Thanks, John and Ted. That seems pretty clear.
It may well be true that the leavers would be very dissatisfied to have the Tory principle applied to them, but that takes us to the heart of class politics. It's hard to see why the principle should be applied to public sector workers and not to leavers. The fact remains that a not very large majority of voters on a less than three quarters turnout have expressed an opinion which is nothing more than guidance to Parliament. Parliament has got to keep the greater interests of the UK in mind, not just the expression of opinions, whatever peculiar notions they are based on. Hanging is an example. MPs are representatives who must make up their own minds, they keep telling us, not delegates. But it may be fatuous to expect consistency just now. I'm looking forward to hearing the intellectual contortions which justify the TTIP investor-state dispute settlements as an increase in UK's 'taking back decisions' to its own courts which is what leavers voted for.
John VW.
------------------------------------------------------------
From Professor John Veit-Wilson
Newcastle University GPS -- Sociology
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, England.
Tel: 0044[0]191-208 7498
email [log in to unmask]
www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/j.veit-wilson/
-----Original Message-----
From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Whittington
Sent: 24 June 2016 11:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: referendum 40 per cent or not?
At 09:05 24/06/2016 +0000, John Veit-Wilson wrote:
>If the referendum had been a vote about going out on strike in the
>public sector, the government insists on a minimum of 40 per cent of
>the eligible union membership electorate voting in favour, not just any
>majority. I haven t seen the precise referendum figures yet, but could
>someone please check them as soon as they are available and let us all
>know. A history-changing national vote does seem rather more important
>than a temporary strike.
>Whatever the many other political aspects of the numbers and breakdown
>of votes, if the leave vote was less than 40% of the electorate it
>would be worth drawing attention to the discrepancies in the
>application of Tory principles when the union issue comes up, as it
>probably will in the turmoils ahead.
The simple answer is 'No'. The 17,410,742 people who voted Leave represented 37.4% of those 46,501,241 registered to vote (and, obviously, an even lower percentage of those who _could_ have registered to vote).
However, a 40% (or whatever) rule would seemingly not be as clearly applicable to the referendum as to a strike vote. As with the strike vote, it would require that the default outcome (if Leave votes did not achieve
40%) would be to 'do nothing' - i.e. 'Remain' - and those favouring 'Leave'
might be very critical of that.
Kind Regards,
John
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