Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Brexit - the issue has been decided

The Callaghan government fell on 28 March 1979 because it lost a motion of no confidence by one single vote (310-311), as a result of which the Prime Minister quite correctly advised HMQ to dissolve Parliament. That was a 0.16% margin of votes cast.
Had the same number of MPs (621) voted in the 2016 EU Referendum and the split been 48%/52% the government would have lost (or won) by a margin of 25 votes. Many issues have been determined by smaller margins in the House of Commons - here are a few just since the last General Election*:
Date Time Subject Turnout Majority Margin %
20 Oct 2015 18:52 Opposition Day — Tax Credits 616 22 3.57%
26 Oct 2015 21:13 Finance Bill — New Clause 7 — VAT on Sanitary Protection Products 596 18 3.02%
19 Jan 2016 16:16 Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 — Prayer to Annul — Replacing Student Grants with Larger Loans for Students from England 599 11 1.84%
19 Jan 2016 16:16 Opposition Day — Student Maintenance Grants 602 14 2.33%
25 Apr 2016 21:26 Immigration Bill — Unaccompanied Refugee Children: Relocation and Support 572 18 3.15%
28 Jun 2016 14:30 Finance Bill — Schedule 19 — Multinational Enterprises — Publication of Country by Country Tax Strategy 571 22 3.85%
"My policy is to hold a renegotiation and then a referendum. That is what we promised in the manifesto and then to abide by what the British public say." PM David Cameron, 19 January 2016. "This is a decision that lasts for life. We make this decision and it is probably going to be the only time in our generation when we make this decision" - PM David Cameron, 23 Feb 2016.
It is time for "those who know better" to decide whether they believe in democracy at all.

__________________

* Data from http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/divisions.php - clearly there is a date error around 19 Jan 2016 but the general point stands.

1 comment:

James Higham said...

It's over, it's done, now get TF on with it, May.