alt Hacker News> nobody expected the result and would not have put it to referendum otherwise
I think you're right, you see this sometimes where the powers that be are extremely over-confident in themselves and think "sure, let's put this thing up for referendum and show those stupid right-wingers how unpopular they really are." Which works until it doesn't.
A US example was Proposition 8 in California (banning same-sex marriage) in 2008. I have zero doubt the thinking was "sure, let's put it up for a vote and show those morons how behind the times they really are." When it passed, in _California_ no less, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and accusations of all sorts of treachery. Anything but doing a little self-reflection and considering that maybe it wasn't as popular an idea as they thought. Didn't matter in the end, courts said "yeah well too bad, you can't ban it anyway, sorry" (kind of funny those legal arguments never came up BEFORE it could even be put up for a vote, again showing the level of confidence on display).
What's shocking of course is that the Brexit vote didn't end up the same way ("ok the vote passed but it can't be done anyway").
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> (kind of funny those legal arguments never came up BEFORE it could even be put up for a vote, again showing the level of confidence on display)
Actually, IMO, it shows one of the weaknesses of our legal system.
The courts can't rule on something that someone's talking about doing. They can only rule on actual legislation.
It would genuinely be great if there were a formal legal process for writing a bill, submitting it to some particular court (maybe the top state appeals court?) for review, and only after that review letting it be voted into law.
> What's shocking of course is that the Brexit vote didn't end up the same way ("ok the vote passed but it can't be done anyway").
There was an attempt.
A campaigner managed to get the courts to issue a verdict that the referendum was not binding, and Parliament must then have a vote on whether or not to implement the result. Remain voters rejoiced and lauded her as a hero. Brexit voters demonised her as an enemy of democracy.
Parliament then duly voted to implement the result.
(Edit - looking back this may have been counterproductive. The argument that the referendum was not legally binding could have continued for some time, maybe even long enough to try to change something. But forcing a parliamentary vote to affirm the result put all that to bed)
>What's shocking of course is that the Brexit vote didn't end up the same way
All that happened was that Britain exchanged limited Eastern Euro immigration for unlimited non-EU immigration.
It's even a bit sillier than that. David Cameron promised a dumb thing to get elected, on the assumption that he'd be in another libdem coalition, and the libdems wouldn't allow it. Then he got a majority. And campaigned against his own dumb thing.
Not only was it expected to fail at referendum, but the referendum itself was never really meant to happen.
> What's shocking of course is that the Brexit vote didn't end up the same way ("ok the vote passed but it can't be done anyway").
It went very much the opposite; they went for almost the most extreme possible version of the thing. A lot of people voting for Brexit had been sold on, basically, Norway's status (effectively in the EU, but can pretend not to be, and has its own rules on fish and can have whatever weird passports it wants). This is part of why support for it evaporated so quickly (the last time any serious poll showed staying out as having more support for rejoining was early 2022); the delivered product was simply not what most people had been sold.