‘Hard man of Brexit’ Steve Baker regrets EU referendum did not require Leave win ‘supermajority’ of 60 per cent
by 1-randomonium
‘Hard man of Brexit’ Steve Baker regrets EU referendum did not require Leave win ‘supermajority’ of 60 per cent
by 1-randomonium
19 comments
The brexireers are realising how full of shit they sound when they declare brexit a resounding success so they’re moving on to explaining how it’s actually everybody else’s fault its a shit show.
It did require it. It was conveniently forgetting by the non-advisory opinion poll.
He’s not wrong.
50+1 is the least desirable outcome to any plebiscite. You’re simply creating the grounds for endless argument about the true worth of the vote and immediately giving the opponents of the question put energy to have another go in the relatively near future.
60/40 would be definitive.
Wow. there are people like Boris Johnson who jumped on the Brexit train last minute for self-gain. But Steve Baker is about as Brexit as they come!
> The Northern Ireland Office minister and leading Leave campaigner made the comments as he suggested a “50 per cent plus one” majority would not be advisable for a vote on Irish unification.
He’s simultaneously making excuses for brexit failing as hard as it did and trying to pie-down any Irish referendum talk.
> He added: “If it had been a 60-40 result, it’s inconceivable to me that we would have had all of the political difficulty which followed from members of parliament in particular refusing to accept the result.”
Everyone accepted the result, _your_ party was in power and _you_ couldn’t work out what the hell to do because a hard brexit would have been setting ourselves on fire and a soft brexit was an obviously worse deal than the existing agreements.
Nobody could agree because you sold a bad fucking choice as a great one, and when (gullible) people made that great choice you were stood there having to try and fabricate some new reality where it was.
Absolute fucknut.
I voted to Leave, but I wish the referendum hadn’t been offered, if that makes any sense
It’s like the death penalty. There are some topics where the people we employ to lead should take the lead.
He’s trying to re-write history by pretending Rejoin now need a 60% supermajority. Call me a cynic with these bastards
Fuck off Steve. You campaigned for this. You fought for this. You lobbied Prime Ministers and the Cabinet for the most extreme version of it. You wanted this, and when people said that they are having second thoughts about it you denied them the chance to think again. You took an advisory poll as sacrosanct, ignored all experts, and pushed ahead for it.
Own it. Own every last bit of it. Don’t slither away from it now, after you fought all your political career to get it. If you own the mistake, we might – might – just forgive you for it. But given how you treated everyone who opposed you, that is unlikely.
The vote was never binding, they never had to follow through with the results of the referendum..
One minute he’s the “hard man of Brexit” and the next minute he’s all “boo-hoo I’ve got depression”.
Sounds far too unstable to be allowed near government if you ask me.
Fucksake, all the political deadlock of the last 7 years could have been avoided with a supermajority. The fact Leavers knew they couldn’t meet it and instead pushed the country into radical change over a 4% lead is disgraceful.
Super majorities are dumb. The issue is that we don’t have any proper mechanism to trigger referenda and the actual body of the referendum text was so ridiculous it caused a massive constitutional crisis.
Trust me, we’re all regretting your horrible decisions every single day.
What most brexiteers failed to realise is that the government was going to negotiate the divorce. They needed to take into account how incompetent most MPs are.
Because then we would not have had Brexit and Steve Baker would have continued being a right wing nobody within the Tory Party, rather than having a historical record that proved him an unprincipled, dishonorable cretin?
Oh fuck this twat. This clusterfuck is his baby, he needs to own it
Brexiters are coming out one by one now saying, well it didn’t work. But why they are not coming all together saying yeah, we fucked it up big time? They are trying to minimize the damage to their public image. Political damage control is what they need to be worried these days and not actually worrying about things like paying the bills last winter, the no tomatoes on Asda or the increasing price of their fucking lives. So yeah, time for a bit of theatrical apologies.
He has a point. Most countries which use referenda to change their constitutions require a supermajority, and it’s also set the precedent that Scottish secession will only require 50+1.
Surely a “supermajority” referendum is objectively undemocratic? I’m not necessarily saying that’s a good or a bad thing but if 59.9% of the population agree to something, shouldn’t that be enough to enact it? Or even 50.1%?
MPs are meant to represent their constituents, they exist in theory because the whole population of the UK can’t fit inside the House of Commons.
I understand the argument that the public aren’t educated in politics and economics to such a level that they could satisfactorily appreciate the ramifications of their decision, but fundamentally any choice made by the voters in a national referendum should be upheld no matter how unbelievably moronic the MPs or anyone else might personally find it, because a full-blown referendum is *the* most directly representative and democratic activity that ever takes place in our country…
This is especially true once the referendum has already been called – disagreeing with any decision made by the voting public and deciding “actually we’re going to ignore that” *after* the referendum had already taken place would have shown the MPs openly disregarding their own constituents who they are meant to represent.