wide referendum, on the AV voting system, did have such a binding provision, but this time Parliament chose not to include one).
As such, the result of the poll has no more legal standing than the result of a consultation exercise. It was a glorified opinion survey, and that is what Parliament intended it to be.
Just a chance to let off steam then? Too bad so much of the steam is so very polluted.
Probably worth noting that it was a glorified opinion survey that has resulted in the UK being downgraded from a AAA credit rating to a AA. That’s going to end up costing real money.
I’ve tremendous respect for David Allen Green and have followed his Jack of Kent blog for years. IANAL, so I must defer to his legal opinion. I’m sure everything he says is true.
But what happens if nobody does press the big red button? The anecdotal reports of racist abuse and violence are numerous and deeply concerning. What happens when those people see nothing changing? Do we imagine they will return meekly into the dark corners from which they emerged? Or do we see a resurgence of support for fringe parties, far beyond the handful of councilors and the occasional MP that UKIP and other far right parties have managed in recent years. What happens to the two wings of the Tory party, held together with duct tape and string for decades, now hanging in tatters. The Labour party, equally divided are starting to eat themselves from the inside out.
This febrile state the UK finds itself in cannot last long. We’ve stabbed the body politic and it bleeds out into the street. We should not be complacent that everything will sort itself out. This is how we slide into terrible places that seemed unimaginable just a few years ago.
We cannot look away, we have to fight to regain what has been lost in this stupid, pointless exercise in spite. I’m just so dispirited by it all. I don’t know where to even start.
In the NYT, there are reports that even the Leave leaders like Johnson are scrambling to say that Britain still should (or will) have unfettered access to the EU markets. Here is an informative article on four of the options on the table.
Lordy, I’m not being complacent that everything will sort itself out, I’m just sharing one take (along with others) on what could happen.
I’m the opposite of complacent about what’s going on. I’m horrified by it.
(I know that wasn’t addressed to me specifically, I just want to make clear that’s not what I meant by posting about what DAG said.)
Ophelia – I knew you weren’t complacent about this.
I’m just getting a bit frustrated at reading all these articles that have appeared (I’ve seen several), telling everyone to calm down and stop freaking out, because hey, it’s not legally binding. Never mind that the racism genie’s out of the bottle again and we’re all going to have to cram the damn thing back in.
I know they’re trying to limit the economic damage that all this has caused in the markets. But unless somebody is going to rock up to a microphone and say “Actually, we’re just going to put this referendum result over here and never speak of it again” I don’t see how any of this helps. Markets hate uncertainty and the current political turmoil in both major parties means there’s going to be weeks if not months of rocky road ahead. And not the delicious ice-cream variety.
One commenter here already realised that the vote wasn’t a real referendum but a plebiscite, unfortunately no one took any notice. So again, despite all the verbal diarrhoea on the net and in the MSM, Britain will probably stay in the EU.
This was all along advertised as a non-binding vote; why the surprise now? As it is I believe the best thing for the UK would be to quit the EU and say goodbye to the role of the Council, dominated by Merkel, and the Commission consisting of unelected bureaucrats with no accountability to anyone except the EU deep state. Whether it will be allowed to happen remains to be seen – I’m not hopeful.
I think if the EU of 2016 had been the same EU in 1973 Britain would not have joined; nor would they have voted to remain in1975.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Merkel and Hollande, despite their ‘sadness’, aren’t actually pleased to see the UK leave. There goes the only member state with enough clout to ask questions and raise objections to the next round of european integration that nobody voted for – military and security unification (under german leadership of course).
Well, I believe that political unions that provide basic respect and equity are better than splits based on nationalistic interests. yes, Europe is far from perfect, but it is the best shot we have at avoiding a disastrous meltdown on that continent. If that were to happen the UK would suffer, even if it is out of Europe. Ironically, much of the bureaucracy touted as one of the reasons for leaving Europe arises from the attempts to forge political agreement between nations with competing interests…
This statement bothers me Sailor 1031 –
It’s both obvious and facile. The world has changed since 1973, even if it seems to be doing its level best to change back there again at the moment. There are innumerable treaties, agreements and social/political changes that have happened over the last decade that would not have happened in 1973. So what of it? It’s not, thankfully, 1973 any more. The EU of today is different to that of 1973, in many ways for the better.
Rob@8
I presume you’re referring to the claim that the EU brought peace to Europe. Probably the Cold War and the prospect of MAD was the real reason for the lack of conflict, ie the EU is the result of a peaceful Europe, not the cause. As to the elimination of nationalistic interests, the EU bureaucrats redefined themselves as Europeans and refereed to ‘Europe’ as if it were a coherent political unit very early in the evolution of the EU. Far too prematurely as history has demonstrated. In other words the EU is an attempt to create a super nation state on the scale of the US or the defunct USSR. It could be regarded as anachronistic in a globalising world.
That said, I don’t have an opinion as to whether Britain should leave or stay, however Brexit is probably never going to happen.
RJW, if I have fallen into the trap of seeing the world through my biases, preconceptions and flawed reasoning (I am after all human – much as I hate to admit it), I think you just joined me. I’d also like you to consider that we can both be right in this case, as none of the events we refer to occurred in isolation but instead with countless interactions and consequences. I doubt either of us are qualified to give a definitive opinion.
I would point out that the EU grew out of a desire for peace and prosperity, and the avoidance of conflict through mutual economic and cultural support. It is conceivable is it not that the desire to shelter Europe’s inhabitants from the excesses of the cold war may have been in the minds of the Unions designers? As for prematurely using Europe/European, when would the right time have been? If someone doesn’t start doing something it doesn’t happen. We’ll be waiting a long time for Gene Roddenberry’s utopia to magic it’s may into existence.
In any case, indisputably Europe’s direct response to the cold war was NATO, which is not specifically a European entity and co-exists alongside the EU.
Finally, MAD is a hotly disputed doctrine. I’m not aware of any documentation from the Soviet side that said “Gee I would have pushed the button today, but I was afraid the US would nuke me.” Tellingly though, US Presidents refused to take advice from some of their generals, at least twice {1}, to use nuclear weapons during the cold war. Thankfully cooler military and political heads prevailed. The only way we could test the hypothesis that MAD worked would be to go back in time and persuade the West to sit in a big circle and sing kum ba yah for a decade or so. Personally I suspect there were other less frighteningly terminal means of achieving the same deterrence.
{1} MacArthur during the Korean war and the SAC command during the Taiwan crisis of 1958.
Rob,
” I doubt that either of us are qualified to give a definitive opinion”
I can’t argue with that, however neither is anyone else, as there are far too many variables. My point was on the rather inflated claims made for the EU by its partisans. There are other factors that prevented the usual European civil wars, the case for the EU is far from settled.
You’re conflating the doctrine of MAD with its execution, the fact that a loony general or two wanted to push the button, or that there could have been catastrophic miscalculations is not relevant to the doctrine itself.
So if a US president vetoed the use of nuclear weapons because of the threat of retaliation. we could argue that the MAD doctrine was effective.
No, I’m commenting on both :-)