“We don’t have a government, we don’t have an opposition,” said satire magazine editor Ian Hislop on BBC’s Question Time, Thursday.
The Prime Minister appeared on the morning after the EU Referendum vote to announce his resignation, effective a long time hence. Since then, the ship of State has been not so much rudderless as uncaptained. Mr Cameron’s irresponsibility is lamentable: just before impact, he has left the bridge for others to steer the country off the rocks.
The Referendum was always going to be divisive. But with US Presidential elections, the often very bitter and unscrupulous fight beforehand is followed by a period of reunification under the flag. In Britain, this has not happened so far.
A major reason is the prolonged failure to declare the result completely irrevocable. There were no “hanging chads”: 52 percent to 48 is a clear margin and many divisions in Parliament are decided on less. More British people voted on the Leave side than have ever previously voted for any issue or political party.
But the losers’ hope continued, because nobody in authority squelched it fast. Cameron’s restrained – and patently regretful and reluctant – call to “respect” the outcome invited talk of the Referendum being non-binding, especially in a perfervid atmosphere in which mutual respect was often absent among the public. The amateur propaganda, insults and smears in social media over the last couple of weeks intensified as it seemed possible that there might be some way to declare the result void for lack of a greater majority; or to re-run the vote because of alleged misinformation prior to the ballot and “buyer’s remorse” after it. Some even said young people’s votes should have more weight, because they have longer to live with the decision!
So 4 million people signed an online petition reading, “We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the remain or leave vote is less than 60% based [on] a turnout [of] less than 75% there should be another referendum.” [By the way, it turns out that 77,000 of the signatories seemed to originate from the Vatican – population 800 – but that’s another story, and it still leaves a lot of unhappy activists, if a few keystrokes counts as action.]
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