Uk Referendum on The EU Announced for 23rd June.

[Zixinus]

A crazy question: would it be possible that the Queen would put her foot down and invoke her full legal power she has to say "this action will result in the destruction of the UK and I must stop it"? Could she even do that, even if she probably wouldn't?

[Elheru Aran]

A crazy question: would it be possible that the Queen would put her foot down and invoke her full legal power she has to say "this action will result in the destruction of the UK and I must stop it"? Could she even do that, even if she probably wouldn't?

I'm pretty sure (though I am not a lawyer, much less an UK lawyer) that while she could make a statement to that effect, she can't actually carry through on it (in theory) without Parliamentary approval.

[Zaune]

The lie was that they could control immigration and remain in the single market.

But what if those who voted leave actually don't want to remain in the single market and only care about stemming the tide of em forreignurs? A repeat vote would alienate a huge part of the nation and destabilize the political system even further.

Quite. In fact I get the impression there's a lot of people who believed we'd be rounding up every non-UK national in the country and forcibly repatriating them first thing on Friday morning, and are getting steadily more annoyed about the fact that's not happening. There hasn't been anything worse than graffitti and bricks through windows to date,* but I doubt that's going to be the worst of it.

* That "Worrying Signs" Facebook group did post an account of two Polish blokes getting beaten half to death in the street, but for some parts of this country that's just Friday night.

A crazy question: would it be possible that the Queen would put her foot down and invoke her full legal power she has to say "this action will result in the destruction of the UK and I must stop it"? Could she even do that, even if she probably wouldn't?

It would almost certainly create at least as many problems as it solved and probably have immediate and lasting negative consequences for the institution of the monarchy, but theoretically, yes.

[jwl]

The "leave vote was under false pretences, therefore the referendum is null" argument only works if the remain camp have been always truthful in contrast. Can this be confirmed to be true? Has anyone checked what Remain said would happen and compared?

But regardless this isn't going to happen. No politician outside of Scotland is talking about actually trying to block article 50, so it will pass Parliament.

[Tribble]

No poltican is actually talking about invoking article 50 either. It's one thing not to block the legislation, but actually initiating it is quite another. Is there any indication that someone is going to try and kickstart the process?

[Crazedwraith]

The "leave vote was under false pretences, therefore the referendum is null" argument only works if the remain camp have been always truthful in contrast. Can this be confirmed to be true? Has anyone checked what Remain said would happen and compared?

Err... if both sides were lying then 'the referendum was under false pretenses' is even more true not less.

But regardless this isn't going to happen. No politician outside of Scotland is talking about actually trying to block article 50, so it will pass Parliament.

Pretty much. If any one actually puts it do a vote. No-one seems to be a hurry to do so.

[Captain Seafort]

A crazy question: would it be possible that the Queen would put her foot down and invoke her full legal power she has to say "this action will result in the destruction of the UK and I must stop it"? Could she even do that, even if she probably wouldn't?

If by "this" you mean Parliament trying to block Article 50, then yes, it's possible, albeit very remote indeed given the overwhelming numbers of politicians saying that the expressed instructions of the electorate must be implemented. If by "this" you mean anything else, then no.

[madd0ct0r]

If a new goverment is formed following a genersl election that ran on an express pro europe platform that would certainly impact on the referdum's credentials.

[Crazedwraith]

So at least someone in the Torys is talking a Second Referendum or General Election: Jeremy Hunt who wants us to negotiate a deal where we have our cake and eat it too and then vote again on that.

[jwl]

He explicitly did say we are invoking article 50 though, he's talking about a referendum on what mode of leaving we are going for.

[Crown]

Meanwhile TTIP negotiations are in complete disarray and thanks to UK's departure as America's henchman in the EU, opposition is intensifying among national leaders too.

I wish only complete death would come sooner to the Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Pact, but even if it is a reprieve produced by the chaos, it is still very welcome. A solid "No" to shitty US standards of life, employment, food and goods quality in Europe, ever, that is what we need to hear loud and clear.

That's kind of a disingenuous summation of the situation; Hollande has outright said he's gonna veto it. Which means TTIP is dead. Irrespective of Brexit or not. He's been saying it since May and last week he's doubled down on it.

[Crown]

I just wanted to split this post from a reply, here's two good articles on Brexit from Rolling Stone and The Telegraph;

The Reaction to Brexit Is the Reason Brexit Happened
If you believe there's such a thing as "too much democracy," you probably don't believe in democracy at all

In 1934, at the dawn of the Stalinist Terror, the great Russian writer Isaac Babel offered a daring quip at the International Writers Conference in Moscow:

"Everything is given to us by the party and the government. Only one right is taken away: the right to write badly."

A onetime Soviet loyalist who was eventually shot as an enemy of the state, Babel was likely trying to say something profound: that the freedom to make mistakes is itself an essential component of freedom.

As a rule, people resent being saved from themselves. And if you think depriving people of their right to make mistakes makes sense, you probably never had respect for their right to make decisions at all.

This is all relevant in the wake of the Brexit referendum, in which British citizens narrowly voted to exit the European Union.

Because the vote was viewed as having been driven by the same racist passions that are fueling the campaign of Donald Trump, a wide swath of commentators suggested that democracy erred, and the vote should perhaps be canceled, for the Britons' own good.

Social media was filled with such calls. "Is it just me, or does #Brexit seem like a moment when the government should overrule a popular referendum?" wrote one typical commenter.

On op-ed pages, there was a lot of the same. Harvard economics professor and chess grandmaster Kenneth Rogoff wrote a piece for the Boston Globe called "Britain's democratic failure" in which he argued:

"This isn't democracy; it is Russian roulette for republics. A decision of enormous consequence… has been made without any appropriate checks and balances."

Rogoff then went on to do something that's become popular in pundit circles these days: He pointed to the lessons of antiquity. Going back thousands of years, he said, Very Smart People have warned us about the dangers of allowing the rabble to make decisions.

"Since ancient times," he wrote, "philosophers have tried to devise systems to try to balance the strengths of majority rule against the need to ensure that informed parties get a larger say in critical decisions."

Presumably playing the role of one of the "informed parties" in this exercise, Rogoff went on:

"By some accounts... Athens had implemented the purest historical example of democracy," he wrote. "Ultimately, though, after some catastrophic war decisions, Athenians saw a need to give more power to independent bodies."

This is exactly the argument that British blogging supernova Andrew Sullivan unleashed a few months ago in his 8,000-word diatribe against Donald Trump, "Democracies end when they are too democratic."

Like Rogoff, Sullivan argued that over-democratic societies drift into passionate excesses, and need that vanguard of Very Smart People to make sure they don't get themselves into trouble.

"Elites matter in a democracy," Sullivan argued, because they are the "critical ingredient to save democracy from itself."

I would argue that voters are the critical ingredient to save elites from themselves, but Sullivan sees it the other way, and has Plato on his side. Though some of his analysis seems based on a misread of ancient history (see here for an amusing exploration of the topic), he's right about Plato, the source of a lot of these "the ancients warned us about democracy" memes. He just left out the part where Plato, at least when it came to politics, was kind of a jerk.

The great philosopher despised democracy, believing it to be a system that blurred necessary social distinctions, prompting children, slaves and even animals to forget their places. He believed it a system that leads to over-permissiveness, wherein the people "drink too deeply of the strong wine of freedom."

Too much license, Plato wrote (and Sullivan echoed), leads to a spoiled populace that will turn to a strongman for revenge if anyone gets in the way of the party. These "men of naught" will inevitably denounce as oligarchs any wise group of rulers who try to set basic/sensible rules for society.

You have to be a snob of the first order, completely high on your own gas, to try to apply these arguments to present-day politics, imagining yourself as an analog to Plato's philosopher-kings.

And you have to have a cast-iron head to not grasp that saying stuff like this out loud is part of what inspires populations to movements like Brexit or the Trump campaign in the first place.

Were I British, I'd probably have voted to Remain. But it's not hard to understand being pissed off at being subject to unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels. Nor is it hard to imagine the post-Brexit backlash confirming every suspicion you might have about the people who run the EU.

Imagine having pundits and professors suggest you should have your voting rights curtailed because you voted Leave. Now imagine these same people are calling voters like you "children," and castigating you for being insufficiently appreciative of, say, the joys of submitting to a European Supreme Court that claims primacy over the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights.

The overall message in every case is the same: Let us handle things.

But whatever, let's assume that the Brexit voters, like Trump voters, are wrong, ignorant, dangerous and unjustified.

Even stipulating to that, the reaction to both Brexit and Trump reveals a problem potentially more serious than either Brexit or the Trump campaign. It's become perilously fashionable all over the Western world to reach for non-democratic solutions whenever society drifts in a direction people don't like. Here in America the problem is snowballing on both the right and the left.

Whether it's Andrew Sullivan calling for Republican insiders to rig the nomination process to derail Trump's candidacy, or Democratic Party lifers like Peter Orszag arguing that Republican intransigence in Congress means we should turn more power over to "depoliticized commissions," the instinct to act by diktat surfaces quite a lot these days.

"Too much democracy" used to be an argument we reserved for foreign peoples who tried to do things like vote to demand control over their own oil supplies.

I first heard the term in Russia in the mid-Nineties. As a young reporter based in Moscow in the years after communism fell, I spent years listening to American advisors and their cronies in the Kremlin gush over the new democratic experiment.

Then, in 1995, polls came out showing communist Gennady Zyguanov leading in the upcoming presidential race against Boris Yeltsin. In an instant, all of those onetime democratic evangelists began saying Russia was "not ready" for democracy.

Now it's not just carpetbagging visitors to the Third World pushing this line of thought. Just as frequently, the argument is aimed at "low-information" voters at home.

Maybe the slide started with 9/11, after which huge pluralities of people were suddenly OK with summary executions, torture, warrantless surveillance and the blithe disposal of concepts like habeas corpus.

A decade and a half later, we're gripped by a broader mania for banning and censoring things that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

It seems equally to have taken over campus speech controversies (expanding the "fighting words" exception to the First Amendment is suddenly a popular idea) and the immigration debate (where Trump swept to the nomination riding a bluntly unconstitutional call for a religious test for immigrants).

Democracy appears to have become so denuded and corrupted in America that a generation of people has grown up without any faith in its principles.

What's particularly concerning about the reaction both to Brexit and to the rise of Trump is the way these episodes are framed as requiring exceptions to the usual democratic rule. They're called threats so monstrous that we must abrogate the democratic process to combat them.

Forget Plato, Athens, Sparta and Rome. More recent history tells us that the descent into despotism always starts in this exact same way. There is always an emergency that requires a temporary suspension of democracy.

After 9/11 we had the "ticking time bomb" metaphor to justify torture. NYU professor and self-described "prolific thought leader" Ian Bremmer just called Brexit the "most significant political risk the world has experienced since the Cuban Missile Crisis," likening it to a literal end-of-humanity scenario. Sullivan justified his call for undemocratic electoral maneuvers on the grounds that the election of Trump would be an "extinction-level event."

I don't buy it. My admittedly primitive understanding of democracy is that we're supposed to move toward it, not away from it, in a moment of crisis.

It doesn't mean much to be against torture until the moment when you're most tempted to resort to it, or to have faith in voting until the result of a particular vote really bothers you. If you think there's ever such a thing as "too much democracy," you probably never believed in it in the first place. And even low-Information voters can sense it.

The Telegraph one is more of 'lets rebuild our politics' idealism (i.e. if only it were that simple), but still worth a read;

Neither Labour nor the Tories are fit for purpose in a post-Brexit world – we need some new political parties

Britain has two main political parties of the Left and the Right – Labour and the Conservatives – because most political issues, both major and minor, split on Left/Right lines.

The one exception to this has always been Europe – this has normally created a split within political parties rather than between them.

The first European referendum – on membership of the European Economic Community (EEC), as it was then called – was held by Harold Wilson because Labour was riven on the issue.

This year’s was called by David Cameron because of irreconcilable differences within the Conservative Party over the European Union (EU). In a way, as the great Yogi Berra used to say, this is déjà vu all over again.

The exception to this rule – that Europe splits within rather than between parties – has been Labour since the late 1980s. It was in 1988 that the labour movement learned to love the EU after Jacques Delors won over the TUC with a speech about the protections for workers that were offered by the Social Chapter.

In one way, this could be seen as unions and the Labour Party responding to nearly ten years of Thatcherism and embracing anything that could protect them from her reforms. Yet, the settlement has lasted – until now.

Europe is back with a vengeance as the most divisive issue in British politics. It has split the country virtually in half and it has split the parties again.

Within the Tory party the Brexit referendum was used explicitly – and successfully – by Boris Johnson as a leadership challenge. He successfully exploited Tory divisions to force out David Cameron, the sitting Prime Minister.

The pro-EU Chancellor George Osborne is wounded and virtually in hiding. Meanwhile, the search is on for a pro-EU candidate who can defeat Boris the Brexiteer.

Other parties were split too. Take the SNP. While their MPs, MEPs and MSPs showed the North Korean unity that is characteristic of Nicola Sturgeon’s party, SNP voters split two-thirds/one-third over Europe.

The same split was visible among Labour voters and was significant enough to be a decisive factor in Leave winning the referendum. It is the proximate cause of the revolt of almost the entire Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) against Jeremy Corbyn. Not dividing the PLP – they are united on the issue – but dividing them from Corbyn whose lacklustre performance in the referendum campaign showed that he remained, at heart, an opponent of Europe.

Labour MPs are motivated to rise against Corbyn for one reason and one alone – his inability to lead. The Government need an opposition to scrutinise them during the Brexit negotiations – Corbyn can’t do that. Labour needs to be ready for a snap election if it were called by the new Tory leader – Labour are in no fit state for that either. Removing Corbyn is not the end in itself – it is the means to an end, a match-fit party.

But right now the country needs more than a functioning Labour Party. It needs a parliament and ultimately a government capable of rising to the challenges the country faces.

Pleasant as the thought of giving Boris Johnson a hospital pass, it is not a sensible solution. We can't say "it's your bed - now lie in it", since we have to live with the consequence too. In Europe there is a solution - the Grand Coalition.

It is how Angela Merkel runs Germany with her Right-wing Christian Democrats supported by the Left-leaning Social Democrats. It is the choice that still face Spain's Socialists (PSOE) after their country's second General Election - do they provide stability to Spain with some formal or informal support to conservative Prime Minister Rajoy?

It was, in effect, what happened in 2010 when the Liberal Democrats went into coalition with the Tories. The problem with that was the price the Lib Dems paid – electoral annihilation.

There is, though, a different and better way possible. If Britain's political parties were listed on the Stock Exchange any M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) specialist would know what to do.

First, take the ultra-Left rump of the Labour Party who currently huddle round the leader and demerge them into a separate party. They will be rapidly picked up by the Socialist Workers Part (SWP), who are currently organising demonstrations in support of a beleaguered Corbyn.

Second, take the Conservatives and split them into pro- and anti-Brexit camps. The Cameroonian modernising camp would happily join with the vast majority of Labour MPs in a progressive party of the radical centre.

Third, sweep the remaining Liberal Democrats into this new party. What you would have is an Opposition of National Unity. One capable not of blocking Brexit, after all the people have spoken, but able to make prime minister Johnson tell the people clearly, openly and honestly why he wasn't giving any extra money to the NHS. Why he was embracing free movement of labour in order to trade freely in the single market. And why he was increasing Britain's contribution to the EU because Brexit had lost us the rebate.

This new grouping could also block an early election, and if Boris asked "Why?'"he would receive this answer, slightly adapted from a classic Paul Keating quote:

"The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm out of this load of rubbish over a number of months. There will be no easy execution for you. You have perpetrated one of the great mischiefs on the British public with this thing, trying to rip away the British values which we built in our society for over a century."

I love that Keating quote, here's the original for those interested.

There was a good article in The Guardian (shocking I know) which must have slipped through their editors because the author was radically of the opinion that labelling everyone you disagree with as 'racist' or 'xenophobic' was somehow unhelpful. I'll see if I can dig it up.

[Zixinus]

It does jive with a lot of what I read about the Brexit. There is a strong element that people voted for leave not so much out of ideological commitment but a vent for pent-up frustration against leaders and political elite. Discontent at them became linked with being anti-EU and leave-campaign demagogy.

If by "this" you mean Parliament trying to block Article 50, then yes, it's possible, albeit very remote indeed given the overwhelming numbers of politicians saying that the expressed instructions of the electorate must be implemented. If by "this" you mean anything else, then no.

No, by "this" I mean the Queen stepping in as monarch to overrule a decision. I think it was one of the points of having a monarch in the first place.

[Captain Seafort]

No, by "this" I mean the Queen stepping in as monarch to overrule a decision. I think it was one of the points of having a monarch in the first place.

The point of having a monarch in the first place was that he was better at bashing heads in than anyone else.

The point of having a monarch now is a) so public servants and the armed forces don't swear allegiance to politicians or a scrap of paper everyone interprets differently and b) to act as a safety valve in case of emergency. Getting out of the EU in no way counts as an emergency. Parliament ignoring an explicit instruction from the electorate might.

[Elheru Aran]

No, by "this" I mean the Queen stepping in as monarch to overrule a decision. I think it was one of the points of having a monarch in the first place.

The point of having a monarch in the first place was that he was better at bashing heads in than anyone else.

The point of having a monarch now is a) so public servants and the armed forces don't swear allegiance to politicians or a scrap of paper everyone interprets differently and b) to act as a safety valve in case of emergency. Getting out of the EU in no way counts as an emergency. Parliament ignoring an explicit instruction from the electorate might.

If I might be permitted the digression, what exactly constitutes enough of an emergency for the monarch to step in?

[Captain Seafort]

If I might be permitted the digression, what exactly constitutes enough of an emergency for the monarch to step in?

My view would be either a high risk of imminent and severe damage to British democracy, or a PM trying to employ nuclear weapons in the face of opposition from the cabinet and the armed forces. In practice, whatever the monarch thinks is an emergency, which might be setting a higher or lower bar than that.

[Crown]

It does jive with a lot of what I read about the Brexit. There is a strong element that people voted for leave not so much out of ideological commitment but a vent for pent-up frustration against leaders and political elite. Discontent at them became linked with being anti-EU and leave-campaign demagogy.

From the ComRes poll I posted in another thread;

Other results from the poll show:
Reported drivers of voting at the referendum vary considerably between those voting Leave and Remain.
The economy (67%) is cited as the most important for Remain voters.
By contrast, the ability of Britain to make its own laws is cited by Leave voters as the most important issue when deciding which way to vote (53%), ahead of immigration (34%).

Which is why it grinds my gears when all the ... *chatter* surrounding the Brexit result is about 'racism' and 'xenophobia' rather than control and democratic accountability. It's a wilful mis-representation of the argument in order avoid having the conversation.

[Elheru Aran]

If I might be permitted the digression, what exactly constitutes enough of an emergency for the monarch to step in?

My view would be either a high risk of imminent and severe damage to British democracy, or a PM trying to employ nuclear weapons in the face of opposition from the cabinet and the armed forces. In practice, whatever the monarch thinks is an emergency, which might be setting a higher or lower bar than that.

Follow-up question: would the monarch be *able* to step in beyond just dashing off a quick note to Parliament? For example, could she (or, give it a few years, he) phone the nearest military base and have planes in the air and tanks on the street? Or would it be more like showing up in the House of Lords, calling a general assembly, and then telling them to get their shit together? Obviously that's not called for in this situation right now, just asking in general.

[Tribble]

If I might be permitted the digression, what exactly constitutes enough of an emergency for the monarch to step in?

My view would be either a high risk of imminent and severe damage to British democracy, or a PM trying to employ nuclear weapons in the face of opposition from the cabinet and the armed forces. In practice, whatever the monarch thinks is an emergency, which might be setting a higher or lower bar than that.

Follow-up question: would the monarch be *able* to step in beyond just dashing off a quick note to Parliament? For example, could she (or, give it a few years, he) phone the nearest military base and have planes in the air and tanks on the street? Or would it be more like showing up in the House of Lords, calling a general assembly, and then telling them to get their shit together? Obviously that's not called for in this situation right now, just asking in general.

As Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces she could make a direct call to a military base and have forces deployed (or stand down) if absolutely necessary. Perhaps if there was a dire emergency and the usual chain of command broke down (say parliament and the PMO are incapacitated for some reason) then the Monarch could and probably would take action.

A more likely scenario would a severe constitutional crisis where the Monarch feels compelled to step in. Naturally Brexit falls far short of that mark.

[Captain Seafort]

Follow-up question: would the monarch be *able* to step in beyond just dashing off a quick note to Parliament? For example, could she (or, give it a few years, he) phone the nearest military base and have planes in the air and tanks on the street? Or would it be more like showing up in the House of Lords, calling a general assembly, and then telling them to get their shit together? Obviously that's not called for in this situation right now, just asking in general.

That's where a) comes in. The armed forces (and all MPs for that matter) swear allegiance to the crown. I suppose that in extremis she could stick her head out of the front door of the palace and tell the nearest guardsman "The PMs being a prat. Bring him/her to me."

[Eternal_Freedom]

Indeed, commanding the military is (technically) within her powers. But most likely it would be summoning Parliament to the Lords and telling them "you've fucked up, I'm dismissing Parliament, go prepare for a general election for fuck sake please don't fuck up like this again."

However, a huge portion of her powers (Royal Perogatives) are, at this point, entirely theoretical. Yes, she can dismiss Parliament, order the military to act or stand down, or veto legislation (by refusing the Royal Assent) but she had best be sure she wins the ensuing political firefight, or else she'll be out of a job afterwards.

I would classify most of her powers over the government to be "in case of political apocalypse, break glass."

[Zaune]

So how much worse does this situation have to get before it meets your definition of "political apocalypse"?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Probably something like Seafort said earlier; if whoever muppet we end up with as PM in October goes totally cuckoo and threatens to nuke Brussels or something, or if they went full-on totalitarian or something equally "oh fuck" worthy.

Basically, I wouldn't expect the Queen to step in on this situation unless we wind up in a serious risk of war (foreign or civil).

[GuppyShark]

There was an example of one such a crisis in Australia in 1975, in which the Governor-General (who holds Her Majesty's powers when she is not in the country) dismissed the Prime Minister as the result of a failure to pass the budget and fund the government. I am lead to believe that Australia and the United Kingdom have effectively the same rules and conventions regarding the power of the Crown, which makes this a relevant comparison.

There would be no need to resort to military force, the government cannot lawfully refuse her commands.

http://www.peo.gov.au/learning/closer-l ... risis.html

[Eternal_Freedom]

Parliament cannot refuse, but there is a concept called (I believe) Parliamentary Sovereignty, namely that they can make and pass whatever laws they wish, subject only to the Royal Assent. They could in theory legislate away the Monarchy's remaining powers, or even the Monarchy itself. Technically the Queen would have to sign off on it but at that points things would have gotten fucking ugly anyway.