‘Even before the vote on 23 June 2016, questions were raised about the possibility of a ‘second’ referendum. I place the term ‘second’ in inverted commas because the idea that another vote means another referendum reflects a misunderstanding both about (i) what a referendum is and (ii) the role of referendums in the United Kingdom’s constitutional arrangements. On the ‘second’ referendum view, a referendum is synonymous with a vote. This is not the case. I will argue in this post that a referendum is a multi-stage process of referring a question to voters. This does include one vote, but may well include multiple votes. I will also argue that the conflation of referendums with votes underlies many of the flaws of the Brexit referendum in particular and the use of referendums in the United Kingdom in general. This is not a political argument for or against Brexit. It is a constitutional argument about what the role can and should be for voting in the process of constitutional reform through referendums in the United Kingdom.’
UK Constitutional Law Association, 5th February 2018
Source: ukconstitutionallaw.org
