Referendum

To my mind, referenda are something which should only be used in very special circumstances, special enough to override the consideration that public opinion is a very fickle thing - this being one of the very good reasons why most countries go in for representative democracy. An arrangement which lifts executive, judiciary and legislature a bit above the ruck.

So I am uncertain whether tomorrow's referendum was a good idea. But I am certain that allowing the result to be determined by a simple majority was a bad idea. Many other places set a higher bar for drastic change, say two thirds. Inter alia, this makes unseemly disputes about every last vote rather pointless, as if very nearly two thirds have voted for something, then there is a clear mandate for that something.

Thinking to see what the law says, I thought, naively, to go to reference 1, to get it from the horse's mouth. But this imposing document does not seem to say anything at all about the meaning of the result, let alone whether or not and to what extent it is binding on the otherwise sovereign House of Commons. It contains lots of stuff about the conduct of the referendum, with various twiddles for the inhabitants of Wales and Gibraltar, but contains the word 'result' just three times and the word 'results' not at all.

Presumably I should have looked somewhere else.

PS: I ought to declare an interest. I had hoped that the Scots would vote to stay in the UK and I do hope that the UK will vote to stay in the EU. So a two thirds rule would have been good for me on both matters.

Reference 1: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/36/contents/enacted.