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David Cameron says he doesn't regret EU referendum

In first first major TV interview since leaving office in July 2016, David Cameron told CNN he doesn't regret calling for a referendum on the EU despite feeling that Britain has "taken the wrong cause" in opting to leave.

Cameron stated that as he "made a promise to the British people" so he had to keep it.

You can read more here.

What do you make of this? Do you think he should regret it? Was it the right thing to do to call a referendum?

Scroll to see replies

That's all he can say, given that this was all down to him.
He is irrelevant
He followed his manifesto on which he was elected on, he couldn’t really say he regretted it.
he is correct in my view - calling the referendum is not something to regret at all. He made the promise, he had to keep it.

Now, making the promise - that is something he should really regret, as its cost him his political career and legacy, as well as pushing the country down a path that he doesn't agree with.

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I like peter hitchens view on this. It should never have been a referendum issue. It should have been decided in a general election, and only should have been implemented if a party could win a majority with it as a key part of their manifesto. That way the party who wins the right to leave, is actually committed and wants to leave. Rather then now, where you had a referendum, and you have a government who largely wants to remain, reluctantly carrying out actions against their will.
Original post by fallen_acorns
he is correct in my view - calling the referendum is not something to regret at all. He made the promise, he had to keep it.

Now, making the promise - that is something he should really regret, as its cost him his political career and legacy, as well as pushing the country down a path that he doesn't agree with.

---

I like peter hitchens view on this. It should never have been a referendum issue. It should have been decided in a general election, and only should have been implemented if a party could win a majority with it as a key part of their manifesto. That way the party who wins the right to leave, is actually committed and wants to leave. Rather then now, where you had a referendum, and you have a government who largely wants to remain, reluctantly carrying out actions against their will.


that's what leads to a point where the government officials feel that they shouldn't agree with the. majority and follow their own rules.
Original post by fallen_acorns

I like peter hitchens view on this. It should never have been a referendum issue. It should have been decided in a general election, and only should have been implemented if a party could win a majority with it as a key part of their manifesto. That way the party who wins the right to leave, is actually committed and wants to leave. Rather then now, where you had a referendum, and you have a government who largely wants to remain, reluctantly carrying out actions against their will.


That's not realistic. A party could win a GE with a 30-40% share of the vote, being maybe 20-30ish% of the population. So a minority opinion could lead to a Brexit. Plus life-long Labour voters (as an example) would be highly unlikely to switch to voting Tory if they wanted to support a Brexit. True that there are other issues, but at least with a referendum party politics are kept out of it.
In the words of Mandy Rice Davis.............
Original post by Andrew97
He followed his manifesto on which he was elected on, he couldn’t really say he regretted it.

Original post by fallen_acorns
he is correct in my view - calling the referendum is not something to regret at all. He made the promise, he had to keep it.

Now, making the promise - that is something he should really regret, as its cost him his political career and legacy, as well as pushing the country down a path that he doesn't agree with.

---

I like peter hitchens view on this. It should never have been a referendum issue. It should have been decided in a general election, and only should have been implemented if a party could win a majority with it as a key part of their manifesto. That way the party who wins the right to leave, is actually committed and wants to leave. Rather then now, where you had a referendum, and you have a government who largely wants to remain, reluctantly carrying out actions against their will.

This.

Also it would mean that party was accountable to the electorate. The current situation means that no one is accountable if it all goes wrong. Leave didn't form a government, they can't be punished by the electorate if they don't keep their promises.
Original post by Duncan2012
That's not realistic. A party could win a GE with a 30-40% share of the vote, being maybe 20-30ish% of the population. So a minority opinion could lead to a Brexit. Plus life-long Labour voters (as an example) would be highly unlikely to switch to voting Tory if they wanted to support a Brexit. True that there are other issues, but at least with a referendum party politics are kept out of it.


"thats not realistic"

1 - a party could win with 20-30% of the population, so a minority could lead to brexit.

A minority already lead to brexit by those terms, and in any case to argue this is to argue against the core of our democratic system. Our elections are normally decided by a minority of the total voting population, and the governments formed can then legislate as they please. If you argue that the lack of a majority of the voting population supporting an issue means that their is no mandate for it, then successive governments have acted consistently without a mandate for the past century. We have gone to war, made radical changes to our country, let people die, etc. all without such a big mandate. to ask for one, misunderstands how our political system works.

2 - Its good that it was not based on party politics

I agree, on a single issue basis. The problem is that our system is party political, and the result of the election has to be carried out in a party political system. And that means, that whilst its nice to vote on an issue in such a non-partisan way, it then makes a messy result when you try and implement the result in a party political system. Hence why you now have:

-MPs going against the will of their constituents, because they have to follow the party line
-The lack of a proper opposition to brexit, as both parties have to support it
-The leadership of the labour party supporting brexit, whilst their MPs do not.. and the leadership of the tory party supporting remain, whilst a number of their MPs support brexit.
-A following election where both parties policies surrounding brexit were effectively identical, giving the voting public no choice.

3 - DeBruyne made a very good point above. The fact that it was a referendum removes direct accountability.

The people who caused the referendum to be needed? Were never in goverment anyway (Ukip)
The people who called the referendum? Left goverment (cameron and osborne etc)
The people who campaigned for brexit? In goverment, but not in charge (gove, boris etc)
The people who are now in charge of brexit? Well sure, they will be held account.. but if it all goes tits up, they will just leave saying that they never wanted it anyway...

With a party you can hold that single entity dirrectly acountable if it goes wrong. Right now, the torries will never be held fully acountable, because they can always fall back on 'the will of the people' - and the fact that labour will have suported all of their brexit policies..
fallen_acorns
It should never have been a referendum issue. It should have been decided in a general election, and only should have been implemented if a party could win a majority with it as a key part of their manifesto. That way the party who wins the right to leave, is actually committed and wants to leave. Rather then now, where you had a referendum, and you have a government who largely wants to remain, reluctantly carrying out actions against their will.
idk, do you really want to force people to vote for a single-issue party? You have the whole issue of this single-issue party then having to do all the other things a government has to do, and for a single-issue party that has only existed a few years, they won't have the experience, and may end up doing more damage than a half-hearted government following the referendum result.
Original post by AngeryPenguin
idk, do you really want to force people to vote for a single-issue party? You have the whole issue of this single-issue party then having to do all the other things a government has to do, and for a single-issue party that has only existed a few years, they won't have the experience, and may end up doing more damage than a half-hearted government following the referendum result.


I know what you mean - but I don't really think that would ever happen.

I think single issue parties can very important, but they will never win an election, because before they can, one of the major political parties will see the way public opinion is going and change their policies to match.

Which is kind of what happened.. UKIP - the single issue party, was growing to big and taking up to many votes, so the conservatives changed their policy to counter it.

The real issue is that the conservatives massively underestimated the numbers for brexit, and thought that they use a referendum to score a win-win situation. Instead of combating the single issue party by adopting the policies that were proving so popular, they thought they could play a clever game, and take back those voters by promising a referendum (that would loose), and then both shut up the issue for a generation, and retain the voters who switched by always being able to say that 'well, we gave you the chance to vote on it'.

It was a really clever plan, but it failed because ultimately their data and their analysis of the public's opinion was wrong.

If you took a referendum off the table though - and said they were unconstitutional and could never happen? What would have happened. I would suggest that in another election cycle or two, as UKIP grew even larger, eventually the conservatives would have adopted leaving as a full manifesto promise, rather then a referedum.
Original post by Danny Dorito
In first first major TV interview since leaving office in July 2016, David Cameron told CNN he doesn't regret calling for a referendum on the EU despite feeling that Britain has "taken the wrong cause" in opting to leave.

Cameron stated that as he "made a promise to the British people" so he had to keep it.

You can read more here.

What do you make of this? Do you think he should regret it? Was it the right thing to do to call a referendum?


Politics is supposed to be about providing the people with what they want.
They wanted a vote and then voted out.

So was he right to call a vote? Yes. It should have been called a decade earlier after the accession countries joined and another called when it turned from the eec to the eu.
No change in his idiot status
He shouldn't regret calling the referendum. Just everything he did between that point & quitting.
Original post by Danny Dorito
In first first major TV interview since leaving office in July 2016, David Cameron told CNN he doesn't regret calling for a referendum on the EU despite feeling that Britain has "taken the wrong cause" in opting to leave.

Cameron stated that as he "made a promise to the British people" so he had to keep it.

You can read more here.

What do you make of this? Do you think he should regret it? Was it the right thing to do to call a referendum?


Although i think referenda are awful things it's not a shock that he'd feel it was the right thing to do given that firstly i do believe he's a man of some integrity who at least tries to do the right thing and that secondly by resigning and the party smartly electing a near neutral prepared to embrace Brexit, the party is now sat on ~40%+ of the vote having last year took a record vote share in Wales (sadly Lab got too good of a result to turn that into seats) and retaken Scottish seats.

All in all Cameron's sacrifice has worked out quite well for the Tories and the Remoaners have been proven wrong in some of their most dire predictions.
Referendums are always risky and Cameron offered it for entirely strategic reasons internal to his party - keeping Euro-sceptic Tory MPs onside.No wonder he slunk away given that the outcome was not one he expected or wanted.
Original post by Rakas21
...and the Remoaners have been proven wrong in some of their most dire predictions.


It's far too early to know what the consequences of Brexit might actually be, not only hasn't it happened we don't even have a 'deal' yet.

There is a silver lining though:

brexit £350 pledge.jpg
Original post by Axiomasher
It's far too early to know what the consequences of Brexit might actually be, not only hasn't it happened we don't even have a 'deal' yet.

There is a silver lining though:

brexit £350 pledge.jpg


Although your correct about the long term consequences and the degree to which growth will drag i am not aware of a single economic model which suggests that the primary negative outcomes will come post-exit rather than during-negotiations. Leaving is only a little bad for the economy (even the worst case 8% to 2030 is about a 0.7% drag per year), it is the uncertainty which is very bad.

I'm not one of these people who believes that Brexit will yield a million life changing trade deals and that the economy will thunder along at a Chinese pace or even that we won't continue to agree to EU payments. What we will have though is more or less full sovereignty and the political cover to make hard economic and cultural changes all for the cost of perhaps 2% average growth rather than 2.2%. A price worth paying to no longer be under the juristiction of a foreign court.
Original post by Rakas21
...Leaving is only a little bad for the economy....


Even if this turns out to be a correct generalisation (and I'm not assuming it will) the impact might still prove very variable by sector and geography. London, for example, is a wealthy and long-established globally connected city and it will probably do well no matter what, other parts of the country are a different matter.

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