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Referendums should not decide

Oct 22,2016 - Last updated at Oct 22,2016

British Prime Minister Theresa May recently said that the British parliament should not meddle with her plans for putting into effect the results of last June’s referendum that saw Britain pull out of the EU.

May said that it is her business, and her business alone, to negotiate her country’s exit from the 28-nation bloc. She said that the people have spoken and it is her governments’ business to deliver on the people’s wish.

These claims call for some scrutiny. For starters, did the British people actually decide to leave the EU? Then, what is the legal import of referendums anyway?

Let us look at the numbers first. There were 17,461,742 people who voted in favour of leaving versus 16,141,241 who voted against. This makes 51.9 per cent of the British voters opting out of the EU versus 48.1 per cent who wanted to stay in.

No one can come to the conclusion that on the basis of these figures the British want out of the EU.

The very slight difference between the two groups of voters cannot justify the claim that the British people have spoken, especially when only 72.2 per cent of the population voted in the first place.

The second issue is the legal import of referendums. Referendums are conducted to test the sentiment of people on one policy issue or another, rather than issue a verdict.

In nations where there are functional parliaments, and the UK is a parliamentary monarchy, it is the role of parliamentarians to decide on important issues such as whether to stay in the EU or not. 

Parliamentarians are, after all, the people’s representatives when they are democratically elected. There is no room for referendums as long as there are legislative bodies in place. 

Instead of having a divided nation on the subject of membership in the EU, the right thing to do is to put the entire matter on the agenda of parliament and let the people’s representatives have the final say. 

 

Besides, important policy issues need a two-third support and not a simple majority vote. That is where this entire issue was mishandled right from the start.

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