Brits would quite like their private messages to stay private

Even a 55% requirement would be a lot better than a simple majority imo.

I can definitely support that. It seemed to basically boil down to "you dirty proles aren't going to stop poor Tarquin going on Erasmus are you? :'("

As for 16 years old voting, I'd argue the age to vote should be raised to 21.

> Some particularly pernicious lies on the leave side too convincing

Both sides lied, both sides exaggerated.

The referendum to simply leave or remain would never have happened if UK Parliament went to the public more often with referendums about various treaties such as Maastricht, Amsterdam and Rome. Giving people the illusion of choice would have been enough.

The UK seems to be an outlier for an arrogant Parliament that thinks it knows best, in spite of public sentiment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_related_to_the_Eur...

Not only was it expected to fail at referendum, but the referendum itself was never really meant to happen.

> What's shocking of course is that the Brexit vote didn't end up the same way ("ok the vote passed but it can't be done anyway").

It went very much the opposite; they went for almost the most extreme possible version of the thing. A lot of people voting for Brexit had been sold on, basically, Norway's status (effectively in the EU, but can pretend not to be, and has its own rules on fish and can have whatever weird passports it wants). This is part of why support for it evaporated so quickly (the last time any serious poll showed staying out as having more support for rejoining was early 2022); the delivered product was simply not what most people had been sold.

Actually, IMO, it shows one of the weaknesses of our legal system.

The courts can't rule on something that someone's talking about doing. They can only rule on actual legislation.

It would genuinely be great if there were a formal legal process for writing a bill, submitting it to some particular court (maybe the top state appeals court?) for review, and only after that review letting it be voted into law.

All that happened was that Britain exchanged limited Eastern Euro immigration for unlimited non-EU immigration.

https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/2060561179408548029

There was an attempt.

A campaigner managed to get the courts to issue a verdict that the referendum was not binding, and Parliament must then have a vote on whether or not to implement the result. Remain voters rejoiced and lauded her as a hero. Brexit voters demonised her as an enemy of democracy.

Parliament then duly voted to implement the result.

(Edit - looking back this may have been counterproductive. The argument that the referendum was not legally binding could have continued for some time, maybe even long enough to try to change something. But forcing a parliamentary vote to affirm the result put all that to bed)

Before you get ranty at me - I voted remain. But your comment is revisionist. The pro-Brexit shysters were not in power. After the referendum, whichever way it went, the pro-Brexit people were not going to be given power, it was not an election.

They had no mandate to implement anything. Any plan they promised would have been irrelevant to the UK government and had no more force than you or I scribbling on a pub napkin.

You know who was in power, who was in a position to make a plan, arguably whose duty it was to make a contingency plan if the referendum went south?

The very pro-EU faction at the head of the Tory government. But they didn’t. They told the public they weren’t making a plan so that it didn’t look like a low-risk option that the country could go for and be OK. The lack of plan was no accident, it was a Remain-side tactic.

The Brexiteers were/are wrong, hateful, shysters in so many ways. But your ire in this specific case should be aimed squarely at David Cameron. The Brexit shysters just didn’t have any power, and Brexit voters voted without a plan because it was the choice they were given.

The trick is to have a two party system and agree on all the important points.

There aren't any major parties willing to reduce espionage or ease up on Gaza.

If elections are coming up, they stick to gender theory, school sports or Lake Ontario.

"Vote blue no matter what" doesn't give you privacy, nor does abstaining or voting red.