We weren't given a vote on no-deal, as even Gove has said. We were given the chance to vote on leaving because the PM at the time was an arrogant fool who thought he could settle a Tory party dispute. It was always a stupid thing to put to a simple in/out vote - doubly so when nobody had worked out what leave would mean.
Richard Dawkins put it well:
In 2016 our then Prime Minister David Cameron caved in to pressure from his backbenchers to hold a referendum on British membership of the EU. This was a question of immense complexity involving sophisticated economic ramifications, the full extent of which became only too apparent later in the year when prodigal regiments of lawyers and civil servants had to be employed to cope with the administrative and legal load. If ever there was a matter for lengthy parliamentary debate and cabinet discussion heavily informed by advice from highly qualified experts, it was membership of the EU. Could there be a question less suited to a single plebiscite decision? And yet we were told to mistrust experts (‘You, the voter, are the expert here’) by politicians who presumably would demand an expert surgeon to remove their appendix or an expert pilot to fly their plane. So the decision was handed over to non-experts like me, even people whose stated motives for voting included ‘Well, it’s nice to have a change,’ and ‘Well, I preferred the old blue passport to the European purple one.’ For the sake of short-term political manoeuvring within his own party, David Cameron played Russian roulette with the long-term future of his country, of Europe, even of the world.
And so, to the precautionary principle. The referendum was about a major change, a political revolution whose pervasive effects would persist for decades if not longer. A huge constitutional change, the sort of change where, if ever, the precautionary principle should have been paramount. When it comes to constitutional amendments, the United States requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress followed by ratification by three-quarters of the state legislatures. Arguably that bar is set a bit too high, but the principle is sound. David Cameron’s referendum, by contrast, asked for only a simple majority on a single yes/no question. Did it not occur to him that so radical a constitutional step might merit stipulation of a two-thirds majority? Or at least 60 per cent? Perhaps a minimum voter turnout to make sure such a major decision was not taken by a minority of the electorate? Maybe a second vote, a fortnight later, to make sure the populace really meant it? Or a second round a year later, when the terms and consequences of withdrawal had become at least minimally apparent? But no, all Cameron demanded was anything over 50 per cent in a single yes/no vote, at a time when opinion polls were yo-yo-ing up and down and the likely result was changing day by day. It is said that a leftover statute of British common law stipulates that ‘no idiot shall be admitted to parliament’. You’d think at least the stricture might apply to Prime Ministers.
From: Dawkins, R (2017).
Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist. Transworld. Kindle Edition.
