Originally Posted by
Geoff Parkstone
If you are going to have a referendum, which I for one would not, then the basis should be:
1. Mandatory voting, failure to vote without just cause (eg at A&E or something life threatening, not "it was raining") should be a criminal offence and dealt with accordingly. This may involve passing some enforcement legislation, which means parliamentary approval, so that probably wont happen;
2. A STV three way option (and this presumes there is a deal in place to stand as one of the options) asking the man in the street to pick one of "Remain, No Deal or Leave by Deal" and then pick a second option for when the inevitable no overall majority is achieved. This would then give a tie breaker;
3. Parliament to absolutely guarantee to enact the decision of that referendum regardless of the outcome, with no stalling, no prevarication and in the manner that the STV driven outcome dictates;
4. Absence of parliament enacting the decision within 3 months of the referendum would lead to dissolution of parliament and lifetime bans on all extant MP's for standing again.
The issue here is not that the result will go one way or the other, but rather that parliament devolved the decision to the general public, and then, when the result was not what they wanted, parliament has done everything it can to thwart that decision, even to the extent of negotiating a deal so bad that it was not acceptable to anyone. This action, even more so than Blair's war mongering, parliamentary expenses fiddles and so on has caused parliament to be held in contempt and disrepute. They must either piss or get off the pot, as my dear old granddad was wont to say.
Any weaker form of referendum (eg RA's voluntary binary one) would not get my support as it will unquestionably result in another inconclusive message, with either a second minority majority decision to leave, or a one all draw on a minority majority basis.
The punishment for failing to vote in the 2nd referendum would be for the malcontent to be sewn up in a leather sack with RA and Angry and tossed off Tower Bridge' in a latter day version of the Roman "poena cullei". Or maybe that sentence should have just ended before the word "Tower"