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So this petitions thing then

Even as MPs agreed to hold a Commons vote on a referendum, government sources made clear that the Tories would be whipped to vote against a poll.

Mr Cameron\’s decision to impose a three-line whip has angered many MPs, since the vote was called under rules the Coalition promised would give backbenchers more freedom.

The back-bench business committee yesterday voted to hold a debate on the issue on Oct 27 after more than 100,000 people signed a petition demanding a choice.

The Prime Minister, who has expressed his desire to take back some powers from Brussels, is publicly opposed to a referendum and will order his MPs to vote against it.

We get to make our voice heard so that they can ignore it then, is that how it works?

13 thoughts on “So this petitions thing then”

  1. Beaten too it by Paul.

    You spend so much time expressing horror at people’s manifest misunderstanding of economics yet seem bewildered when politicians act as politicians have always acted – in their own self-interest.

  2. “We” voted for Cameron, (and clegg, and labour).

    All very blatantly pro EU, our wishes are not being ignored, they are being enforced.

  3. Will the whipping work now that the PM cannot dissolve parliament?

    What would be a real laugh would be if Cameramong made it a confidence motion and lost, bringing down the Government as happened in Slovakia.

    It will never happen, but I can dream, can’t I?

  4. It is what you get when you think “democracy” is a once-in-five-years, take-it-or-leave-it, all-or-nothing pig-in-a-poke.

    If government did significanlty less, it would be easier to decide which group of brigands would constitute the government of this country.

  5. The problem, it seems to me, is that the option which many would prefer, ie less Europe, not no Europe, would not, or could not, be adequately expressed in any referendum.

    And any referendum would just be treated as an opportunity to “kick a banker/foreigner” anyway, not one to express a considered view on the available options.

  6. SimonB,

    Every voter in an election has three options:

    i) The pro-EU incumbent.
    ii) The pro-EU challenger.
    iii) A no-chance anti-EU challenger.

    That’s the whole point of having a referendum.

  7. Mr P: that’s the kind of argument that far-left groups use: “the people would support the SWP if we had True Democracy!”. It’s bollocks when they use it, too.

    If a large proportion of people believed both that we should leave the EU and that this was an important thing, they’d vote UKIP, wouldn’t they?

  8. If a large proportion of people believed both that we should leave the EU and that this was an important thing, they’d vote UKIP, wouldn’t they?

    Not if they’ve looked at the rest of the UKIP policy portfolio, no (although some of the economic & budgetary stuff is reasonably sane.) Although I think we would be much better off out of Europe, I can’t bring myself to vote for people who are quite clearly barking – it’s the right-wing (if you assume that is meaningful) equivalent of voting Lib-Dem.

    Now, European elections: where the result, whatever it is, is fundamentally meaningless and a couple more nutters in Bedlam is hardly going to be noticed …

  9. As the “EU Referendum” blog points out, if we were “given” such a vote every lying son-of-a-bitch in this benighted land would be rolled out for the “stay in” gang. Every moronic sleb, every dickhead journalist and the BBC

  10. Part2 –after pressing wrong button and blog collapse:

    hack will be launched into action. The EU will spend 2-3 billion of our money and every type of media will be employed to peddle the “stay” line and smother the antis.
    The EU will get more oppressive even as it collapses. We must wait for the right time to strike to be free of it.

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