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Most referenda are held as advisory, meaning they have no legal weight. I imagine this is one such. The price to pay for ignoring it remains, of course, which Theresa May will find unless she follows through. All in all, she needs to decide if staying in the EU is worth her future career.
At the moment, most of what I remember about the vote was that it A) Seemed to surprise almost everybody, and B) Was basically followed by the "Leave" side's leaders reneging on almost everything they'd promised - probably because they never expected to have to do anything of the sort, so they just said whatever they wanted. I suppose the PM could organize a quick study, "find" that what people thought they were voting for wasn't actually going to happen, and say Parliament declined to invoke it for that reason...
Buuuuut I'm not an expert on UK politics and I don't even know if such a thing would be practical, much less something they'd actually do. XD;
Most referenda are held as advisory, meaning they have no legal weight. I imagine this is one such.
No need to imagine; that was one of the legal points harped on by the court when it said that May required the consent of Parliament to invoke Article 50.
At the moment, most of what I remember about the vote was that it A) Seemed to surprise almost everybody, and B) Was basically followed by the "Leave" side's leaders reneging on almost everything they'd promised - probably because they never expected to have to do anything of the sort, so they just said whatever they wanted. I suppose the PM could organize a quick study, "find" that what people thought they were voting for wasn't actually going to happen, and say Parliament declined to invoke it for that reason...
The problem is that a large fraction of the Leave supporters are genuine in their support for leaving. Leave won by 52% to 48% overall, so a lot of the Remain crowd are genuinely disappointed and worried.
But let's assume for a moment that May did hold a second referendum and Remain won by the same 52%/48% split. This would put the Leave supporters in the same disappointed and worried boat, and it wouldn't actually solve anything. Although it would probably get May off the hook for a little bit of time, it would leave her, and the Conservative majority, in very bad shape politically, and it's not clear that it do anything other than defer the reckoning.
She has no good choices left.
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We all need to remember that she chose the situation after the results were known. I don't feel all that sorry for her.
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Still, it's more a question of what can she do? Would an "Invoke Article 50" act even pass Parliament? What happens if it didn't? The EU won't negotiate until the Act's invoked, so she can't even present an actual deal to Parliament. They have to vote on a blank check.
Did you ever see the original (British) House of Cards? In theory, the PM has a lot of tools at his (her) disposal to ensure that members of the ruling party will vote the way the PM wants. Of course, if you've seen House of Cards, you will also recognize that using these tools will normally burn a hell of a lot of goodwill, since not all of the pressure applied is of the sort that the MP in question would be willing to see appear in the pages of the Daily ChipWrapper.
Assuming even a moderate level of competence on May's part, she can probably force the votes through if she wants to badly enough. But this gets back to the "she has no good choices left" bit. If she pushes the vote through on a three-line whip, she owns the entire mess that results, and I don't think she wants to do that. If she just issues it as an ordinary matter for Parliament to vote for, she has a better chance of being able to bluff it out with "well, take it up with your local MP if you don't like the way he voted." If she doesn't offer it up for a Parliamentary vote at all, then she owns all the resentment of the Leave camp (and, incidentally, catches all the flak for ignoring the Will of the People).
I think the best way out, honestly, is the way she's taking (even though may annoy the Europeans). She's already lost in court once about having the authority to invoke Article 50 via Royal Perogative, and a number of senior members of her party are suggesting she abandon the appeal. I don't think she will do that (nor should she); instead, she should go ahead and exhaust her appeals (losing all the way up the chain), making it clear that it's a Parliamentary matter and not a government matter. Then, she can turn it over to Parliament, without "whip[ping] it good" (thank you, Devo) and let them shoot it down. Everyone gets to argue about their local MP, but she will have several years to find something shiny to distract the electorate with before the next general election.
It's not a good plan -- there are none, after all -- but it keeps her fingerprints off the mess, which is about the best that she can hope for.
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Voters have recently taken to be quite hostile to representatives who do not seem to respect the voters' choice
I think popular pressure on the MPs and their parties will end up with Parliament activating article 50
Also the longer the uncertainty the greater the financial cost for big companies. They too will not be amused if the matter stays unsettled
Voters have recently taken to be quite hostile to representatives who do not seem to respect the voters' choice
I think popular pressure on the MPs and their parties will end up with Parliament activating article 50
The rules are a little different in the United Kingdom than they are in most of the rest of the world. "Popular pressure on MPs" is actually very hard to apply, since general elections are called more-or-less at the PM's whim and so tend to be dominated by national issues. There's no method for recalling an MP who doesn't accurately reflect the wishes of his constituents (and, indeed, by statute and long-standing custom, an MP is supposed to follow the national interest over the merely local cares of his MP, which is part of why institutions like the Whip exist, to provide the government with tools to make sure it happens). One of the problems in the US is that there's no way for the Speaker of the House to bring recalcitrant members of his own party in line, but there's a problem in the UK Parliament that there are no ways for the local riding to bring pressure to bear on an MP who doesn't seem to care about his constituents.
We all need to remember that she chose the situation after the results were known. I don't feel all that sorry for her.It's not about feeling sorry for her, though IIRC wasn't she sort of a sacrificial candidate for PM? No one else wanted the hot potato.
She'd been in the Remain camp.
Nope, there were several people keen to be PM, most obviously Boris Johnson. She turned out to be the last one standing after the others had knifed each other in the back. Orfamay is spot on referencing the original House of Cards, because it happened much like that.
Tory party leadership contests would be amusing to watch if we didn't have to live with the consequences...