Quote:
Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz
Well that depends on what you consider democracy to be.
England (and Canada) have a representative democratic system, which is supposed to be for exactly this type of situation.
Not everyone can be experts, or up to date on everything, so we elect people to make some decisions for us.
They had a referendum...great, it wasn't legally binding, probably to avoid exactly this type of situation, where the people who are actually making the deal can say "You know what guys, now that we're neck deep in this, and see what it actually means, this is actually a really bad idea. Maybe we should walk it back a bit".
They "Go forward at all costs because the referendum" side are implicitly stating that one kind of democratic decision supersedes another.
I'd argue that a hundreds of years old tradition of representative, rather than direct democracy supersedes a non-binding referendum.
If your argument is "Brexit will be good for the country" then by all means, argue for Brexit.
If your argument is "they voted in a referendum" then you're going to need something more to back it up, because you're also implicitly arguing against long standing principles of representative democracy in the UK.
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The reason the referendum was non binding was because it is impossible legally to have a binding national referendum in the UK, there is no law or constitution that can take primacy away from Parliament that would enable it.