Now, does that not pretty much mandate a referendum? Without a referendum in each signatory state (if that is the correct term to use) it would not be possible to claim that the treaty has the support of the citizens of member states.
The only way (that I can see) that it could be claimed that the ratification of the treaty is consonant with the will of citizens of member states without calling referendums would be to call a general election in each member state, to be fought on the basis of each party’s desire to accept or reject the treaty. This would obviously be ridiculous and would be an extremely clunky way of ascertaining the will of citizens–especially under first past the post electoral systems.
]]>Parliamentary decision-making is very far from perfect, as you point out. But are referendums really the way forward? My argument is that they make what is already broken even worse. They are the medicine that could kill the patient.
]]>This is a very tricky topic. You are completely correct in your analysis, but ONLY on the assumption that Parliament would actually vote against this constitution.
Were that the case, you are spot on. The problem is that this fundamental assumption is flawed. Parliament just simply would not be able to throw it out as it would very likely bring down the government with it.
The only way to reject the document is to invite a rebuttal of “No, what?” as you correctly say.
IMHO, this is a better outcome than “Yes” (for all sorts of reasons that are a totally separate topic).
Given this reality (as opposed to an entirely theoretical rejection by Parliament), the referendum is the best way to show the will of the people in this case.
]]>If the last election had been a referendum, the question would have been:
do you want the Labour government to continue in office, yes or no?
What would we have done with a ‘no’ vote? Referendums cannot give their results any meaning. A ‘no’ vote could be taken as a victory for anyone non-Labour, from the Tories through to the Lib Dems, Respect or the BNP. In effect, the result would be useless, as it would give no signal of where the country wanted to head. The same with the EU referendum.
]]>(And it IS ‘referendums’, not ‘referenda’, before we start on that one.)
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