Comment by gausswho
4 hours ago
Maybe you can help illuminate something that confused me about the result of the referendum. I thought it was worded such that voting yes would lead to a committee determining the details, and that that would lead to a second referendum? It felt like the UK population was tricked into voting for a 'sure I'll hear out your plan' which then turned into 'cool, we'll make a plan and then begin implementing it'.
> Maybe you can help illuminate something that confused me about the result of the referendum. I thought it was worded such that voting yes would lead to a committee determining the details, and that that would lead to a second referendum.
The wording of such a famous referendum shouldn't be hard to find if you want to know the wording
Edit: just realised I still had this tab open from checking something for another subthread. It says nothing about a committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2016_EU_Referendum_Ballot...
Edit edit :)
On the same page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...), I found this. Perhaps you're remembering that?
> After internal polls suggested that 85% of the UK population wanted more information about the referendum from the government, a leaflet was sent to every household in the UK. It contained details about why the government believed the UK should remain in the EU. This leaflet was criticised by those wanting to leave as giving the remain side an unfair advantage; it was also described as being inaccurate and a waste of taxpayers' money (it cost £9.3m in total). During the campaign, Nigel Farage suggested that there would be public demand for a second referendum should the result be a remain win closer than 52–48%, because the leaflet meant that the remain side had been permitted to spend more money
Thank you for those links. Those are written in a way that it's very obvious what you'd be voting for. I must have been thinking of some other voting measure, unless my memory is (very possibly) faulty.
I don’t remember anyone before the referendum saying it would be the first of two.
A lot of people pushed unsuccessfully for a second referendum after the first one but that was never based on any pre-existing legalities or precedent, it was just an attempt to overturn the first result from people who were upset that theyd lost.
Also based on the fact that no specific plan for brexit had popular support.
In hindsight, I think I was misremembering that a second referendum was debated beforehand. But the non-binding aspect of the first had me thinking it would lead to further definition before it was embarked upon. Was there elections held between referendum and determining to do it?