Referendum Quotes

Future Politics Effecting change in national politics was mostly a matter of making better use of online forums, encouraging voters to press forth with hard questions, providing statistics and solutions. Direct-to-voter referendums became an increasingly common way of effecting national policy. If Congress were deadlocked over a particular issue, the voters would be asked to make up their minds for them in the form of an online referendum.

We, gays, can get married in Canada. We let heterosexuals too, but that was a huge thing, we had to have a referendum and a vote, it’s crazy! But then we were like, if they want to get married.. that’s cool. That’s gonna destroy their relationships, but.. Heterosexuals deserve the same rights as homosexuals.

I have been told by the third grade teacher that my daughter Poppet is reading at middle school level. Yet if I leave Poppet a note in block letters telling her to feed the dogs I will come home to find the dogs have been ... given a swim in the above-ground pool, dressed in tutus, provided with hair weaves. What I will not find is that the dogs have been fed. 'I thought you wanted me to free the dogs,' says Poppet whose school district is not spending quite what D.C.'s is, thanks to voter rejection of the last school bond referendum.

Younger men had to make everything mean something, had to turn every choice and preference into a referendum on their personality.

Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality.

It was repealed by voter referendum, and 40 percent of the people voted to keep the law banning interracial marriages

You might one day be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty. Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them. Even the history of lapel pins is far from innocent. In Nazi Germany in 1933, people wore lapel pins that said "Yes" during the elections and referendum that confirmed the one-party state. In Austria in 1938, people who had not previously been Nazis began to wear swastika pins. What might seem like a gesture of pride can be a source of exclusion. In the Europe of the 1930s and '40s, some people chose to wear swastikas, and then others had to wear yellow stars.

If the surprise outcome of the recent UK referendum - on whether to leave or remain in the European Union - teaches us anything, it is that supposedly worthy displays of democracy in action can actually do more harm than good. Witness a nation now more divided; an intergenerational schism in the making; both a governing and opposition party torn to shreds from the inside; infinitely more complex issues raised than satisfactory solutions provided. It begs the question 'Was it really all worth it' ?

But if one's dreams having to come true was the only referendum on whether they were beautiful, or worth dreaming, well then, no one would wish for anything. And that would be so much sadder.

In the end, in the referendum people chose the years when they were young....There was a certain injustice in that - choosing the time the next generation would live in. As happens in all elections, actually.

By the time this book is published, I am confident that there will have been a second referendum. After all, only 1,269,501 more people voted to Leave than to Remain. No serious mathematician would consider that any kind of ‘majority’.

A final irony has to do with the idea of political responsibility. Christians are urged to vote and become involved in politics as an expression of their civic duty and public responsibility. This is a credible argument and good advice up to a point. Yet in our day, given the size of the state and the expectations that people place on it to solve so many problems, politics can also be a way of saying, in effect, that the problems should be solved by others besides myself and by institutions other than the church. It is, after all, much easier to vote for a politician who champions child welfare than to adopt a baby born in poverty, to vote for a referendum that would expand health care benefits for seniors than to care for an elderly and infirmed parent, and to rally for racial harmony than to get to know someone of a different race than yours. True responsibility invariably costs. Political participation, then, can and often does amount to an avoidance of responsibility.

Thus, it is a political axiom that power follows property. But it is now a historical fact that the means of production are fast becoming the monopolistic property of Big Business and Big Government. Therefore, if you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible. Or take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you want to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society's merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government.

It is a profound political reality that Christ now occupies the supreme seat of cosmic authority. The kings of this world and all secular governments may ignore this reality, but they cannot undo it. The universe is no democracy. It is a monarchy. God himself has appointed his beloved Son as the preeminent King. Jesus does not rule by referendum, but by divine right. In the future every knee will bow before him, either willingly or unwillingly. Those who refuse to do so will have their knees broken with a rod of iron.

All Socialism is Democratic Socialism. Socialist nations take away civil liberties by referendum.

It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people.

In 2012, Switzerland held a referendum on the federal initiative “six weeks of vacation for everyone”. Two-thirds of the voters said “no”.

You might object that people were asked ‘What do you think?’ rather than ‘What do you feel?’, but this is a common misperception. Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality. If democracy were a matter of rational decision-making, there would be absolutely no reason to give all people equal voting rights – or perhaps any voting rights. There is ample evidence that some people are far more knowledgeable and rational than others, certainly when it comes to specific economic and political questions.

Alabama, the last state to do so, did not throw out its law against intermarriage until the year 2000. Even then, 40 percent of the electorate in that referendum voted in favor of keeping the marriage ban on the books.

Democracy is not a form of government. It is a tool of government. Case in point, Stalinist USSR was a "democracy".

Turtles don’t have nations. Or flags. Or strategic nuclear weapons. They don’t have terrorism or referendums or trade wars with China. They don’t have Spotify playlists for their workouts. They don’t have books on the decline and fall of turtle empires. They don’t have internet shopping or self-service checkouts. Other animals don’t have progress, they say. But the human mind itself doesn’t progress. We stay the same glorified chimpanzees, just with ever bigger weapons. We have the knowledge to realise we are just a mass of quanta and particles, like everything else is, and yet we keep trying to separate ourselves from the universe we live in, to give ourselves a meaning above that of a tree or a rock or a cat or a turtle.

Important decisions that will affect a nation’s fate or humanity’s fate cannot be left to the referendums! Because such decisions require good knowledge of history; they require a sound reason and a powerful logic and masses often do not have such characteristics!

Hawai'i became only the second sovereign nation to join the United States. But unlike the Republic of Texas, where a public referendum was held, no one asked the thirty-one thousand native Hawaiians whether they wished to give up their country. Twenty-nine thousand of them signed a petition of protest, which was submitted to Congress and politely ignored.

One of the unwritten rules of a democracy is that referendums can be overturned if a sufficient number of rich celebrities demand it.

But anyone of us who starts writing and treats what comes out as ‘oop, here come the results of the referendum on whether I’m a complete piece of shit’ is going to have a bad time.

South Carolina did not overturn its ban on interracial marriage until 1998, and even then 38 percent of voters opposed the referendum.

But now, except for a county in Alabama where the citizens voted no on a referendum, I believe the poor goy cannot elude the bagel anywhere in America.

Lucy understood it now. The referendum was giving groups of people who didn’t like each other, or at least failed to comprehend each other, an opportunity to fight.

Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality

In 1898, while at war with Spain in the Pacific, the United States Congress decided Hawai'i would be a strategic asset and issued a joint resolution annexing the islands, which President McKinley signed into law. Hawai'i became only the second sovereign nation to join the United States. But unlike the Republic of Texas, where a public referendum was held, no one asked the thirty-one thousand native Hawaiians whether they wished to give up their country. Twenty-nine thousand of them signed a petition of protest, which was submitted to Congress and politely ignored.

Because these were also rules: sound like you know more than you can say; act like you’ll do more than you intend. And when campaigning, lie your head off – the referendum’s other great legacy.

You know," he added reflectively, "we've got a much easier job now than we should have had fifty years ago. If we'd had to modernise a country then it would have meant constitutional monarchy, bicameral legislature, proportional representation, women's suffrage, independent judicature, freedom of the press, referendums . . ." "What is all that?" asked the Emperor. "Just a few ideas that have ceased to be modern.

For many Europeans and Americans, events in the 2010s—the rise of antidemocratic politics, the Russian turn against Europe and invasion of Ukraine, the Brexit referendum, the Trump election—came as a surprise.

Watching Nigel Farage rudely insult fellow members of the European Parliament today - the first occasion they were all assembled in Brussels since the tragic 'Brexit' referendum result - made me feel utterly ashamed to be British. Let it be known that Nigel Farage is the very epitomy of a narrow-minded 'Little Englander' who does not represent the vast majority of outward-looking people from Great Britain. His shameful and unofficial campaign to convince the British electorate to leave the European Union was peppered with lies and deceit. His populist and xenophobic rhetoric has also subsequently contributed to ugly scenes of racial abuse and hate crime directed at Eastern European nationals and ethnic minorities living and working in the UK, in the wake of the referendum result. Fellow Europeans, world citizens, let this be a wake-up call. Deny your own domestic peddlers of populism and nationalism the opportunity to follow the example of this unelected, disrespected maverick, intent on making a name for himself, for he has unwittingly unleashed a wrecking ball on Britain's future economic prosperity, cultural diversity and social harmony.

LENIN = "Revolutionary Social Democracy" American Socialists = "Democratic Socialism". What is the difference? The USSR held democratic referendums too; all of which increased the power of the central planners and reduced the individual to nothingness.

Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality. If democracy were a matter of rational decision-making, there would be absolutely no reason to give all people equal voting rights – or perhaps any voting rights at all.

Quanto ai cristiani, sarebbe stato proprio lo scossone della sconfitta nel referendum sul divorzio a costituire il principio del loro risveglio; più tardi Iddio avrebbe fatto alla sua chiesa l'immenso dono del papa polacco: un papa di nuovo 'pietra' e 'roccia' finalmente

The army could not have been happier. The result of the referendum was a repeated slap to the faces of those liberal powers who thought they could change the country. The army never wanted change, not with so many interests, businesses, and powerful people involved. It was a system sixty years in the making. Removing Mubarak didn’t even touch the deep state that he was a disposable face of. The Muslim Brotherhood were never serious about the revolution either. They used it simply to come into power. They had no problem with the old regime as long as they were on top of it. One

On the morning after that referendum, Friday June 24, 2016, a group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs met in the Boothroyd Room in Portcullis House. Some were simply jubilant. Some were struggling to assess what it meant. Everyone seemed to assume that the argument was over. So I stood up and gave a warning.

It was awful luck that my pot-hobbled spermatozoa had managed to rally themselves for one last mad fallopian adventure, and that five years’ worth of love, good companionship, and the exhilaration of sneaking around should come in the end to a referendum on my fitness as a father, but there it was.

We are unlikely to face a robot rebellion in the coming decades, but we might have to deal with hordes of bots that know how to press our emotional buttons better than our mother does and that use this uncanny ability to try to sell us something—be it a car, a politician, or an entire ideology. The bots could identify our deepest fears, hatreds, and cravings and use these inner leverages against us. We have already been given a foretaste of this in recent elections and referendums across the world, when hackers learned how to manipulate individual voters by analyzing data about them and exploiting their existing prejudices.

Food wasn’t there to satiate hunger, to fuel activity, or to enjoy. Instead, it became emotionally and morally laden. A slice of cheddar cheese became a referendum on my willpower, work ethic, character. A bite of ice cream was a moment of weakness. One scoop was cause for concern; two scoops called for an intervention.

That November, German authorities held parliamentary elections (without opposition) and a referendum (on an issue where the “correct” answer was known) to confirm the new order. Some German Jews voted as the Nazi leaders wanted them to in the hope that this gesture of loyalty would bind the new system to them. That was a vain hope.

Australia has nothing to lose and a great deal to gain by voting ‘Yes’ in the Voice referendum. One key reason why Indigenous policy has failed so fundamentally at times is because it has been written and implemented from Canberra by non-Indigenous politicians and bureaucrats, without listening to the people they’re supposed to be helping.

You might one day be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty. Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them. Even the history of lapel pins is far from innocent. In Nazi Germany in 1933, people wore lapel pins that said “Yes” during the elections and referendum that confirmed the one-party state.

Ukippers have spent decades convinced that the anger and dissatisfaction they felt, with which their lives were infused, was caused by one thing. And now the thing has gone. What if they feel the same? A crushing realisation for them, but also for the rest of us. Their misdirected zeal could easily have tipped the balance in the referendum. So excuse the compl(rem)aining,

Built up by the middle classes to hold their own against royalty, sanctioning, and, at the same time strengthening, their sway over the workers, parliamentary rule is pre-eminently a middle-class rule. The upholders of this system have never seriously maintained that a parliament or a municipal council represent a nation or a city. The most intelligent among them know that this is impossible. The middle classes have simply used the parliamentary system to raise a protecting barrier against the pretensions of royalty, without giving the people liberty. But gradually, as the people become conscious of their real interests, and the variety of their interests is growing, the system can no longer work. Therefore democrats of all countries vainly imagine various palliatives. The Referendum is tried and found to be a failure; proportional representation is spoken of, the representation of minorities, and other parliamentary Utopias. In a word, they strive to find what is not to be found, and after each new experiment they are bound to recognize that it was a failure; so that confidence in Representative Government vanishes more and more.

Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality. If democracy were a matter of rational decision-making, there would be absolutely no reason to give all people equal voting rights – or perhaps any voting rights. There is ample evidence that some people are far more knowledgeable and rational than others, certainly when it comes to specific economic and political questions.

Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality. If democracy were a matter of rational decision-making, there would be absolutely no reason to give all people equal voting rights—or perhaps any voting rights at all. There is ample evidence that some people are far more knowledgeable and rational than others, certainly when it comes to specific economic and political questions.

Europe’s reaction to the UK’s referendum was dominated by the same harsh response that greeted Greece’s June 2015 ballot-box rejection of its bailout package. Herman Van Rompuy, former European Council1 president, expressed a widespread feeling when he said that Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum “was the worst policy decision in decades.” In so saying, he revealed a deep antipathy toward democratic accountability.

In the wake of the Brexit vote, eminent biologist Richard Dawkins protested that the vast majority of the British public – including himself – should never have been asked to vote in the referendum, because they lacked the necessary background in economics and political science. ‘You might as well call a nationwide plebiscite to decide whether Einstein got his algebra right, or let passengers vote on which runway the pilot should land.’3

The euro and the ECB were designed in a way that blocks government money creation for any purpose other than to support the banks and bondholders. Their monetary and fiscal straitjacket obliges the eurozone economies to rely on bank creation of credit and debt. The financial sector takes over the role of economic planner, putting its technicians in charge of monetary and fiscal policy without democratic voice or referendums over debt and tax policies.

He accused republicans in his own party of conducting a “proxy war” against Howard. He threw into the mix Churchill, Pétain, Charles de Gaulle, the failings of the Weimar republic and the rise of Hitler. In the Sydney Morning Herald at that time I set him some homework:   Clearly explain how an Australian head of state with powers as proposed in the referendum could bring to office in Canberra a local equivalent of the most vicious dictator of the century?   He never justified the Hitler slur to anyone.

The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do. Revolutionaries sometimes do intend to destroy institutions all at once. This was the approach of the Russian Bolsheviks. Sometimes institutions are deprived of vitality and function, turned into a simulacrum of what they once were, so that they gird the new order rather than resisting it. This is what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung. It took less than a year for the new Nazi order to consolidate. By the end of 1933, Germany had become a one-party state in which all major institutions had been humbled. That November, German authorities held parliamentary elections (without opposition) and a referendum (on an issue where the “correct” answer was known) to confirm the new order. Some German Jews voted as the Nazi leaders wanted them to in the hope that this gesture of loyalty would bind the new system to them. That was a vain hope.

In late 1998, the inhabitants were invited to become Australia’s seventh state and roundly rejected the notion in a referendum. It appears they quite like being outsiders. In consequence, an area of 523,000 square miles, or about one-fifth of the country, is in Australia but not entirely of it. This throws up some interesting anomalies. All Australians are required by law to vote in federal elections, including residents of the Northern Territory. However, since the Northern Territory is not a state, it has no seats in Parliament. So the Territorians elect representatives who go to Canberra and attend sessions of Parliament (at least that’s what they say in their letters home) but don’t actually vote or take part or have any consequence at all. Even more interestingly, during national referendums the citizens of the Northern Territory are also required to vote, but the votes don’t actually count towards anything. They’re just put in a drawer or something. Seems a little odd to me, but then, as I say, the people seem content with the arrangement. Personally,

Support for getting rid of the Queen was at 57 per cent but the nation was divided on the kind of republic that should replace her, a division that proved the death of the proposal. This was minority politics – the power of the passionate minority to hold the line – played at a level of genius by Howard and with inexhaustible passion by his lieutenant Tony Abbott. The republicans have never recovered. Abbott can claim a good measure of credit not only for wrecking the republican hopes in the 1999 referendum, but also for keeping them off the agenda ever since.

However, for better or worse, elections and referendums are not about what we think. They are about what we feel. And when it comes to feelings, Einstein and Dawkins are no better than anyone else. Democracy assumes that human feelings reflect a mysterious and profound “free will,” that this “free will” is the ultimate source of authority, and that while some people are more intelligent than others, all humans are equally free. Like Einstein and Dawkins, an illiterate maid also has free will, and therefore on election day her feelings—represented by her vote—count just as much as anybody else’s. Feelings guide not just voters but their leaders as well. In the 2016 Brexit referendum the Leave campaign was headed by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. After David Cameron resigned, Gove initially supported Johnson for the premiership, but at the very last minute Gove declared Johnson unfit for the position and announced his own intention to run for it. Gove’s action, which destroyed Johnson’s chances, was described as a Machiavellian political assassination.4 But Gove defended his conduct by appealing to his feelings, explaining, “In every step in my political life I have asked myself one question: ‘What is the right

Focus on What You Want to Say, Not on What You Think the Audience Is Thinking Many people pay too much attention to how others perceive them, and this puts too much power in the hands of the listener and not enough in the head of the speaker. There is not enough bandwidth in your brain for you to concentrate simultaneously on your point, your delivery, and what you think your listener might be thinking based on his or her facial expressions. Guessing the engagement level of your audience will create excess anxiety that speeds up your pace. In reality, you can never know what’s going on in someone else’s head. Facial expressions aren’t a referendum on your performance.

Among them was a middle-aged man supported by two broken sticks. His legs were bent permanently beneath him by accident or disease, and it took him five minutes to cross the room, collect his ballot and shuffle into the booth in front of me. It was painful to watch; as he edged forward I became aware that my heart was racing. Finally - finally - the referendum really was under way. What would happen next? Could Eurico and Basilio have more support than I had assumed? How could the violence of the last seven months fail to have an effect? I should have looked away, but I watched, and saw the man on sticks painstakingly mark his cross in the lower of the two boxes, the one rejecting continuing association with Indonesia. Then he folded the paper, turned his legs around, and began walking slowly towards the ballot box.

Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality. If democracy were a matter of rational decision- making, there would be absolutely no reason to give all people equal voting rights - or perhaps any voting rights. There is ample evidence that some people are far more knowledgeable and rational than others, certainly when it comes to specific economic and political questions. In the wake of the Brexit vote, eminent biologist Richard Dawkins protested that the vast majority of the British public - including himself - should never have been asked to vote in the referendum, because they lacked the necessary background in economics and political science. 'You might as well call a nationwide plebiscite to decide whether Einstein got his algebra right, or let passengers vote on which runway the pilot should land.' (page 36)

Peace cannot require Palestinians to acquiesce to the denial of what was done to them. Neither can it require Israeli Jews to view their own presence in Palestine as illegitimate or to change their belief in their right to live there because of ancient historical and spiritual ties. Peace, rather, must be based on how we act toward each other now. It is unacceptable for a Palestinian to draw on his history of oppression and suffering to justify harming innocent Israeli civilians. It is equally unacceptable for an Israeli to invoke his belief in an ancient covenant between God and Abraham to justify bulldozing the home and seizing the land of a Palestinian farmer. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which proposes a political framework for a resolution to the conflict in Ireland, and which was overwhelmingly endorsed in referendums, sets out two principles from which Palestinians and Israelis could learn. First “[i]t is recognized that victims have a right to remember as well as to contribute to a changed society.” Second, whatever political arrangements are freely and democratically chosen for the governance of Northern Ireland, the power of the government “shall be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions and shall be founded on the principles of full respect for, and equality of civil, political, social, and cultural rights, of freedom from discrimination for all citizens, and of parity of esteem and of just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos, and aspirations of both communities.” Northern Ireland is still a long way from achieving this ideal, but life has vastly improved since the worst days of “the Troubles” and it is a paradise on earth compared to Palestine/Israel.

You might object that people were asked ‘What do you think?' rather than 'What do you feel?', but this is a common misperception. Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality. If democracy were a matter of rational decision- making, there would be absolutely no reason to give all people equal voting rights - or perhaps any voting rights. There is ample evidence that some people are far more knowledgeable and rational than others, certainly when it comes to specific economic and political questions. In the wake of the Brexit vote, eminent biologist Richard Dawkins protested that the vast majority of the British public - including himself - should never have been asked to vote in the referendum, because they lacked the necessary background in economics and political science. 'You might as well call a nationwide plebiscite to decide whether Einstein got his algebra right, or let passengers vote on which runway the pilot should land.' (page 36)

You might object that people were asked ‘What do you think?' rather than 'What do you feel?', but this is a common misperception. Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality. If democracy were a matter of rational decision- making, there would be absolutely no reason to give all people equal voting rights - or perhaps any voting rights. There is ample evidence that some people are far more knowledgeable and rational than others, certainly when it comes to specific economic and political questions.2 In the wake of the Brexit vote, eminent biologist Richard Dawkins protested that the vast majority of the British public - including himself - should never have been asked to vote in the referendum, because they lacked the necessary background in economics and political science. 'You might as well call a nationwide plebiscite to decide whether Einstein got his algebra right, or let passengers vote on which runway the pilot should land.' (page 36)

The danger is that if we invest too much in developing AI and too little in developing human consciousness, the very sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers might only serve to empower the natural stupidity of humans. We are unlikely to face a robot rebellion in the coming decades, but we might have to deal with hordes of bots that know how to press our emotional buttons better than our mother does and that use this uncanny ability to try to sell us something—be it a car, a politician, or an entire ideology. The bots could identify our deepest fears, hatreds, and cravings and use these inner leverages against us. We have already been given a foretaste of this in recent elections and referendums across the world, when hackers learned how to manipulate individual voters by analyzing data about them and exploiting their existing prejudices.33 While science fiction thrillers are drawn to dramatic apocalypses of fire and smoke, in reality we might be facing a banal apocalypse by clicking.

The institutions that American’s founders created to safe guard liberal democratic government cannot survive when half the country does not believe in the core principles that undergrid the American system of government. The presidential election of 2024, therefore, will not be the usual contest between Republicans and Democrats. It is a referendum on whether the liberal democracy born out of the Revolution should continue. Today, tens of millions of Americans have risen in rebellion against that system. They have embraced Donald Trump as their leader because they believe he can deliver them from what they regard as the liberal oppression of American politics and society. If he wins, they will support whatever he does, including violating the Constitution to go after his enemies and political opponents, which he has promised to do. If he loses, they will reject the results and refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of of the federal government, just as the South did in 1860. Either way, the American liberal political and social order will fracture, perhaps irrecoverably. (Page 3)

Extract from 'Quixotic Ambitions': The crowd stared at Katy expectantly. She looked at them - old women in black, exhausted young women with pasty-faced children, youths in jeans and leather blousons chewing gum. She tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, she blurted out her short speech, thanking the people of Shkrapova for their welcome and promising that if she won the referendum she would work for the good of Maloslavia. There was some half-hearted applause and an old lady hobbled up to her, knelt down with difficulty, and kissed the hem of her skirt. She looked at Katy with tears rolling down her face and gabbled something excitedly. Dimitar translated: ‘She says that she remembers the reign of your grandfather and that God has sent you to Maloslavia.’ Katy was embarrassed but she smiled at the woman and helped her to her feet. At this moment the People’s Struggle Pioneers appeared on the scene, waving their banners and shouting ‘Doloy Manaheeyoo! Popnikov President!’ Police had been stationed at strategic points and quickly dispersed the demonstrators without any display of violence, but the angry cries of ‘Down with the monarchy!’ had a depressing effect on the entertainment that had been planned; only a few people remained to watch it. A group of children aged between ten and twelve ran into the square and performed a series of dances accompanied by an accordian. They stamped their feet and clapped their hands frequently and occasionally collided with one another when they forgot their next move. The girls wore embroidered blouses, stiffly pleated skirts and scarlet boots and the boys were in baggy linen shirts and trousers, the legs of which were bound with leather thongs. Their enthusiasm compensated for their mistakes and they were loudly applauded. The male voice choir which followed consisted of twelve young men who sang complicated polyphonic melodies with a high, curiously nasal tenor line accompanied by an unusually deep droning bass. Some of their songs were the cries of despair of a people who had suffered under Turkish occupation; others were lively dance tunes for feast days and festivals. They were definitely an acquired taste and Katy, who was beginning to feel hungry, longed for them to come to an end. At last, at two o’clock, the performance finished and trestle tables were set up in the square. Dishes of various salads, hors-d’oeuvres and oriental pastries appeared, along with casks of beer and bottles of the local red wine. The people who had disappeared during the brief demonstration came back and started piling food on to paper plates. A few of the People’s Struggle Pioneers also showed up again and mingled with the crowd, greedily eating anything that took their fancy.

Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox said in 2016, in the run-up to the EU referendum, that ‘the United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its twentieth-century history.’ Funny, because Britain is in fact one of the few countries in the world that literally did bury a good portion of its twentieth-century history. During the period of decolonisation, the British state embarked upon a systematic process of destroying the evidence of its crimes. Codenamed ‘Operation Legacy’, the state intelligence agencies and the Foreign Office conspired to literally burn, bury at sea or hide vast amounts of documents containing potentially sensitive details of things done in the colonies under British rule.25 Anything that might embarrass the government, that would show religious or racial intolerance or be used ‘unethically’ by a post-independence government was ordered destroyed or hidden. The Foreign Office were forced to admit in court about having hidden documents, then were unforthcoming about the scale of what was hidden, to the point that you’d be a fool to trust anything that is now said. But from what we know, hundreds of thousands of pages of documents were destroyed and over a million hidden, not just starting in the colonial period but dating all the way back to 1662. This operation was only exposed to the public in 2011 as part of a court case between the survivors of British concentration camps in Kenya and the government.

Furthermore, it is not the people or the citizens who decide on what to vote, on which political program, at what time, and so on. It is the oligarchs and the oligarchic system that decide on this and that submit their choice to the vote of the electorate (in certain very specific cases). One could legitimately wonder, for instance, why there are not more referendums, and in particular referendums of popular initiative, in “democracy.” Cornelius Castoriadis perfectly described this state of affairs when he wrote: “The election is rigged, not because the ballot boxes are being stuffed, but because the options are determined in advance. They are told, ‘vote for or against the Maastricht Treaty,’ for example. But who made the Maastricht Treaty? It isn’t us.” It would thus be naive to believe that elections reflect public opinion or even the preferences of the electorate. For these oligarchic principles dominate our societies to such an extent that the nature of the choice is decided in advance. In the case of elections, it is the powerful media apparatus—financed in the United States by private interests, big business, and the bureaucratic machinery of party politics—that presents to the electorate the choices to be made, the viable candidates, the major themes to be debated, the range of possible positions, the questions to be raised and pondered, the statistical tendencies of “public opinion,” the viewpoint of experts, and the positions taken by the most prominent politicians. What we call political debate and public space (which is properly speaking a space of publicity) are formatted to such an extent that we are encouraged to make binary choices without ever asking ourselves genuine questions: we must be either for or against a particular political star, a specific publicity campaign, such or such “societal problem.” “One of the many reasons why it is laughable to speak of ‘democracy’ in Western societies today,” asserts Castoriadis, “is because the ‘public’ sphere is in fact private—be it in France, the United States, or England.”The market of ideas is saturated, and the political consumer is asked to passively choose a product that is already on the shelves. This is despite the fact that the contents of the products are often more or less identical, conjuring up in many ways the difference that exists between a brand-name product on the right, with the shiny packaging of the tried-and-true, and a generic product on the left, that aspires to be more amenable to the people. “Free elections do not necessarily express ‘the will of the people,’ ” Erich Fromm judiciously wrote. “If a highly advertised brand of toothpaste is used by the majority of the people because of some fantastic claims it makes in its propaganda, nobody with any sense would say that people have ‘made a decision’ in favor of the toothpaste. All that could be claimed is that the propaganda was sufficiently effective to coax millions of people into believing its claims.

Com’è il morale? In generale”. “Il morale è... eccellente,” disse Nigel, deglutendo con forza. “È un periodo interessantissimo, naturalmente. La Gran Bretagna è a un punto di svolta e noi siamo proprio nell’epicentro... nell’epicentro del turbine che sta... trasfigurando la realtà politica, indirizzandola verso uno sviluppo... decisamente sismico in cui... le placche tettoniche della nostra storia nazionale si stanno spostando, con il risultato di provocare una trasformazione... e io, in qualità di testimone...” All’improvviso si interruppe. Il suo sguardo si perse nel vuoto. Le spalle si afflosciarono. Per un minuto o due rimase a fissare la superficie schiumosa del suo caffè. Alla fine tornò ad alzare gli occhi e le sue successive parole furono le più sincere che Douglas avesse mai sentito uscire dalle sue labbra. “Siamo fottuti.” “Prego?” “Siamo completamente e irrimediabilmente fottuti. È un caos. Corriamo di qua e di là come polli decapitati. Nessuno ha la più pallida idea di quello che sta facendo. Siamo... siamo fottuti.” Rapidamente Doug tirò fuori il cellulare e cominciò a registrare. “È ufficiale?” chiese. “Che importa? Siamo fottuti, perciò che senso ha sapere se è ufficiale?” “Che tipo di caos? Chi corre di qua e di là come un pollo decapitato?” “Tutti. Nessuno escluso. Chi si aspettava un esito simile? Nessuno era pronto. Nessuno sa cosa sia la Brexit. Nessuno sa come attuarla. Un anno e mezzo fa tutti la chiamavano Brixit. Nessuno sa cosa voglia dire Brexit.” “Pensavo che Brexit significasse Brexit.” “Divertente. E come dovrebbe essere questa Brexit?” “Una Brexit rossa, bianca e blu, come dice la May,” citò Doug e di nuovo si dispiacque per Nigel, così infelice. “Ma di sicuro ci saranno frotte di consiglieri... esperti?...” “Esperti?” disse Nigel con amarezza. “Non crediamo più negli esperti. La catena di comando è semplicissima. Ciascuno riceve le sue direttive da Theresa, e Theresa le riceve dal ‘Daily Mail’. E anche da un paio di think tank così fanatici del libero scambio che non li lasceresti...” “Questi think tank...” disse Doug incuriosito. “Non mi dirai che una di loro è l’Imperium Foundation, vero?” “Mio Dio,” disse Nigel, la testa tra le mani. “Sono dappertutto... dappertutto. Sempre pronti a indire riunioni. A bombardarci di tabelle. Dimenticati della volontà del popolo. Sono questi i pazzi che hanno preso il potere.” “Cameron avrebbe saputo fronteggiarli meglio, secondo te?” “Cameron?” disse Nigel con una smorfia. “Un fesso di prima categoria! Un moccioso! Un coglione fatto e finito. Se ne sta nel suo capanno del cazzo a scrivere le sue memorie. Guarda che disastro si è lasciato alle spalle. Tutti pronti a pugnalarsi alle spalle. Gli stranieri vengono insultati per la strada. Aggrediti sull’autobus. Invitati a tornarsene da dove sono venuti. Se uno non riga dritto, ecco che subito diventa un traditore e un nemico del popolo. Cameron ha demolito questo paese, Doug. L’ha demolito ed è scappato.

Frustrato, Doug tentò un’altra strada. “Ascolta, supponiamo che la maggioranza voti per la Brexit e noi...” “Scusami se ti interrompo,” disse Nigel. “Supponiamo che la maggioranza voti per cosa?” “Brexit.” Nigel lo guardò sbalordito. “Come mai salti fuori con questa parola?” “Non è così che la chiamano tutti?” “Credevo che si dicesse Brixit.” “Cosa? Brixit?” “Noi diciamo così.” “Noi... chi?” “Dave e tutto il gruppo.” “Tutti dicono Brexit. Da dove viene Brixit?” “Non lo so. Pensavo che si dicesse così.” Di nuovo prese un appunto sul taccuino. “Brexit? Sei sicuro?” “Sicurissimo. È una parola composta. British exit.” “British exit... Allora dovrebbe essere Brixit?” “Be’, i greci l’hanno chiamata Grexit.” “I greci? Non sono usciti dall’Unione europea.” “No, ma hanno valutato la possibilità di farlo.” “Noi non siamo i greci. Dovremmo avere una parola che sia unicamente nostra?” “Ce l’abbiamo. Brexit.” “Ma noi continuiamo a dire Brixit.” Scuotendo la testa, Nigel continuò a scrivere. “Sarà una notizia bomba nel prossimo consiglio dei ministri. Spero che non tocchi a me comunicarlo.” “A che ti serve avere una definizione se sei sicuro che la cosa non succederà?” gli domandò Doug. Nigel sorrise felice. “Naturale... hai ragione da vendere. Non succederà e quindi non ci serve definirla.” “Ecco, vedi.” “Dopotutto, tra un anno, nessuno si ricorderà più di questa stupida faccenda.” “Esattamente.” “Nessuno si ricorderà che qualcuno voleva la Brixit.” “Proprio così. Però, sai, alcuni di loro...” Si chiese come dovesse metterla. “Sono personaggi da prendere sul serio, no? Boris Johnson, per esempio. Un vero peso massimo.” “Non infierire sul suo aspetto fisico,” disse Nigel. “Anche se Dave è molto arrabbiato con lui.” “Non si aspettava che si pronunciasse a favore dell’uscita?” “No, non se l’aspettava.” “Gira voce che la sera prima che il ‘Telegraph’ andasse in stampa, Boris avesse preparato due articoli – uno in cui sosteneva l’uscita e l’altro in cui si dichiarava favorevole a restare nell’Unione europea.” “Non ci credo per niente,” disse Nigel. “Boris avrebbe preparato tre articoli: uno per uscire, l’altro per restare e il terzo perché non riusciva a decidere. Gli piace essere sempre pronto.”“E poi c’è Michael Gove. Un altro attaccante che si è pronunciato a favore dell’uscita.” “Lo so. Dave è arrabbiatissimo con Michael. Per fortuna rimangono molti conservatori leali e di buon senso che apprezzano i benefici di restare membri della UE. Credo che tu vada a letto con una di loro. Ma prova a immaginare cosa pensa Dave di Michael e di alcuni altri. Insomma, è andato a Bruxelles, è tornato con un accordo assai vantaggioso, e questi non sono ancora contenti.” “Semplice: a molti non va giù la UE,” disse Doug. “Pensano che non sia democratica.” “Sì, ma uscirne sarebbe un male per l’economia.” “Pensano che la Germania comandi a bacchetta su tutti.” “Sì, ma uscirne sarebbe un male per l’economia.” “Pensano che dalla Polonia e dalla Romania siano arrivati troppi immigrati che spingono i salari al ribasso.” “Sì, ma uscirne sarebbe un male per l’economia.” “D’accordo,” disse Doug. “Credo di avere appena capito quali saranno i tre punti strategici della campagna di Dave.” Adesso era il suo turno di prendere appunti. “E come la mettiamo con Jeremy Corbyn?” Nigel inspirò con un lungo sibilo e sobbalzò visibilmente. “Jeremy Corbyn?” “Se il quadro è questo, lui dove si colloca?” “Preferisco non parlarne.” “Perché no?” “Perché no? Perché è un marxista. Marxista, leninista, trotzkista, comunista. Maoista, bolscevico, anarchico, di sinistra. Un socialista fondamentalista, anticapitalista, antimonarchico, pro-terrorismo.” “Ma è anche uno che vuole rimanere nella UE.” “Davvero?” “Così dice.” “Allora, naturalmente, saremo felici di averlo a bordo. Ma non credo che Dave sarebbe pronto a condividere alcunché sul piano politico.” “Non sarà necessario. È Jeremy il primo a respingere un accordo di questo tipo.” “Bene.

Il referendum annessionistico non rifletteva realmente le vere aspirazione del popolo siciliano.

„»Ja, ja. Ein Referendum. Wenn das Volk ›ja‹ sagt, ist alles klar. Sagt es aber ›nein‹, hat es nur schlecht nachgedacht. Und soll sich die Sache bitte schön noch mal überlegen.«

What was also clear, if you look at the past, is that people here, as in the rest of Ukraine, are always “for” something, because they want their future to be better than their past. In recent history too, supporters of one side or another always point to a referendum in which people have voted for something they approved of, and then ignore the ones where they have voted for something they do not want.

A referendum magnifies the worst aspects of an already imperfect system—democracy—channeling a dazzlingly wide variety of issues through a very narrow gate. It has

To this day, the story of Darien is one that divides Scotland. During the 2014 referendum on independence, it became a metaphor for both sides. For the nationalists, a parable of how England had always sought to sabotage and oppress Scottish hopes; for the unionists, a lesson in the dangers of abandoning stability in favour of unrealistic ambitions. As a tale, it lends itself to metaphor. I mean, it’s the story of a country turning away from a political union with its closest geographical trading partners in favour of a fantasy vision of unfettered global influence promoted by free-trade zealots with dreams of empire, who wrapped their vague plans in the rhetoric of aggrieved patriotism while consistently ignoring expert warnings about the practical reality of the situation. Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything that could be a metaphor for right now.

Poland was the first country to give Ukraine diplomatic recognition, the day after the independence referendum of 1 December 1991.

The great Marxist historian of England, E. P. Thompson, writing in the Sunday Times in the run-up to the 1975 referendum, gave this disgust an explicitly anti-Common Market turn, brilliantly fusing English puritanism with anti-capitalist politics: ‘It is about the belly. A market is about consumption. The Common Market is conceived of as a distended stomach: a large organ with various traps, digestive chambers and fiscal acids, assimilating a rich diet of consumer goods… This Eurostomach is the logical extension of the existing eating-out habits of Oxford and North London.’8

Returning from a summit in Paris three months after the referendum, Wilson ‘proudly announced that he has saved Britain from the horrors of the “Euroloaf” and “Eurobeer”. “An imperial pint is good enough for me and for the British people, and we want it to stay that way.”’11 Wilson undoubtedly knew that this was nonsense, but he also knew, as Johnson would discover, that it was the kind of nonsense that sold well. The British had an insatiable appetite for every kind of Euromenace to their food and drink.

Asked on the eve of the referendum how EU membership made them feel, voters were given a list of eight words, four positive (happy, hopeful, confident, proud) and four negative (angry, uneasy, disgusted, afraid) and invited to choose up to four of them. Feelings of ‘unease’ dominated, with 44 per cent selecting this word, as against just 26 per cent who went for the most popular positive term, ‘hopeful’. No other positive word was selected by more than 14 per cent.

The argument was summed up by the Labour MP Roderick MacFarquhar, a leading constitutionalist who later taught at Harvard: While the people elect their representatives to exercise supreme powers on their behalf, they do not elect them to concede some of those powers in perpetuity to a superior outside body. Therefore, if those powers are to be diminished by entry into the Common Market, the British people must give their consent, and that consent can be given only in a referendum, because only through a referendum can the issue be isolated.

Heath had never pretended that the terms of membership were ideal, for the United Kingdom was a late entrant to a club designed by and for the interests of its existing members. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) had been settled in the 1960s, under the shelter of the French veto, as had a budget mechanism that would weigh disproportionately on the UK. In Heath's view, it was simply not realistic to think that Britain could rewrite these arrangements from the outside; the priority was to get a seat at the table, so that it could influence the Community from within.

Instead, statutory law is a man-made law based on what 51% of those voting can agree on in any given court, legislative body or public referendum. In biblical terms from the Book of Judges, we could say that statutory law is essentially men “doing what is right in their own eyes.

The difference between a referendum and a plebiscite is a fine one. Both pertain to collective decisions made by the direct vote of all qualified adults. The referendum, which derives from Swiss practice, involves an issue that is provisionally determined in advance, but that is then ‘referred’ for a final decision by the whole electorate. This

One way in which the referendum could be overturned is the following way.  If the MPs (Members of Parliament) forced a general election and a party campaigned on a promise to keep Britain in the EU, got elected and then they claimed that the election mandate topped the referendum one.

In 2011, Boris Johnson, then London’s mayor, saw the downside when the capital’s fringes went on the rampage for several days, smashing up shops and burning cars, looting what they could not have. Five years later Britain’s left-behinds vetoed London’s economic interests in the Brexit referendum.

Over the next period, the majority for Brexit will slowly vanish. In the three years between the Brexit referendum and the European Parliament elections in 2019, 1.26 million British citizens over 65 will die and 2 million will reach the voting age of 18, according to Age UK. Given that 70 per cent of young voters were in favour of Remain and 64 per cent of over-65s voted to Leave, the pro-European camp will increase by 1 million and the Brexit camp go down by 756,000.

Markets are voting machines; they function by taking referenda. In the new world money market, for example, currency values are now decided by a constant referendum of thousands of currency traders in hundreds of trading rooms around the globe, all connected to each other by a vast electronic network giving each trader instant access to information about any factor that might affect values. That constant referendum makes it much harder for central banks and governments to manipulate currency values.

Yet the ‘post-national’ ambitions of the new Community should not be exaggerated. The European Community was fundamentally a creation of national governments. Every step was the work of national politicians, engaged in a process of national reconstruction, for which they were responsible to their own domestic constituencies

As he put it in 1975, Labour was ‘neither in favour of being in Europe on principle, or being out of the Common Market on principle’.130 Unable to commit either to membership or to withdrawal, Labour had contained its contradictions within what might be termed ‘Schrödinger's Cabinet’: a body that was simultaneously pro-Market and anti-Market, until such time as the wave function of Wilsonian ambiguity was collapsed.

The idea that Britain could have led integration in a wholly different direction, had it only shown the imagination, grossly exaggerates Britain's influence, not to mention its ability to override the national interests of other member states. From the Schuman Declaration onwards, the Six were committed to the integration of core industries, a customs union protected by common external tariffs, and common institutions based upon the pooling of economic sovereignty. It was this model, and not some ideal alternative, against which the national interest had to be measured.45

The genius of the European project, expressed first in the ECSC and subsequently in the EEC, was that it harnessed cross-border integration to the pursuit of national self-interest, rather than setting these forces against one another.

The past is a foreign country, which maintains its independence with the same fierce determination as any ‘Brexiteer’.

They were fighting for the honour of the Eldon League, a student dining club whose motto was ‘forwards into the past’, to determine its position on the European Community.

The combatants, ‘monocled and bespatted’, mounted a horse-drawn carriage and rode in triumph down Constitution Hill, the Mall and Trafalgar Square. Speaking as imperial grand prior of the League, Hamilton reportedly told journalists that the organisation ‘views with unabashed antipathy all forms of democracy, especially the referendum’. ‘We oppose anything that is common, whether it be consultation of the common people or the Common Market.

8 In a speech at the opening of the European Research Institute in 2001, Tony Blair summarised ‘the history of our engagement with Europe’ as ‘one of opportunities missed in the name of illusions – and Britain suffering as a result’.

In explaining why the UK was not a signatory to these agreements, the question is not why it turned its back on Europe, but why Britain's own combination of idealism, fear and self-interest produced a different policy calculation – and why that changed in the years that followed.

In this climate, there were three essential tests against which any economic strategy had to be measured: that it restore exports, so that Britain could rebuild its national wealth and finance its overseas commitments; secure cheap food and raw materials for the work of reconstruction; and husband Britain's scarce supply of dollars, by trading so far as possible in sterling. In the decade after the war, all three considerations pointed towards the Commonwealth, not the Continent, as the focus of its international trade.

It was the weakness of the Continent that explains, in part, the determination of successive American governments to push Britain into the leadership of a continental federation. This would certainly have suited US interests, allowing it to take over Britain's world role (and trade) while passing on an expensive and potentially hazardous engagement in western and central Europe. The benefits for Britain were less clear, for it risked being sucked into a defensive commitment that was beyond its capacity to manage, while weakening ties with its most important markets. The Foreign Office warned in 1948 ‘that a federated Western Europe is becoming the battle cry of a new [American] isolationism’, in which the costs of reconstruction and defence would be offloaded onto the UK.50

In 1955 Australia and Canada supplied 61 per cent of British wheat imports, while Australia and New Zealand contributed 60 per cent of its meat imports. By contrast, the Six remained a net importer of food until 1958.47 As late as 1960, two-thirds of British exports and perhaps 90 per cent of capital investment went outside Europe.48

As Peregrine Worsthorne argued in the Sunday Telegraph, British democracy did not require governments always to do what the people wanted; it simply required them to face the judgement of the people for the decisions they had made. This, he argued, not only promoted more considered government – for ministers would take the blame for failed policies at an election, however popular they might have been at the time; it also protected democracy itself from opprobrium.