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| First of all, this is an extremely complicated and long legal document. How can you expect all voters to understand this? Also, how many people have read the current proposal? | |
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Of course you can't lay out every detail, but to say the a large portion of the UK is too dumb to understand the proposal and its consequences seems quite patronising.
You're essentially saying that voters don't and can't understand the world they live in. Clearly they can't in every minute detail, nobody does, but that's far from necessary. I rather doubt the Irish or the Swiss, where such votes have been successfully conducted, are that more intelligent.
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| Second, what do you do if the deal will be rejected? Stay forever in the EU or try to renegotiate something? You don't know what should be changed exactly to get it accepted. | |
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Contrary to before, the British + NI now know (perhaps just more or less) what will be affected. And they probably have re-built at least part of the diplomatic corps that's necessary for such an undertaking.
Switzerland took ten years to seal the the Bilaterale so if you decide to withdraw this note and have another go later on, be realistic and project at least that long for the transition phase after the actual Brexit. Since the UK will face many hurdles from WTO members, 15 years may be a better timeframe.
The UK has said "A". Nobody forces you to follow up with "B" if this looks like a mistake, whatever "B" may happen to be. Undoing "A" is also an option.