The EU referendum was only advisory and lacked safeguards against lies - Yorkshire Post Letters

In his excellent letter of August 21, your correspondent M.K. O'Sullivan of Allerton Bywater refers to “the several and regular contributors who have never accepted the 2016 referendum”. I am one of those contributors.

The 2016 EU In-Out referendum was a travesty. It was set up by parliament as an advisory only referendum (the alternative would have been to set it up as a mandatory referendum, the result of which parliament would have been required to respect and enact).

Given that the referendum was ‘advisory only’ parliament was too casual in setting it up. In consequence, three of what would have been vital ingredients of a mandatory referendum were simply left out.

The first of these was the failure to surround the vote with the protections of the Representation of the People Act (RPA) 1983 to provide a bulwark against false information and other electoral malpractices.

The two main ‘Leave’ campaigns hence had scope to circulate misinformation on an industrial scale. Subsequently a high court judge gave his opinion that if the referendum had been held within the restraints of the RPA 1983 the result would have been wide open to challenge in the courts.

The Leeds writer Michael Meadowcroft entitled his pamphlet detailing the shortcomings of the referendum ‘Out on A Pack of Lies’.

Secondly, if there is to be constitutional change it is customary to write in a “supermajority requirement”. To amend the constitution of the Conservative Party requires a two thirds majority of those voting and the support of 50 per cent of those entitled to vote.

It is distinctly unwise to go ahead with constitutional change on a 52:48 split. In the last seven years that unwisdom has come home to us.

To quote a previous precedent, in a Scottish referendum in 1979 on devolution a threshold of 40 per cent of those entitled to vote was stipulated if further progress were to take place.

That threshold was not reached then – and neither was it in 2016 (37 per cent was the figure).

Finally we need to consider the franchise. In the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the vote was given to all EU citizens living in Scotland, together with all 16 and 17 year olds.

The last were not allowed a vote in 2016 – the referendum was advisory only. And yet these were the people who, to use that Americanism, ‘had the most skin in the game’. Had they been entitled to vote the result would almost certainly have been different.

Brexit has resulted in many continental EU citizens, previously happily living and working here, now exiting.

Our young are going to live with the adverse consequences all their lives. Perversely it was the over 65s who carried the vote for ‘Leave’. And they are required to live with the consequences for a shorter period.

I (and millions of other pro-EU citizens) have been robbed of our EU membership by this travesty of a referendum seven years ago. So, Mr. K. O'Sullivan, I have no intention of accepting the 2016 referendum result. I continue to resent being cheated.