You speak as if the two questions being voted on are identical. They're not.
The first question was, should we Remain exactly as we are, or should we Leave in some totally unspecified fashion? The second question will be, should we Remain exactly as we are, or should we Leave in a no-deal hard exit, since that's the only possibility still on the table? It's no longer an abstract Leave, to which everyone can ascribe all their dreams and wishes; it's now a very specific Leave, with all the faults thereof. That may change the voting somewhat.
And, down the road, if there's another concrete Leave on the table, should the people have another referendum? Sure, why not? There probably won't be a need to vote on the negotiated Leave, though - losing by 230 votes in Parliament is probably enough. And there won't be any need to vote on a hard Brexit a second time, either - if it's voted on in a referendum, it will lose 65-35 or 70-30. (Or so I suspect, but what do I know? I'm not in the UK.)
And if the vote outcome _does_ change, what do we do afterwards - make it best of three and have another one to finally settle it as the pro Brexit voters revolt about their decision being overturned?
If there was another vote to reverse the Brexit-decision and people voted for that in majority, you could stop the madness and accept the results. Things change. Being stubborn is rarely the best option.
Actually only about 70% of leave voters, with the other 11% undecided.
I think the interesting data point is that 19% of leave voters would vote differently in hindsight, but only 5% of remain voters would. That's a 4x difference. But you're also right that most people did not change their opinion.
The real issue is that the people who voted "for Brexit" were all voting for different things, because it wasn't at all articulated what "Brexit" would look like. Now that that's better understood, there should absolutely be a second referendum, probably with three ranked options:
1. Stay
2. Soft leave (May's deal)
3. Hard leave (No deal)
With months and months of nonstop coverage, one could now say that there's broad understanding of what these precise options mean (though probably not their longer-term consequences, especially of option 3).
In any case, you don't have to be "ignoring the will of the people" to go back and ask again now that there's better information.
And if the vote is again for leaving the EU, should we keep asking the question until we get the answer you want?
All the vote was about was UK membership of the EU: not austerity, the exchange rate of the pound, the integrity of the UK, or immigration. Anyone who voted thinking otherwise should accept the consequences. Things are going exactly as planned: the UK is now going to leave the EU, and if one or two parts of it secede, those areas which did vote to leave are going to leave the EU.
You are probabaly a remainer, as am I, but you are using a remainer's justification for a re-run. And pretending leavers believe this. They generally don't.
No significant proportion of people have changed their mind. The leavers still want to leave, everyone's sick of parliament dragging this out for years.
Many remainer's are still hoping for some sort of magic unicorn waving it's horn and we'll stay in.
The time to do that was 2 years ago, not now, just get it over with already.
By this argument we'd only hold elections once, and move on.
A central aspect of a democracy is that people are allowed to change their mind, and that people are allowed to continue to campaign for a decision to be overturned.
So no, we won't move on. Even after a Brexit we won't move on - some of us will fight to rejoin, some of us will work for independence (for my part, I've offered to help one of the groups starting to work for independence for London).
But this is not over, even it if takes breaking the UK apart to finish it.
Perhaps I could've been clearer. There will always be changes, hence, anyone who wishes to claim there's been a change can.
That doesn't obviate "once in a generation", does it? Perhaps they should've been clearer and said "once in a generation, and if the UK has a referendum on EU membership and we decide to leave, and if…"
It would've been more honest, at least.
I'll also note, you're right that the vast majority of leave proponents wanted a Norway-style deal, it was remainers who presented this form as part of their machinations to try and wangle the UK staying in. Don't blame anyone else for that.
OT: Can I ask a question about something that has long puzzled me about Brexit?
Note: I'm not asking about whether or not Brexit was a good idea. No matter where you stand on that, let's assume for the sake of argument that there were terrific arguments for both staying in the EU and leaving.
My puzzlement concerns the specific question asked on the 2016 referendum, which was
> Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
with the options being remain or leave.
If you wanted the UK to stay in the EU, then clearly "remain" was the right choice for you.
Remaining didn't require the UK to do anything, so if you voted "remain" you were voting for something with a highly predictable outcome.
Leaving, on the other hand, requires a lot of action over the next several years. There were many quite different ways a post-EU UK could turn out, and much disagreement among the people who wanted to leave as to which of those ways they wanted. There could be changes of government over the years it takes to implement so even if you were confident that the people now in power would work toward an implementation of the kind of Brexit you wanted, they might not be the ones in power when it comes to actually finishing the thing.
If you wanted to leave then it seems to me that the best choice would still be to vote "remain" because this particular referendum was terrible. Instead, work to elect politicians who would offer a better referendum. Something like this:
> Should the United Kingdom develop a concrete proposal to leave the EU and then hold a referendum on that, and if that referendum passes negotiate a final deal to leave the EU, and then hold a final referendum on whether to implement that final deal?
To be fair you don't need anyone to change their mind for the outcome to change, Leavers skew older so mortality would swing the result in remains favour.
Id agree that each side is entrenched, I still think you need to have that vote, or come up with an option somewhere between the 2 camps, not swing to an even further extreme as we seem to be doing at the moment. No deal wasn't a thing we were discussing in the run up to the referendum, it wasn't even a thing we were really discussing this time last year.
Maybe my point wasn’t clear. Very little will change (in the short term at least), the “deadline” is a misnomer, and whichever day finally becomes the real leaving day (as it’s been and no doubt will continue to be stretched out and kicked down the road) everyone will wake up and notice it’s much the same as any other, the histrionic cries coming from Twitter users notwithstanding.
As to “nothing did need to change” that quite clearly wasn’t the case or a winning vote for leaving wouldn’t be remotely possible. In any well supported political view there is some truth to be found in its suggestions and/or grievances, whether it’s ultimately misguided or not.
Not in this case. The full outcome of the Brexit vote will not become clear for another ten years, probably. Both sides have tried to win over voters by scheming with "irrefutable facts" that clearly showed the other side's facts were wrong.
If people have not changed their mind the result will be the same.
If they have changed their mind they will have done it with the enormous, painful benefit of the past few years of hindsight.
In either case the result will be clearer than what we have now.
If the UK then votes to leave, I'll go with that, regretfully but I will.
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