The Referendum Era 2010 - 2024

[Lex]

There is no doubt that last night marked a sea change, and contemporary historians are already referring to the last 14 years of politics as ' The Referendum Era'

There was actually three referendums, and you can draw a straight line between each of them. It all started in 2010, and the coalition government of Clegg and Cameron. One of Yellow Belly Nicks conditions of support for the Tory Government was a referendum on The Alternative Vote, anyone remember that? Yes it did really happen, in 2011. It was a thumping victory for the Tories and the FPTP Status Quo - 67.9% to 32.1%. It closed that argument for good. We didn't realise it then, but this precedent of a referendum closing down a political issue was going to become very important. 

Following The AV result and the SNP majority at the Holyrood Parliamentary Election in 2011, it was David Cameron that was trumpeting a Scottish Independence Referendum as loud as anyone. Who can forget him goading Salmond to 'get on with it' at the dispatch box in 2012? A Tory PM calling out an SNP leader to hurry and have a Scottish Independence Referendum seems bizarre today, but it really happened. The reason for this of course, was that Cameron knew that NO was going to win. He thought that would close down the issue for good as well, oh dear. Stuttering Eck pushed it back as far as he could to 2014, but no dice. The result was a thumping No win, however it was a good bit closer than Cameron had expected. He was expecting 60%+ like his AV vote, he got 55%. He was rattled, but he had created a referendum monster that he could no longer control.

2014 was also the year for the most important election that no one remembers, The European Parliamentary Elections. Anyone remember that? Yep, UKIP won, the first UK election not won by the Tories or Labour since 1906. They won because of the referendum precedent that Cameron had created. Eurosceptics now realised that they too, could get their referendum. Tory MP's and voters started defecting to UKIP and ahead of the 2015 General Election and Cameron was snookered by a monster of his own creation. The only way he could shore up his own party was to put an EU referendum in the 2015 manifesto.

It's been said he never wanted this referendum and he put it in the manifesto for two reasons. Firstly, if he didn't he'd lose hordes of MP's and votes to UKIP, secondly he never thought he'd get a majority, so he wouldn't have to act on it anyway. If the coalition held the Lib Dems would block any EU referendum bill so it wouldn't even see the floor of the house. If anyone remembers the run up to that election it was all about who the Lib Dems were going to prop up, was it going to be Miliband or Cameron? Maybe Labour could get a majority, but surely the incumbent Tories wouldn't increase their amount of seats and get a majority?

Naturally, that's exactly what happened. The Tories got their unexpected majority because of their manifesto pledge and the Brexit referendum that was never meant to happen, did happen.  Cameron's monster ate him in the end and since 2016 almost all of our politics has been about these two referendums. Labour standing on a 'peoples vote' manifesto, Lib Dems running on a 'Stop Brexit' manifesto and their leader losing her seat, and the famous 'Get Brexit Done' majority of 2019 etc etc. 

What we know now with hindsight, is that a referendum doesn't close down a political issue at all. All that happens is that whoever loses the referendum immediately asks for a second one, and whoever lost the second one would ask for a third one, continue ad nauseum.  It's a horrible idea. If anything all referendums do is make existing divisions and the political sphere much more toxic and polarised. Verbal and online abuse, physical attacks and even murders of MP's have re-entered our political discourse since 2011. No surprise therefore, that this generation of politicians have been scarred by referenda, and the consensus amongst both sides of the house is: 

Let's never have a referendum on anything ever again, and there won't be. This will be a much studied period in future, I'm sure there's already a Netflix documentary in production. What memories will you have? What was your favourite moment?

 

 

[MarkoRaj]

[pozbaird]

2 hours ago, Lex said:

 

Let's never have a referendum on anything ever again, and there won't be. This will be a much studied period in future, I'm sure there's already a Netflix documentary in production. What memories will you have? What was your favourite moment?

 

 

The vote on our 2023/24 third strip. The exit polls nailed that one. Clear win for the red shirt & black shorts combo’.

Edited Friday at 11:27 by pozbaird

[Jives Miguel]

Nice blog post mate

[SandyCromarty]

On 05/07/2024 at 09:53, Lex said:

There is no doubt that last night marked a sea change, and contemporary historians are already referring to the last 14 years of politics as ' The Referendum Era'

There was actually three referendums, and you can draw a straight line between each of them. It all started in 2010, and the coalition government of Clegg and Cameron. One of Yellow Belly Nicks conditions of support for the Tory Government was a referendum on The Alternative Vote, anyone remember that? Yes it did really happen, in 2011. It was a thumping victory for the Tories and the FPTP Status Quo - 67.9% to 32.1%. It closed that argument for good. We didn't realise it then, but this precedent of a referendum closing down a political issue was going to become very important. 

Following The AV result and the SNP majority at the Holyrood Parliamentary Election in 2011, it was David Cameron that was trumpeting a Scottish Independence Referendum as loud as anyone. Who can forget him goading Salmond to 'get on with it' at the dispatch box in 2012? A Tory PM calling out an SNP leader to hurry and have a Scottish Independence Referendum seems bizarre today, but it really happened. The reason for this of course, was that Cameron knew that NO was going to win. He thought that would close down the issue for good as well, oh dear. Stuttering Eck pushed it back as far as he could to 2014, but no dice. The result was a thumping No win, however it was a good bit closer than Cameron had expected. He was expecting 60%+ like his AV vote, he got 55%. He was rattled, but he had created a referendum monster that he could no longer control.

2014 was also the year for the most important election that no one remembers, The European Parliamentary Elections. Anyone remember that? Yep, UKIP won, the first UK election not won by the Tories or Labour since 1906. They won because of the referendum precedent that Cameron had created. Eurosceptics now realised that they too, could get their referendum. Tory MP's and voters started defecting to UKIP and ahead of the 2015 General Election and Cameron was snookered by a monster of his own creation. The only way he could shore up his own party was to put an EU referendum in the 2015 manifesto.

It's been said he never wanted this referendum and he put it in the manifesto for two reasons. Firstly, if he didn't he'd lose hordes of MP's and votes to UKIP, secondly he never thought he'd get a majority, so he wouldn't have to act on it anyway. If the coalition held the Lib Dems would block any EU referendum bill so it wouldn't even see the floor of the house. If anyone remembers the run up to that election it was all about who the Lib Dems were going to prop up, was it going to be Miliband or Cameron? Maybe Labour could get a majority, but surely the incumbent Tories wouldn't increase their amount of seats and get a majority?

Naturally, that's exactly what happened. The Tories got their unexpected majority because of their manifesto pledge and the Brexit referendum that was never meant to happen, did happen.  Cameron's monster ate him in the end and since 2016 almost all of our politics has been about these two referendums. Labour standing on a 'peoples vote' manifesto, Lib Dems running on a 'Stop Brexit' manifesto and their leader losing her seat, and the famous 'Get Brexit Done' majority of 2019 etc etc. 

What we know now with hindsight, is that a referendum doesn't close down a political issue at all. All that happens is that whoever loses the referendum immediately asks for a second one, and whoever lost the second one would ask for a third one, continue ad nauseum.  It's a horrible idea. If anything all referendums do is make existing divisions and the political sphere much more toxic and polarised. Verbal and online abuse, physical attacks and even murders of MP's have re-entered our political discourse since 2011. No surprise therefore, that this generation of politicians have been scarred by referenda, and the consensus amongst both sides of the house is: 

Let's never have a referendum on anything ever again, and there won't be. This will be a much studied period in future, I'm sure there's already a Netflix documentary in production. What memories will you have? What was your favourite moment?

 

 

What is a contempory historian?

Surely you meant political commentators.

And 14 years is hardly an era.

[Monkey Tennis]

On 05/07/2024 at 09:53, Lex said:

There is no doubt that last night marked a sea change, and contemporary historians are already referring to the last 14 years of politics as ' The Referendum Era'

There was actually three referendums, and you can draw a straight line between each of them. It all started in 2010, and the coalition government of Clegg and Cameron. One of Yellow Belly Nicks conditions of support for the Tory Government was a referendum on The Alternative Vote, anyone remember that? Yes it did really happen, in 2011. It was a thumping victory for the Tories and the FPTP Status Quo - 67.9% to 32.1%. It closed that argument for good. We didn't realise it then, but this precedent of a referendum closing down a political issue was going to become very important. 

Following The AV result and the SNP majority at the Holyrood Parliamentary Election in 2011, it was David Cameron that was trumpeting a Scottish Independence Referendum as loud as anyone. Who can forget him goading Salmond to 'get on with it' at the dispatch box in 2012? A Tory PM calling out an SNP leader to hurry and have a Scottish Independence Referendum seems bizarre today, but it really happened. The reason for this of course, was that Cameron knew that NO was going to win. He thought that would close down the issue for good as well, oh dear. Stuttering Eck pushed it back as far as he could to 2014, but no dice. The result was a thumping No win, however it was a good bit closer than Cameron had expected. He was expecting 60%+ like his AV vote, he got 55%. He was rattled, but he had created a referendum monster that he could no longer control.

2014 was also the year for the most important election that no one remembers, The European Parliamentary Elections. Anyone remember that? Yep, UKIP won, the first UK election not won by the Tories or Labour since 1906. They won because of the referendum precedent that Cameron had created. Eurosceptics now realised that they too, could get their referendum. Tory MP's and voters started defecting to UKIP and ahead of the 2015 General Election and Cameron was snookered by a monster of his own creation. The only way he could shore up his own party was to put an EU referendum in the 2015 manifesto.

It's been said he never wanted this referendum and he put it in the manifesto for two reasons. Firstly, if he didn't he'd lose hordes of MP's and votes to UKIP, secondly he never thought he'd get a majority, so he wouldn't have to act on it anyway. If the coalition held the Lib Dems would block any EU referendum bill so it wouldn't even see the floor of the house. If anyone remembers the run up to that election it was all about who the Lib Dems were going to prop up, was it going to be Miliband or Cameron? Maybe Labour could get a majority, but surely the incumbent Tories wouldn't increase their amount of seats and get a majority?

Naturally, that's exactly what happened. The Tories got their unexpected majority because of their manifesto pledge and the Brexit referendum that was never meant to happen, did happen.  Cameron's monster ate him in the end and since 2016 almost all of our politics has been about these two referendums. Labour standing on a 'peoples vote' manifesto, Lib Dems running on a 'Stop Brexit' manifesto and their leader losing her seat, and the famous 'Get Brexit Done' majority of 2019 etc etc. 

What we know now with hindsight, is that a referendum doesn't close down a political issue at all. All that happens is that whoever loses the referendum immediately asks for a second one, and whoever lost the second one would ask for a third one, continue ad nauseum.  It's a horrible idea. If anything all referendums do is make existing divisions and the political sphere much more toxic and polarised. Verbal and online abuse, physical attacks and even murders of MP's have re-entered our political discourse since 2011. No surprise therefore, that this generation of politicians have been scarred by referenda, and the consensus amongst both sides of the house is: 

Let's never have a referendum on anything ever again, and there won't be. This will be a much studied period in future, I'm sure there's already a Netflix documentary in production. What memories will you have? What was your favourite moment?

 

 

Some interesting stuff.

The first referendum you mention did effectively kill that issue though, even if the subsequent two didn't kill theirs.

The build up to 2015 also featured a Hell of a lot of scare stuff about Labour being beholden to the SNP if they got in.

[JS_FFC]

5 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Some interesting stuff.

The first referendum you mention did effectively kill that issue though, even if the subsequent two didn't kill theirs.

The build up to 2015 also featured a Hell of a lot of scare stuff about Labour being beholden to the SNP if they got in.

There are still electoral reform supporters out there, however the main sponsor of the project have now become experts at navigating FPTP to their advantage. 
 

The Lib Dems would be very smart to realise that having 72 MPs is useless when the governing party have a huge majority and having their fair share of MPs in a hung parliament would be better for them.

Edited Saturday at 12:46 by JS_FFC

[Cheese]

We should have more referendums.

[Monkey Tennis]

14 minutes ago, JS_FFC said:

There are still electoral reform supporters out there

Yes, but it really did go quiet for a while after the referendum on it.  In fact it was pretty quiet during the referendum.  

I know that a Labour Conference voted for PR recently, but Starmer was never enthusiastic on it.  Given the stonking majority that FPTP has just given him on 36% of 60%, I can't see his attitude changing.

I wonder though if some of the media narrative round PR might change now, due to the fact that the big losers with FPTP this time are on the right.

[Dunfermline Don]

1 hour ago, Cheese said:

We should have more referendums.

We should have a referendum to decide this IMO!

[tarapoa]

I mentioned yesterday what a load of bollox FPTP is, and someone mentioned the Alternative Referendum held early in the Cameron/Clegg era and how the notion of changing it was binned by the UK population.

It dawned on me I have absolutely zero recollection of this.

I listened to the news/radio a lot more then than now (more podcasts these days), and have a reasonable interest in politics, but just cannot recall ever being offered the chance to vote on this.

Was it really low profile?

[Fullerene]

29 minutes ago, tarapoa said:

I mentioned yesterday what a load of bollox FPTP is, and someone mentioned the Alternative Referendum held early in the Cameron/Clegg era and how the notion of changing it was binned by the UK population.

It dawned on me I have absolutely zero recollection of this.

I listened to the news/radio a lot more then than now (more podcasts these days), and have a reasonable interest in politics, but just cannot recall ever being offered the chance to vote on this.

Was it really low profile?

It was an additional question being asked during council elections or something like that.

[Fullerene]

When the Tories discovered they couldn't beat Sadiq Khan in the election for London Mayor, they changed the system to FPTP (and no second preference) without consulting anyone, no referendum or anything and nobody batted an eyelid.

They still lost.

[Cheese]

The Tories weren't interested in it at all and the LibDems are a pointless rabble of clownshoes.

[coprolite]

56 minutes ago, tarapoa said:

I mentioned yesterday what a load of bollox FPTP is, and someone mentioned the Alternative Referendum held early in the Cameron/Clegg era and how the notion of changing it was binned by the UK population.

It dawned on me I have absolutely zero recollection of this.

I listened to the news/radio a lot more then than now (more podcasts these days), and have a reasonable interest in politics, but just cannot recall ever being offered the chance to vote on this.

Was it really low profile?

I'd forgotten about it until it was mentioned on here last year. 

The way the question was asked vs the form of words on the brexit question was very significant. 

 

 

For PR apparently it would have been impossible to have a vote in principle without having the details. So it wasn't about PR as such but one particular version vs the status quo. People haven't rejected the principle of PR. They've rejected the Alternative Vote method. Probably because it's baffling. 

Brexit on the other didn't specify an alternative to the status quo so allowed for votes in favour of hardest possible brexit to be lumped in with customs union or Bino supporters. Even two options would have split the brexit vote and kept us in. Just one specific option might have stopped wooly minded fantasists voting for their hoped for version. 

[Monkey Tennis]

1 hour ago, tarapoa said:

I mentioned yesterday what a load of bollox FPTP is, and someone mentioned the Alternative Referendum held early in the Cameron/Clegg era and how the notion of changing it was binned by the UK population.

It dawned on me I have absolutely zero recollection of this.

I listened to the news/radio a lot more then than now (more podcasts these days), and have a reasonable interest in politics, but just cannot recall ever being offered the chance to vote on this.

Was it really low profile?

Yes it was very low profile.

I don't remember it well myself which seems ridiculous, because it feels like something that should have been a big deal.

As I recall, the portrayal of it was that it was some silly Lib Dem nonsense that we all had to indulge for a bit in order to allow the Tories to then resume their wrecking of the country. 

Coprolite is right too in saying that the version of PR alighted upon for the referendum was particularly unattractive.

I don't think it ever looked like there was the remotest chance of FPTP losing.  It all went away quickly and the Lib Dems had sold themselves for a generation, for nothing. 

[HibeeJibee]

It was not 'low profile' to my recollection - certainly v council polls (which were only in areas of England anyway); and question was perfectly straightforward:

At present the UK uses the "first past the post" system to elect MPs to the House of Commons.
Should the "alternative vote" system be used instead?
Yes / No

Trounced by 68% to 32%... 64% to 36% in Scotland... with only constituencies for it Edinburgh Central, Glasgow Kelvin, Oxford and a few in London.

"One Man One Vote" and "Lib Dems in power forever?!" messages cut through IIRC.


Surely "the Referenda Era" btw .
 

On 05/07/2024 at 09:53, Lex said:

There was actually three referendums

... 4?     2011 Welsh devolution referendum - Wikipedia;

or 5!     2012 English mayoral referendums - Wikipedia

Edited Saturday at 19:15 by HibeeJibee

[tamthebam]

8 hours ago, SandyCromarty said:

What is a contempory historian?

Surely you meant political commentators.

And 14 years is hardly an era.

I don't know about contemporary historians but some might say there is a contemptuous historian on here... 

[tamthebam]

6 hours ago, tarapoa said:

I mentioned yesterday what a load of bollox FPTP is, and someone mentioned the Alternative Referendum held early in the Cameron/Clegg era and how the notion of changing it was binned by the UK population.

It dawned on me I have absolutely zero recollection of this.

I listened to the news/radio a lot more then than now (more podcasts these days), and have a reasonable interest in politics, but just cannot recall ever being offered the chance to vote on this.

Was it really low profile?

There was a feeling that the form of PR being proposed wasn't very good. I voted For amending the voting system in that referendum despite the proposed system being imperfect. 

My maw who is 82 went to vote in this General Election and said it was a pity she could only vote for one candidate- I think people here have got used to the PR system being used in Scottish Parliament and Council elections. 

Labour should really revisit changing the voting system if only to ensure the Tories don't get back in with a huge majority ever again. But they won't. 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

21 minutes ago, tamthebam said:

There was a feeling that the form of PR being proposed wasn't very good. I voted For amending the voting system in that referendum despite the proposed system being imperfect. 

My maw who is 82 went to vote in this General Election and said it was a pity she could only vote for one candidate- I think people here have got used to the PR system being used in Scottish Parliament and Council elections. 

Labour should really revisit changing the voting system if only to ensure the Tories don't get back in with a huge majority ever again. But they won't. 

The neanderthals in SLab are against it - Murphy and his acolytes were the biggest opponents when I was in the Labour Party - not much has changed there.

Still the same inaccurate bullshit about "that's how the Nazis got into power"    - clearly these c***s have zero understanding of history.

Nazis don't care about electoral systems - it's always about getting a foothold then seizing power.

Edited Saturday at 21:38 by DeeTillEhDeh