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Friday 6 May 2016

Did my vote make a difference?

I regret to report that the answer is "no."

This isn't the first time. In 2001, Irish voters rejected the Treaty of Nice. Evidently, they got it wrong, so the government held another referendum in 2002, and this time the referendum approved the treaty. If I'd been voting in that, I'd have felt "You'll keep voting until you get it right".

In 2105, UKIP got 12.6% of the votes, 0.2% share of the seats.

And now again. So much for democracy. If they ask us to vote, isn't there a kind of implied committment to abide by the result of that vote?

But the ship will not be called Boaty McBoatface.

2 comments:

  1. Completely wrong. The Irish didn't vote twice because they got the wrong answer the first time, a frequently repeated fable of the British tabloid press. The Irish are the only people in the EU who get a vote on constitutional matters and they are not, in fact, stupid. The original deal included Ireland losing a permanent right to an EU commissioner. That and several other matters were renegotiated and then voted on.

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