What is the definition of ‘the will of the people’?

Toko Black

I think you'll find that it's the compiler test that it failed.

/> make wishful.thinking -include pipe_dreams

operation failed due to missing .reality

/>

Sonic67

1. ECJ Won't allow it unless it's permanent. You can't revoke it and then try and leave again six months later.

Article 50: Can the UK revoke Brexit?

The ruling said revocation should be "unequivocal and unconditional", suggesting that the UK could not simply revoke Article 50 in order to buy more time and then resubmit it at a later date.
Labour ditched the idea of a second referendum when it turned out it would be hammered in marginals.

Revoking would be worse. It's a democracy. You have local elections, euro elections, by-elections and general elections to fight.

We are here because 4 million votes was important. You want to upset 17 million?

Also, as you say, parliamentary approval. See the link. It's likely parliamentary approval will be needed and no MP in a marginal will vote on it knowing they will be punished at the next vote.

Ruperts slippers

Here's an interesting blog from Christian List discussing the same question.
Is Brexit the will of the people? The answer is not quite that simple
I personally believe that the reasons chosen by people to vote one way or the other were not persuaded by any campaign or pre referendum debate. The reasons are too innate and ingrained to be broken down into a quantifiable hypothetical table. Surely incoherence applies to both sides, the original question was 'leave or stay' which in my view is quite well defined. Consequently only now are the experts analysing the possible outcome of carrying out the majority vote.
"If there were another referendum, however, it should be preceded by an extensive process of deliberation, a process that is as inclusive, information-based, reasoned, and respectful as possible, perhaps with citizens’ assemblies and similar events as key ingredients".

Personally we've had enough deliberation, previous examples of behaviour involving both positions and arguments have shown it's surely highly unlikely for anymore debates to be fruitful.

Pacifico

Well some responses to the points in the blog..

The UK voting system has never required an absolute majority to take part - what is special about brexit?

There was no shared vision as to what remain meant - for example the CBI are in favor of Euro membership.

If the argument is that people dont know what the EU is about then that simply demolishes the case for our membership in the first place.

That is the case 1 minute after the results of any vote are announced. Should we invalidate them all?

A supermajority wasnt required to take us into the EU - in fact we didnt get a vote at all.

If we have a second referendum and the majority is for remain by the same amount as it was for leave in the first referendum how does that meet the requirements listed previously? - by the arguments listed we should ignore that result.

Supersonic

The important wording is 'suggesting'. Anything is still possible as there is no precedent for this stuff.

Labour haven't ditched the idea of a second referendum.

How do you know it's still 17 million? The last vote was almost 3 years ago and - for what they're worth - opinion polls show a Remain majority now.

Stuart's right (no pun intended). The MPs shouldn't really be claiming to know what the will of the people is. And they certainly shouldn't interpret Leave to mean anything specific about how to leave. Maybe they should ask us?

All they actually have is the result of the 2016 vote, which was only ever indicative. Parliament can do what it likes, which would include defying the result of the 2016 indicative vote if they see fit.

Sonic67

They have. They can't say they have. Labour will promise remainers in London one thing and leavers in the rest of the country another. They want votes so they promise both sides but do nothing. Once they ever commit to one thing they alienate the others.
1. How do you know the opinion polls are correct?
2. We don't go off polls. If polls were correct we wouldn't bother with voting.
3. They are consistently wrong.
4. Polls seemed to promise a Remain majority before.
5. We go off actual votes. The vote was to leave and we haven't.
6. And "a majority?" At best Remain might scrape a win. So if you don't accept a Leave win why should anyone accept a Remain win?
The vote was to leave. It was "parliament will enact what you decide" not "parliament will argue with itself and then we'll forget about it." "Will of the people" refers to "the general will of the people."
Funny but we used to laugh at third world countries with dodgy voting. You want it here. We hold a massive vote, then ignore it as some losers got upset over it. How about we do it for every vote?

Goooner

Exactly. Why all the worry about a possible Corbyn government, if he gets in we can just re-run it

FireCrackerJim

polls show people are beaten down by remainers and and the EU trying to rugby tackle us as we walk to the exit, once we leave most of the trouble causing will end.  

It has little to do with actually being out of the EU.

klaxhu

Will prove you wrong on at least two points: Opinion polling for the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum - Wikipedia

Pretty consistent and accurate.

Again, where do you get your facts when you make these crude generalisations?
Even if polls were constantly right we would not deny voting capacity for people, that's what democracy is all about. But I know that this language is part of the conspiracy theory that the EU is a controlling state where there is no democracy with no proof whatsoever. Quite the opposite in fact, they can teach the UK a thing or two about real democracy.

Cliff

I'm interested.. In what way?