Meep wrote:Karl wrote:I genuinely don't think No-Deal Hard Brexit would win in a referendum though?And our democracy was never supposed to be about referenda in the first place. I question the democratic validity of referenda full stop.
People voted to leave the EU. A logical interpretation of that is not to say "okay, let's a have an arrangement worse than the one we have with the EU at present". I think our politician should at least try to create something better, even if it runs counter to established wisdom.
Your despair is centred on the idea that people knew remotely what they were voting for. People actually voted for a load of impossible nonsense. "We'll leave, we'll be better off, we'll have loads more money, it'll save the NHS, the EU will bend over backwards to accommodate us". If you could somehow put it to another more realistic vote that said "Look, we can either stay or get absolutely strawberry floated on every level, there are no upsides, full stop, that's a fact", and the government got that message across without far-right media interference, I really genuinely think Remain would win. (As Moggy remarks, I know there have been some weird polls on this lately. Personally I think they probably reflect something different -- people being sick of hearing about it, maybe.)But that's besides the point because the above demonstrates exactly why referenda are a suboptimal democratic process -- people are too ignorant and are being constantly pounded by too many lies for a referendum on any complicated issue to be fair. That's why we elect representatives and pay them handsomely. They don't always understand what they're talking about but they're better informed than a guy on the street. I would be 100% fine with just ignoring it. Representative democracy is harmed by referenda. The "test" should have been if there was a majority of pro-Leave MPs, and we were absolute light years away from that position. I don't really agree with the rest of your post, I don't think any silver linings - which are hypothetical and speculative - are as important as the things we're losing out on: the growth, the on balance generally pro-consumer and pro-worker EU legislation, the freedom of movement, the institutional links, the development funds, and all that. If we can stay in the customs union and retain some of those, that's objectively better than losing it all. It might not be as good as if we remained completely, but saying "ah well we started to strawberry float everything up so we may as well go all the way" is a fallacy.