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Isn't this just changes in government policy? On that basis this Laboutmr MP presumably wants no nationalisation and the continuation of austerity...they were prior commitments Sometimes I wonder about some of the 635 people elected to "run" this country (and not just the bigots)

i agree but we do not have a culture of referenda and so they do take on that meaning which is problematic - to overturn one needs another and then we get in a mess

You're right about democracy. A referendum is an opinion poll. The decisions about implementing Brexit based on that poll and the form it took were made by the government of the day. That government is long gone. Their fate decided by democracy. Their disastrous decisions for the UK must be too.

I think the genie is out of the bottle now, if Brazil & Serbia have taught us anything it’s that if enough people want something then there’s not anything the powerful can do to stop it.

Once they start questioning NHS capacity to meet migrant demand their cluelessness is exposed. The quickest way to reduce NHS is capacity is to cut immigration. But no, the decision of 27%, mostly now dead voters shall define our future.

Beatings must continue until the promised sunlit uplands have been achieved.

FoM discussion only risks eroding trust because the oligarchs and their goons keep saying it will. Under sane conditions only the most extreme europhobe would let their trust be eroded by normal political discourse.

That MP has form, she isn't going to change and you can only hope the leadership just ignore her. Her entire argument is based on a massive lie which is things can be significantly improved without accepting FoM. They simply can't and she must know that.

Bit like saying bring back the death penalty as some people supported it and we mustn’t betray them 🙄

In part, the problem is that the UK doesn't have legislation that provides a framework for referenda. A single electorate voting at 52% should not provide a sufficient basis for a referendum vote. Other countries have multiple electorates, or minimum voting requirements, etc. UK needs to step up.

Stupidity in having a referendum when they are not part of our political culture as they are fixed points in time and are never retested like elections

That was a court case, not a referendum.

Absolutely agree. The idea that a government cannot reassess an earlier decision in light of current circumstances and popular opinion, and then make a decision to change that decision in order to make things better, is quite ludicrous. It’s precisely what we elect them to do for us.

I think Melanie is just trying to ensure her reelection . What’s Brexit done for Grimsby & Cleethorpes … lost all their EU funding but gained notoriety as police detention centre central … great 🙄

Such an argument might be justified if a supermajority requirement had been in place (typically 60% but often higher). Without it, the referendum lacked enduring constitutional legitimacy (and could therefore ckaim to stop democratic process). What a pr*ck was Cameron: all foreseeable...

Fucking ridiculous. If this article was accurate then why the hell do we have elections every few years? Surely once people have decided on a government they should accept that government for the rest of eternity? Right? Utter lunacy.

“Blue Labour” is a shade of turquoise.

A non-commitment that half the country didn’t want at the time, and even more of country don’t want now. Our working community as they put it was pretty well supported by the EU, we mostly voted to remain. I’m sick of these people seeming to only listen to areas who voted leave 😤

Agree @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social took similar lines last night arguing that because of hard core Brexiteers, too difficult to open honest conversations on closer EU ties & ‘what ifs &buts red herrings, ending with hysterical front page spreads of antiEU, antiAndy comment in Mail, Telegraph, Express.

Yes! Surely it’s a sign of madness never to revisit an action that has had zero benefit to people, country or culture. Indeed which has caused hardship, unnecessarily reduced growth, and many other downsides.

It won’t get an airing in the billionaire owned media & certainly there’s no support for said education on #BBC. Except for @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social #BBCNews has no profile on BlueSky which excludes me because I dumped Twitter (I had 18k followers) &won’t go back to that hellhole. I despair at BBC.

We’ve used small boys for ages to clean out chimneys and it brings in a few pennies for their families, so why change that now…

It's like we were asked if we wanted to ditch Sky TV and go to another provider only to find it was Freeview and we're not allowed to do anything about it.

Quite. The referendum only asked about leaving EU. Everything else was consecutive government decisions.

Indeed - the same argument could have been made for refusing to repeal the Corn Laws. It’s not about the facts changing. It’s not even primarily about the voters changing. The whole Brexit project was based on lies on an industrial scale and should be overturned at the earliest possible moment.

Is @melanieonnmp.bsky.social familiar with the aspect of parliamentary sovereignty that stipulates that a Parliament cannot bind its successors?

And a bizarre inability to accept that this decision has already been “revisited” as it was the 2nd referendum on Europe. Using this logic, we also wouldn’t have elections every 5 years because “the people had decided” at the last election.

Correct. Also what voter trust? That was lost long ago, it’s now about rebuilding it.

100000% what planet do they live on

The thing is pretty much anything else the electorate vote for is not in perpetuity. Normally party’s puts forward their arguments, we vote for the ones that convince us, then 4-5 years later we revue that decision. Why, in their minds, is Brexit set in fucking stone?

In a democracy nothing can ever be “written in stone”, that surely must be one of the fundamental attributes.

Xenophobic people should stand by their xenophobia and take the ridicule, not hide behind a sacred notion of the working class.

Brexiters:

Held back by Grimsby and Cleethorpes. Hartlepool etc.

It's word salad anyway. Is she saying promises must be kept forever? Does she realise her own party have broken promises? And why is she limiting this to "working communities"? Does she seriously think we live in times of "voter trust"? It's all madness on a stick.

Oh they will reward the unemployed from Britain's most deprived areas with fruit picking jobs at £4/HR and make it compulsory. The term "labour camps" comes to mind for making workers work in jobs they don't want to keep a dysfunctional economy grinding on for the party elite.

Freedom of movement wasn't even on the ballot. Leaving the EU is not the same as losing freedom of movement.

Even MPs don’t understand the features of democracy that got them their jobs. Like all those Brexiters were well and truly kicked out in 2024. In an election! So act on it!

And the likes of Hannan were quite clear in the run up to the vote that "no-one is talking about leaving the single market" or ending FoM. All of a sudden we moved to May's ludicrous "red lines" and the hardest Brexit possible 🤬

The people who promised Brexit would be great were liars and everybody knows it, but we need to keep doing the thing they lied about or people won’t trust us or something

One of the things about the referendum is every politician is petrified of arguing that immigration has benefits as though that's the sole reason the campaign failed.

Give some of them a safe Southern seat & watch their views “evolve” This is not community leadership, it’s showing desperation to stay in a seat

Diddums. Those Labour MPs (eg Nandy) who've made promises that they cannot keep because the were not based on the truth are now suffering from the interface with reality. MPs are supposed to show leadership not cower behind public opinion. Sympathy, I have none.

I really think FOM is not the issue some think it is or what it was. People now understand it better. After fom scraped: Small boats started Non EU Immigration massively up Airport queueing up Retiring abroad down

Don't forget that many MPs are still loyal to all their wealthy donors, who have not stopped wanting to avoid new EU rules on taxing offshore wealth?

And Farage once again on radio 4 with nick robinson fawning over him…. Sickening

Labour MPs have certainly been guilty of protecting their own seats by protecting Brexit (see Nandy circa 2016 and since). They could, of course, try to educate their misinformed constituents instead. They are expected to know more than us after all.

Yeah this is pure populism and the very state of mind that got us here in the first place. It is also possibly the populism and the state of mind which ended up costing Jo Cox her life. It must be immediately and forcefully called out

Yup, Leave cheating alright. Where are the prosecutions? Oh, I forgot, there never are any 🤬 www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-poli...

The lack of moral courage displayed by MPs is something that we should all worry about.

The brexiters have spent the last decade trying instead of finding any way it could match its 'guarantees', rather to try and make it an entrenched clause of the constitution. To give brexit a greater protection than the form of government as a 'parliamentary constitutional monarchy'

'Brexiters promised a land of milk and honey and delivered contaminated water and broken biscuits.' I'm nicking that. 🙂

The biggest part of the leave vote was anti-Cameron and austerity. That’s gone now. It was justified by the media afterwards.

Trying to push a fantasy that is a proven fallacy. They simply do not deserve to be in the position they've been voted into if they cannot find the courage to make the right decisions on behalf of their constituents. That's literally what they're paid handsomely to do.

That fat blubbering idiotic excuse of a prime minister and his “oven ready deal” wasn’t he supposed to die in a ditch, instead he’s making millions spouting lies

As soon as I saw "legitimate questions" I stopped reading. Too close to the euphemism for me.

It would be more useful to talk about the process that led to Brexit. An emotional, beliefs based decision. The rejoin argument has some similar features. We need to learn how to make better decisions as a country

Even the Guardian is still writing about how Makerfield voted 65% leave. That was over 10 years ago and recent polling has the constituency voting to re-join. The press has to move on from 2016 as well.

The Lexiter argument was always bizarre and illogical so why break that pattern?

As if promises aren’t revisited time and time again in politics. Triple lock anybody?

Melanie Onn must be shit scared of her electorate. This graphic from around the time of the referendum shows how poor her constituency was then. I was there on Saturday & it's no better. "Don't rock the boat" is not going to work. Burnham needs to get her into line.

It's so easy to retort too. If a referendum on Europe is binding forever then the latest one is voided by the existence of the first

De-selection meeting required

Evil me: "Three-line party whip them into submission"

At the end of the day most of these people have voted for everything the daily mail had told them they wanted and got it: Austerity, Brexit, Boris when lots of people said it would be shit. Maybe it's time they wound their necks in and shut the fuck up.

It was advisory ref too..!!!

Unbelievable, like keep hacking away at our limbs hoping they will grow back…!