From: Steve Shaw -
Date: 25 Mar 18 - 08:05 PM

The referendum was severely skewed. I'm not going to keep going over that, Nigel. It should always be much harder to bring about a fundamental and permanent change, irrevocable, than to vote for the status quo, which is always subject to fairly easy revision. If you can't see that well I'm afraid it makes you a crowing triumphalist, and people like that, like you, find it all too easy to set democracy aside when it suits you to do so. Had you lost the referendum by a similarly narrow margin you would definitely, DEFINITELY, be campaigning for a rerun. I'm not even doing that, am I. Just a reminder, Nigel: you got 38% of the electorate. Just thought I'd mention it.

While 'Remain' got less than 38%.
However you read it, number of voters, percentage of the electorate, percentage of those who actually voted, or percentage of total population of the UK, the result will always show a preference for Brexit and against Remain of 52 to 48.

If a second referendum was required would you be insisting that the 'current' status quo (that we are leaving the EU) could only be overturned if Remain get 66% of the vote with a 75% turnover? Or does that only apply to votes where you disagree with the outcome? (Keeping in mind that the 1975 referendum was based on 67% of a 64% turnout)

And he's also dead right about the bar being set far too low, a point I've made here again and again - the referendum's alternative answers, in or out, were way too skewed for them to be able to be properly subjected to a simple majority of the turnout. Vote to remain and we can easily try again and again to turn it around, just as we do in general elections every few years. Vote to leave (assuming we do leave as the politicians fail to see the light) and it's irrevocable by every practical consideration. Two-thirds of a minimum 75% turnout vote to leave, or even better, no referendum at all, would have been a far better way to go. The quality of the brexiteers' attitude is betrayed by their idiotic "people-have-spoken" crowing over this disastrous state of affairs (38%, remember?) and their calling US undemocratic for continuing to complain and campaign.