No need for just 3 options. You could add "Leave, but re-open negotiations, led by a person nominated by the board of Vote Leave".
I've been thinking about the idea of a second referendum, the fickle voting public, the disturbing idea of re-running elections until you scrape the 50.1% you need, and the fact that a lot of people thought that we should have required a larger margin of victory immediately after they'd just lost the first vote.
I think I'd be happy for a second referendum if the margin required to "change course" was 60/40. Given that the current status quo is to leave the EU, this means that remain would require a 60/40 win in order to cancel Brexit. If remainers can't convince 60% of the public to support them now that a) everyone knows that their votes mean something and a "protest vote" for something you don't actually want is stupid, b) we've got a better idea of what leave means, c) after the complete farce our politicians have made of the whole thing so far, and d) now they know they have to tell people what's great about the EU rather than just the bad things that will happen when we leave, then maybe it is time to concede gracefully. On the other hand, if they can get a 60% victory, Brexiteers really won't be able to claim (with a straight face) that brexit is the will of the people.
Yes, it's not fair that the first referendum was run with a 1-vote majority required to change course, but changing course again requires a larger majority. Well, first, who said life was fair? But also, we can't do anything about the past, except learn from it. If we won't allow ourselves to do things better in the future because that would make us feel bad about having done them differently in the past, we'll never make any progress.
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I've been thinking about the idea of a second referendum, the fickle voting public, the disturbing idea of re-running elections until you scrape the 50.1% you need, and the fact that a lot of people thought that we should have required a larger margin of victory immediately after they'd just lost the first vote.
I think I'd be happy for a second referendum if the margin required to "change course" was 60/40. Given that the current status quo is to leave the EU, this means that remain would require a 60/40 win in order to cancel Brexit. If remainers can't convince 60% of the public to support them now that a) everyone knows that their votes mean something and a "protest vote" for something you don't actually want is stupid, b) we've got a better idea of what leave means, c) after the complete farce our politicians have made of the whole thing so far, and d) now they know they have to tell people what's great about the EU rather than just the bad things that will happen when we leave, then maybe it is time to concede gracefully. On the other hand, if they can get a 60% victory, Brexiteers really won't be able to claim (with a straight face) that brexit is the will of the people.
Yes, it's not fair that the first referendum was run with a 1-vote majority required to change course, but changing course again requires a larger majority. Well, first, who said life was fair? But also, we can't do anything about the past, except learn from it. If we won't allow ourselves to do things better in the future because that would make us feel bad about having done them differently in the past, we'll never make any progress.