UK Parliament to Vote on Brexit

[Caaethil]

Source

Parliament must vote on whether the UK can start the process of leaving the EU, the High Court has ruled.

This means the government cannot trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - beginning formal exit negotiations with the EU - on its own.

Theresa May says the referendum - and existing ministerial powers - mean MPs do not need to vote, but campaigners called this unconstitutional.

The government is appealing, with a further hearing expected next month.

The prime minister's spokeswoman said she would be calling President of the EU Commission Jean-Claude Juncker to say she intended to stick to her March 2017 deadline for triggering Article 50.

Amid suggestions that she might try to call an early general election, she added that Mrs May believed "there shouldn't be an election until 2020 and that remains her view".

A statement is to be made to MPs on Monday but the government says it has no intention of letting the judgement "derail Article 50 or the timetable we have set out".

Brexit Secretary David Davis said he presumed the court ruling meant an act of Parliament would be required to trigger Article 50 - so would be subject to approval by both MPs and peers.

But the government was going to contest that view in an appeal, and said the referendum was held only following "a six-to-one vote in the Commons to give the decision to the British people".

"The people are the ones Parliament represents - 17.4m of them, the biggest mandate in history, voted for us to leave the European Union. We are going to deliver on that mandate in the best way possible for the British national interest," he told the BBC.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn urged the government "to bring its negotiating terms to Parliament without delay", adding that "there must be transparency and accountability to Parliament on the terms of Brexit".

But UKIP leader Nigel Farage said he feared a "betrayal" of the 51.9% of voters who backed leaving the EU in June's referendum and voiced concern at the prospect of a "half Brexit".

BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said the court ruling could mean potentially "months and months" of parliamentary hurdles but said a majority of MPs would be likely to vote for Article 50 - despite having backed the Remain campaign - as Brexit had been supported in the referendum.

Thoughts? Personally, I don't think this is actually going to stop Brexit, but it's not exactly a nice message. Seems a bit undemocratic to give the decision back to parliament after we put it to the vote.

 

[Sektor]

They should just let the people leave! I mean, why prolong the inevitable when the majority of voters wanted to exit? I find it very distasteful and poor loser-esque of them. "Wait! B-b-best 6 out of 9! No... wait! Best 15 out of-". Such a sad state of affairs, it's like they're grasping at straws.

 

[gimmepie]

Ugh
Brexit is an unbelievably stupid idea and I can completely understand why they'd want to take any means they could to prevent it but circumnavigating the democratic process, even for that reason, is just poor form.

 

[Ivysaur]

Well, the UK is legally a Parliamentary Democracy and Parliament has the last word on everything- over people's votes on a referendum, even. I doubt they'll overrule it but it's going to be very interesting to see how they handle the vote, as most MPs are against Brexit anyway.

 

[Nah]

Can't blame 'em really for not wanting to do it. But they have to do it sooner or later. Parliament's not voting whether or not to revert the Brexit vote, but rather if they want to start the process to officially go through with it. And they can't hold off on that forever, cuz y'know, democracy and all.

 

[Nihilego]

I don't think this is actually going to stop Brexit, but it's not exactly a nice message. Seems a bit undemocratic to give the decision back to parliament after we put it to the vote.

Ugh
Brexit is an unbelievably stupid idea and I can completely understand why they'd want to take any means they could to prevent it but circumnavigating the democratic process, even for that reason, is just poor form.

They aren't really circumnavigating it. The referendum was advisory from the start and the Members of Parliament, elected by the public, have always made the final call here. Our democracy goes so far as to allow us to elect the MPs that we want to represent us, but most of the final say rests with them and there was never anything different about the EU referendum. I get for sure that there are some moral issues with what's happening here (and I'll touch on that in a second), but it's certainly not a perversion of democracy.

I do agree though that we're certainly not getting what it seemed we were voting for. As much as I absolutely hate the outcome, the impressions given from the start (along with the fact that there was a referendum at all...) suggested that the wishes of the public would be followed through by Parliament. Yes, this is still in alignment with democracy in the UK, but I feel like the rug's been pulled from under the feet of the Leavers here. Everyone was told up until now, including by May herself, that Brexit was inevitable and that the referrendum, although not legally binding, indicated what was going to happen. So yes, if I were a Leave voter, I'd be pretty irritated by this. But, it's still democratic, and the Remain voter in me is glad that this is at least giving us some chance of not shooting ourselves in the head.

...that said, the Tories in Parliament represent the worst among the Tory voters. After all, people who work their way into Parliament generally align with the more "model" members of their respective parties; you don't really see much neutrality at that sort of level. Since prominent Tories have generally been pro-Brexit (with the surprising initial exception of May) I fear that, if Parliament votes on this, it'll just be an even greater Brexit majority. All I can hope for is that the Tories do all they're good for by not turning up to vote.

 

[Caaethil]

They aren't really circumnavigating it. The referendum was advisory from the start and the Members of Parliament, elected by the public, have always made the final call here. Our democracy goes so far as to allow us to elect the MPs that we want to represent us, but most of the final say rests with them and there was never anything different about the EU referendum. I get for sure that there are some moral issues with what's happening here (and I'll touch on that in a second), but it's certainly not a perversion of democracy.

I do agree though that we're certainly not getting what it seemed we were voting for. As much as I absolutely hate the outcome, the impressions given from the start (along with the fact that there was a referendum at all...) suggested that the wishes of the public would be followed through by Parliament. Yes, this is still in alignment with democracy in the UK, but I feel like the rug's been pulled from under the feet of the Leavers here. Everyone was told up until now, including by May herself, that Brexit was inevitable and that the referrendum, although not legally binding, indicated what was going to happen. So yes, if I were a Leave voter, I'd be pretty irritated by this. But, it's still democratic, and the Remain voter in me is glad that this is at least giving us some chance of not shooting ourselves in the head.

...that said, the Tories in Parliament represent the worst among the Tory voters. After all, people who work their way into Parliament generally align with the more "model" members of their respective parties; you don't really see much neutrality at that sort of level. Since prominent Tories have generally been pro-Brexit (with the surprising initial exception of May) I fear that, if Parliament votes on this, it'll just be an even greater Brexit majority. All I can hope for is that the Tories do all they're good for by not turning up to vote.

I suppose I'm not saying they're actually, technically perverting democracy so much as they seem to be making a conscious effort to work against the will of the people and that bothers me as something that is remarkably undemocratic in the moral sense that the people have spoken and they don't really care. I'm pro-leave but I like to think I'd be saying the same if I was pro-remain.

 

[Somewhere_]

In the US, referendums are used by politicians that do not want to vote on a bill that would make them unpopular. For example, abortion is split about 50-50, so a politician voting for or against abortion rights has lost half the population.

Is this the same thing in Britain? I would imagine the MP's would respect the referendum if they were the ones who initiated it in the first place.

 

[Nihilego]

In the US, referendums are used by politicians that do not want to vote on a bill that would make them unpopular. For example, abortion is split about 50-50, so a politician voting for or against abortion rights has lost half the population.

Is this the same thing in Britain? I would imagine the MP's would respect the referendum if they were the ones who initiated it in the first place.

Well, in the UK the actual identity of the politician matters less. While in America there are very few major politicians making the big decisions (i.e., the president and those closely associated with them), we have 650 MPs representing us who each theoretically get their vote in every decision. A lot of them are lazy and don't exercise that's vote, but still, that's the idea. So a single MP losing or gaining votes based on their opinions isn't such a big deal - due to the overwhelming number of MPs that we have, people generally consider themselves to be voting for the entire party as opposed to the individual MP. No-one ever talks about David Cameron's own personal policies (of which there are none), for example - it's about the party's policies, not the person's.

"MPs" didn't actually initiate the referendum - it was one particular MP. Specifically, David Cameron during his previous bid to become our Prime Minister. He promised the country that, if elected, he would hold a referendum on our EU membership, thinking that he would gain a few extra votes without posing much of an issue to our actual place in the EU. Obviously, he was wrong, and on losing the referendum was forced to resign over the incompatibility between him, his party and his country. Most of his pro-Leave friends also bailed, unable to handle the responsibility that the decision had placed on them. So right now it's a weird situation where no MP can really be held "responsible" for Brexit. It's a big part of what makes this so difficult for us.

 

[blue]

It just baffles me as to why they're trying to prevent it from happening. The decision to remain or leave the EU was put to a vote and leave won fairly by over one million votes.

 

[Aliencommander1245]

It just baffles me as to why they're trying to prevent it from happening. The decision to remain or leave the EU was put to a vote and leave won fairly by over one million votes.

I'd say because it was a 2% majority that they're a lot more apprehensive than they'd otherwise be, but i really don't think it's that- at least not fully.

The problem is that it's becoming starkly clear that there's no way the UK comes out of Brexit better off in any way that really matters. A lot of the farage/johnson rhetoric was smoke and mirrors falsities that can't, and never could've been, held up upon and that stuff was what got people going.

Faced with a position where the government both can't hide that they can't give the public anything good from brexit, and a bunch of the things promised by people in the case of a brexit being impossible to deliver and always intended to be so, it's much easier to just delay as much as possible than it is to try and sort through the mess that would result from triggering it

 

[Hands]

They should just let the people leave! I mean, why prolong the inevitable when the majority of voters wanted to exit? I find it very distasteful and poor loser-esque of them. "Wait! B-b-best 6 out of 9! No... wait! Best 15 out of-". Such a sad state of affairs, it's like they're grasping at straws.

It was barely a majority and the leave campaign was almost entirely ran on lies.

 

[Lipstick Vogue]

Voted remain but would be dead against this.

Just imagine the reaction if it was overturned. I'm liberal AF and even I'd be tempted to go and write some rude graffiti about immigrants.

 

[Caaethil]

It was barely a majority and the leave campaign was almost entirely ran on lies.

It was still a majority. Do you genuinely think we need a do-over?

 

[Star-Lord]

I'm really having a hard time understanding why people are crying about how undemocratic this is. Like, I get it, more people voted to leave... but this was a vote that happened on a weirdly mismatched, fear mongering campaign that people who supported then have changed their opinion on now.

The referendum wasn't legally binding, it's essentially an opinion piece as far as I'm concerned. The opinion is understood (and it'll probably still pass tbh), but now it gets passed through the parliament full of MPs that they democratically elected. It's honestly that simple to me.

 

[Aliencommander1245]

It was still a majority. Do you genuinely think we need a do-over?

With a majority of less than 2% for such an important and huge issue, with such dire consequences, the lies from farage/johnson definitely did have a lot of an effect and I would say it's preferable to have another vote than to try and go through with it as-is?

I mean, when you've voted for an outcome while being heavily influenced by something you're told will happen if you vote yes- and that isn't true in the slightest- would you not want to be able to reconsider your vote in light of that?

 

[Caaethil]

With a majority of less than 2% for such an important and huge issue, with such dire consequences, the lies from farage/johnson definitely did have a lot of an effect and I would say it's preferable to have another vote than to try and go through with it as-is?

I mean, when you've voted for an outcome while being heavily influenced by something you're told will happen if you vote yes- and that isn't true in the slightest- would you not want to be able to reconsider your vote in light of that?

I mean, if we're gonna play the blame game, the BBC was massively biased against Brexit, despite being required by law to be impartial. Is that fair either?

You don't get a re-vote every time we vote on something you don't like. That's not how democracy works. Should we re-vote on the president now that he's not building a wall?

 

[Aliencommander1245]

I mean, if we're gonna play the blame game, the BBC was massively biased against Brexit, despite being required by law to be impartial. Is that fair either?

Maybe, it depends, I'm no at all up to date on what the campaign was life over there beyond the lies of leave. The problem arises that there were way more negatives, and most economists ect predicted a negative result of Brexit overall, as well as banks, businesses ect directly stating they'd leave Britain if it left the EU (Due to Britain's status as a good midground between the EU countries and the rest of the world making it a good place to have your base of operations, with that changing moving across into EU countries is the only/the best option for said businesses)

This is a problem because if it's the worse decision of the two on important issues such as those- reporting it as such isn't not being impartial. It's the same as conservative's cries in the US about "media bias" when in reality it was just Trump making a gaff or saying something horrendous every day meaning there was simply more negatives than positives to cover, and a lot more negative coverage as a whole because of it.

It's not partial to report on the facts, even if the facts are weighted against one side of the debate

You don't get a re-vote every time we vote on something you don't like. That's not how democracy works.

It is in a representational democracy, but that's digressing from the main point. You're ignoring what i've been saying about it being something the government knows it can't get a good deal out of and trying to boil it down to "me not liking it" to try and make your point there.

If the people vote for something by an incredibly slim margain and a lot of misinformation is thrown around during the campaing, and the government then goes to do the thing voted on and realises there's no way to be better off than not doing it, i see it as perefectly fine to have another vote to make entirely sure that, with all possible information available to them, the public is still willing to do said thing.

I would also argue that if the people vote for something, and the government realises that it'll make everyone worse off, they're well within their right as a representational democracy to overrule that. It'd look bad, and taint their careers in the eyes of the public, but it's well within the rights of a democratic representation of the people to put their foot down for what's best for the people?

Obviously the first one is preferable and more likely, but i see merits in the second one

Should we re-vote on the president now that he's not building a wall?

Talking about fairness, is it fair that the man people want to be president less than his opponent, who got less votes than her, won anyway?

Regardless, yeah, if he lied his way into office on a platform of bigotry in the first place he probably shouldn't have been there, but now he's dropping the stuff he couldn't possibly have done (And known that from the start) it's fair to say we should re-vote there, but it's not possible and no-one will.

It's a very different kind of vote you're talking about anyway- an election to something that functions as a suggestion on what the parliment should do- and doesn't really fit as something related

 

[Caaethil]

Maybe, it depends, I'm no at all up to date on what the campaign was life over there beyond the lies of leave.

I'm not sure why you're trying to talk about the lies of leave if you have done no research into remain.

The problem arises that there were way more negatives, and most economists ect predicted a negative result of Brexit overall, as well as banks, businesses ect directly stating they'd leave Britain if it left the EU (Due to Britain's status as a good midground between the EU countries and the rest of the world making it a good place to have your base of operations, with that changing moving across into EU countries is the only/the best option for said businesses)

It doesn't matter because the people chose to leave. I don't think most people expected any direct economic benefits from leaving. They expected freedom from what they perceived to be a bureaucratic system that didn't represent them.

This is a problem because if it's the worse decision of the two on important issues such as those- reporting it as such isn't not being impartial.

I like how you take such an important and nuanced debate and make it so black and white. You've just dismissed over half of the UK's opinion as unequivocally wrong.

It's the same as conservative's cries in the US about "media bias" when in reality it was just Trump making a gaff or saying something horrendous every day meaning there was simply more negatives than positives to cover, and a lot more negative coverage as a whole because of it.

And yet they never once covered any of the bad things Clinton had done, to the point of lying about them.

It's not partial to report on the facts, even if the facts are weighted against one side of the debate

More than anything else, this is a blatant disrespect for any contrasting opinion.

It is in a representational democracy, but that's digressing from the main point. You're ignoring what i've been saying about it being something the government knows it can't get a good deal out of and trying to boil it down to "me not liking it" to try and make your point there.

I don't care if the government can or can't get a good deal out of it, I want it to respect the verdict of the people.

If the people vote for something by an incredibly slim margain and a lot of misinformation is thrown around during the campaing,

On both sides, by the way.

and the government then goes to do the thing voted on and realises there's no way to be better off than not doing it, i see it as perefectly fine to have another vote to make entirely sure that, with all possible information available to them, the public is still willing to do said thing.

The remain camp made all of these horrible terrible things very clear when we were voting. We still voted leave. It's not going to change by repeating it and making us vote again. It reeks of them telling us we chose the wrong answer.

I would also argue that if the people vote for something, and the government realises that it'll make everyone worse off, they're well within their right as a representational democracy to overrule that. It'd look bad, and taint their careers in the eyes of the public, but it's well within the rights of a democratic representation of the people to put their foot down for what's best for the people?

They're well within their rights, yes. That doesn't mean I should like it. Anyone who tries to overrule the will of the people isn't getting my vote, it's that simple.

Talking about fairness, is it fair that the man people want to be president less than his opponent, who got less votes than her, won anyway?

Yes, because that's how the system was designed. Don't blame the player, blame the game.

And to be clear, we don't know for sure how the popular vote would have gone had the electoral college not been in place. So many people during this election, dissatisfied with both candidates, chose to vote third party instead of for the lesser of two evils because they live in deeply red/blue states anyway. Had the college not existed, they'd have probably chosen one of the two main candidates instead.

Regardless, yeah, if he lied his way into office on a platform of bigotry in the first place he probably shouldn't have been there, but now he's dropping the stuff he couldn't possibly have done (And known that from the start) it's fair to say we should re-vote there, but it's not possible and no-one will.

I'm rather surprised you endorse that, actually.

It's a very different kind of vote you're talking about anyway- an election to something that functions as a suggestion on what the parliment should do- and doesn't really fit as something related

It's a suggestion by definition, doesn't mean we should be okay with parliament not taking it.

 

[Hands]

It was still a majority. Do you genuinely think we need a do-over?

I didn't even remotely suggest that and I'd kindly ask you not to do the usual Leaver technique of making up arguments you feel you can respond to rather than responding to the actual content within comments.

The BBC have also pushed a massive, massive anti Corbyn bias over the past two years. The BBC also defended and covered up for several active paedophiles, the BBC also gave Cameron a free pass on virtually everything. The BBC hasn't been unbiased in, well, it hasn't ever been unbiased.

The difference is that whilst the Remain campaign was a mess, the leave campaign was genuinely fraudulent and a lot of leave voters had no clue about the EU. Some I know even believed every law we had was made in Europe. Your snake oil salesmen have set us up for economic collapse, the least they can do is allow people who aren't egotistical enough to destroy three countries over a chance to be PM try and negotiate a far less dangerous outcome.