What a short-sighted way of dismissing a reasoned argument on what might now happen just because you are scared that the people might have changed their minds.

The people voted in the first referendum on Europe, as you say, to stay in what was nothing more than a free trade agreement between and much smaller, and much more financially equal group of countries. The pressure to leave only really came into force after the move towards the United States of Europe, comprising a goodly number of countries in almost permanent need of financial support, whose national economic statistics were either ignored or massaged to even allow them to join the EU. So I don't agree that a comparison between the two referenda is fair.

On the second point, we have had 2 more years of people telling us what leaving MIGHT entail, depending on their position on it, but no-one still has any FACTS on what it will entail.

The second referendum was quite clear to me: LEAVE or STAY - so if we cannot manage an ordered exit with a deal, we take the disorderly one with no deal.

Any other option is a betrayal of the will of the majority of the people at the point they were asked, and exactly what the EU has been trying to achieve all along.

Well, I've read quite a lot of what you've put up.....You make the discordant argument that we apparently shouldn't be able to influence parliamentarians with referendum results....However, MPs are only in parliament because they won voting contests.....So essentially you are picking and choosing what parts of democracy you like and....oh look....it appears it's just those parts that suit your own politics.

I wonder if there had been a referendum on whether we should have entered into Blair's Iraqi war and it came back 'no'.....I wonder if you would have made the same argument.

I can read thanks. Comparing anyone/group to monkeys/chimps in this day and age of PC is a dangerous route to take, don't you think?

I too have read quite a lot of your comments. It might surprise you that I don't always disagree with all you say. Most perhaps, but not all. The same applies here.

Of course I don't think that referendums shouldn't influence politicians. I don't think we should hold referendums but if we do then I don't think they should be binding. MPs though can be influenced by them, just as they are by many things, so as a test of current opinion they are fine.

Where I agree is that MPs are only in Parliament because they have won a vote. That is the key point. Our sole responsibility is to choose our MPs. Once done we delegate the decision making to them. We don't want to allow outside influences to tamper with the way the ordinary people might vote in a public vote. We need to trust the professsionals. Only because they are now so split, and that we held a previous referendum, is the way forward a new referendum.

No picking or choosing involved. Just pragmatism.

There is no way that we would ever hold a referendum about going to war.

Personally I think things like the EU project should most definitely have been a topic for referendums. There has been a significant giving away of parliamentary sovereignty and to be honest....that should never have been in the gift of parliament to give away.

Anyway, while we obviously disagree, you argue your case and I respect that.

Edited by Stirlingsays (17 Jan 2019 8.58pm)