Feathers ruffled in Brexit debate

Councillor George Howe's recent letter about the so-called People's Vote campaigners wanting to overturn the democratic vote recorded in the 2016 referendum has ruffled a few feathers.

These responders are backing the call to ignore the people’s vote of 2016. People don’t understand irony.

First there was Arthur Oxley (October 20) claiming it is undemocratic not to have a so-called “people’s vote”.

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On the contrary it is undemocratic to ignore the decision of the people in the referendum.

A recent rally in Sunderland in favour of a “people’s vote” was attended by at best 200 people. That’s 200 people trying to deny the wishes of 82,394 people who voted leave in Sunderland.

Democracy is not served by holding vote after vote until you get the answer you want.

Then we had Ged Taylor (October 22). He pursues the same line saying it is undemocratic to deny another vote, yet wants to ignore the democratic vote result from 2016. He then states we had a referendum in the 1970s when people “overwhelmingly voted to join the EU”.

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This is very strange as there was no referendum on joining the EU in the 70s or at any other time.

The 1975 referendum was the only one held in the 70s and was on whether we stayed in or left the EEC, not on joining it.

The UK joined the EEC in 1973 without the people having a say.

In the 1975 referendum 8.4million voted to leave the EEC. This increased massively to 17.4million voting to leave the EU in 2016, while the vote to remain went down. Surely a clear result of 40 years’ experience of dominance by Europe.

Incidentally, the EU came into being in 1993.

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Ged like others returns to the Leave campaign being fined for over spending but like others omits to mention that the High Court ruled that the Electoral Commission misinterpreted referendum spending laws allowing Leave to break them.

The strangest piece of his tome is his suggestion that we solve the Irish border issue by giving “those Irish people back their country then there would be no more talk of a soft or hard border”.

This is yet another call to ignore a democratic vote. A total of 71.1% of the people of Northern Ireland and 94.4% of the people of the Republic voted for the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland.

So that’s the answer just tear up the Good Friday Agreement and force people in the North to be part of the Republic? I await your ideas for stopping the resulting civil conflict this would cause.

Are those calling for another vote incredibly arrogant or simply unable to understand what democracy means?

Alan Wright