On your second point the only thing to realize is that the representative parliament voted to hold the referendum. Whether they did that as true believers or a cop-out so they didn't have to take their own responsibility is anybodies guess (and probably not the same for all members of parliament).
You're right, of course. On the one hand, it was an abrogation of the responsibility they as MPs had been given; on the other, the Conservative manifesto contained a commitment to have a referendum, so there was an obligation to provide it. The argument to which you allude was made in an exceptionally feeble article in The Spectator last week, quoting Burke:
"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion". If his judgment is that it is best for you, not him, to make the decision, then he must follow it.
So as a lawyer, is de jure not relevant? The 37% is in fact the percentage of those who actually voted, and we only rejected a poor alternative to our defective electoral system.
It's theoretically relevant, of course, but the constitution is nothing if not pragmatic.
I was aware of the origin of your 37%; my point was that the result could easily have been different had those who didn't bother to vote made the minimal effort required.
I don't think the quality of the alternative was relevant in that referendum. The result reflected an underlying fondness, whether rational or not, for the kind of decisive government achievable in reality only by the current system. The then coalition government was an indicator of what we were likely to have in perpetuity were we to change the system, and the prospect wasn't viewed with much affection.
The fact is, British democracy is at least as defective as the EU's.
Yes, it may be; but it's ours, just as my own photograph of a scene others have shot hundreds of times before is mine. It gives us the ability to change those who govern us. There is no perfect system.
Jeremy
