Whether you are the most Spartan of Brexiteers or a wistful federalist, so much changed between 1975 and 2016 that the electorate was entitled to be consulted
Effectively, you accept that Cameron called the referendum primarily for party management reasons. I presume you would accept that, just as those who opposed membership did not accept the 1975 referendum result as the final say, those who believe that the European Union will never be truly European without Britain are fully entitled to hope for the day when they will get the chance to reverse the 2016 result. Your final paragraph sounds like a desperate plea to them to accept defeat.
One can argue whether it was “primarily” or “partly” for party management reasons: but the strife within the Conservative Party was in some ways only a microcosm of the fissures within public opinion. There was a substantial and growing gap between a sense among political leaders that our membership of the EU was an untouchable assumption of foreign policy, and a public of which a hefty chunk, while not giving it a great deal of thought, was nagged by a sense that we had ended up somewhere they hadn’t expected, and about which they had not been asked. As for rejoining, hope is everyone’s birthright, but (and this is only my opinion) it’s not even on the table in the next 15 years or so, and to nurse it as a grievance, as some do, simply curdles political discourse. It’s axiomatic that Parliament cannot bind its successor, so anything is theoretically possible, but I genuinely believe if the 52/48 had been in the other direction, many Leavers (though I’m sure not all) would have taken it on the chin and moved forward with other issues. Each of us has to decide at what point a long disliked policy and a desire to see it changed or reversed becomes a forlorn hope. No-one wants to be in the kind of turmoil Churchill was in over India in the 1930s, say.
And what would the "worst possibility" referred to in your final sentence have been? Some form of coup by frustrated Brexiteers?
Effectively, you accept that Cameron called the referendum primarily for party management reasons. I presume you would accept that, just as those who opposed membership did not accept the 1975 referendum result as the final say, those who believe that the European Union will never be truly European without Britain are fully entitled to hope for the day when they will get the chance to reverse the 2016 result. Your final paragraph sounds like a desperate plea to them to accept defeat.
One can argue whether it was “primarily” or “partly” for party management reasons: but the strife within the Conservative Party was in some ways only a microcosm of the fissures within public opinion. There was a substantial and growing gap between a sense among political leaders that our membership of the EU was an untouchable assumption of foreign policy, and a public of which a hefty chunk, while not giving it a great deal of thought, was nagged by a sense that we had ended up somewhere they hadn’t expected, and about which they had not been asked. As for rejoining, hope is everyone’s birthright, but (and this is only my opinion) it’s not even on the table in the next 15 years or so, and to nurse it as a grievance, as some do, simply curdles political discourse. It’s axiomatic that Parliament cannot bind its successor, so anything is theoretically possible, but I genuinely believe if the 52/48 had been in the other direction, many Leavers (though I’m sure not all) would have taken it on the chin and moved forward with other issues. Each of us has to decide at what point a long disliked policy and a desire to see it changed or reversed becomes a forlorn hope. No-one wants to be in the kind of turmoil Churchill was in over India in the 1930s, say.
Precisely. And if they had been after Treaties of Lisbon & Maastricht then 2016 wouldve passed like any other.