[wincy]

People on Hacker News, being in general the knowledge workers and (at least in our minds) the intelligentsia that we are, have particular disdain for democracies doing things they disagree with.

I remember the day after Brexit passed my high school friend who was then working on her PhD in international theory asking how the government could revert such a decision. It seemed like the most out of touch ivory tower thing to say, and made me suspect of what educational institutions are teaching people these days.

[TMWNN]

>I remember the day after Brexit passed my high school friend who was then working on her PhD in international theory asking how the government could revert such a decision. It seemed like the most out of touch ivory tower thing to say, and made me suspect of what educational institutions are teaching people these days.

It's pretty clear in retrospect that part of what drove the Labour collapse in 2019 (In some Red Wall seats the Tories didn't have to gain a single vote to win) is Remainers who disliked the idea (whether explicit among Lib Dems, or implicit among much of Labour) of ignoring a democratic vote in 2016. That's why another referendum was so unpopular, because no one believes that it would not be rigged against Leave.[1]

People here calling the outcome of the referendum "racist" and "evil" conveniently forget the weeping and wailing that began the night of the referendum. By the next morning we were confidently told by the press and Reddit as a whole that millions of Leave voters were already regretting their vote, and that another referendum was thus the only fair/democratic/correct thing to do. (That even if such millions of Regretters actually existed that does not mean that a revote would occur is a minor technicality.)

People also forget how anger on Leavers' part against delay on Brexit did not become significant until 2019. The Supreme Court agreed that there was reasonable basis for the Miller case, and (more controversially) unexpectedly ruled for her in the second Miller case. But Leavers understandably came to see both lawsuits as part and parcel of an unrelenting attempt on Remainers' part to stop Brexit by any and all means, whether legitimate or not. The fact that Miller actively campaigned for revoking Article 50 didn't help the Remain cause, and discredited her claim during the first case that she wanted to protect parliamentary sovereignty.

Those who in other circumstances might have supported a "People's Vote" didn't, because they saw it as yet another attempt to delay and prevent Brexit via Neverendums. I think Leave would have won another referendum conducted under the circumstances of the first one, but Leavers understandably didn't trust the People's Vote folks to implement another referendum in any way that Leave can again win. Not after 3.5 years and counting of shenanigans such as the Miller case.

[1] Even supporters of same, no matter what they said. That's why they were for it.

[cycrutchfield]

It was a nonbinding referendum. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask why important policy decisions are being made by a simple majority of the voting public.

[ghufran_syed]

Didn’t the conservative party win a general election in 2015 in which the referendum was a manifesto pledge? So the conservatives promised a referendum and won that election - that seems like “the consent of the governed”, doesn’t it? And the british public could have voted for labour in 2017 or 2019 if they wanted a softer stance on Brexit, but they didn’t, and the Conservatives won both those elections too, albeit with a minority government from the 2017 election. Maybe that means something, in terms of what the british electorate thinks?

[ben_w]

Perhaps, but landslide wins in U.K. general elections often involve significantly less than half the electorate voting for the winning party, and general elections come with all the baggage of the party manifestos and Red/Blue/etc. tribalism.

OTOH, there was a referendum on changing the voting system (which was also rejected).