I get the sentiment (as a pro-Euro Brit), but surely the original referendum counts as being listened to in some way?
Even ignoring all the illegality and fraud about the referendum, and ignoring that because it was advisory large portions of british citizens living abroad were prevented from having a say, and ignoring the arguments about 16-year-olds who it would be directly affecting because of the time lags, and ignoring the arguments around the fact that the process/success has been wildly, wildly different than promised,
Ever since the referendum 50% of the population of the UK has had no representation in Parliament and government, whilst being endlessly parroted at that it is the "will of the people" and simultaneously being blamed for everything going predictably wrong.
Democratic governments aren't supposed to have one vote then completely ignore the rest of the population.
Your original claim was that the people had "[not been] listened to in any way". My singular claim was that in fact they had been listened to at least in some way.
> Even ignoring all the illegality and fraud about the referendum
Something is illegal if deemed so by law and potentially affirmed by courts. If this is indeed the case, there should be proceedings that show this to be so. Something doesn't become illegal just by declaring it as such.
> large portions of british citizens living abroad were prevented from having a say
This is merely an anecdote, but I am a Brit living in the US and I got the chance to submit my Remain postal vote.
> ignoring the arguments about 16-year-olds who it would be directly affecting because of the time lags
This is the nature of every election and every vote. e.g. the poll tax was introduced in 1990 which had widespread ramifications for years to come, and impacted many people that couldn't vote in the prior 1987 general elections. The referendum is no different. This is just the way of democracy.
> Democratic governments aren't supposed to have one vote then completely ignore the rest of the population.
The government actually held a second vote - the general election requested by May in 2017. In that vote, despite winning a smaller plurality, the Tories were still re-affirmed. If everything you say is true, then the popular will would have selected Labour as an overwhelming majority. While the Tory victory was marginal, they still beat Labour.
The reason decisions like elections use a simple majority is that otherwise it'd be a small minority of people oppressing the will of the majority, which is unstable, and otherwise known as dictatorship.
As far as I'm aware nobody got convicted(unlike in the U.S) so your fraud argument is weak even today. I can see a second referendum on no-deal vs May's deal though.
Vote Leave fined for election fraud. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44856992 Leave.EU fined for election fraud. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44080096 Labour Leave fined for undeclared donations. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47623595 Vote Leave fined for unsolicited texts using football lottery to gather details. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47623413 Eldon Insurance and Leave.EU fined for data breaches when misusing company email data. https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-bl...
Or, re-calling a general election after 1.5 years. Didn’t ‘the people’ already decide?
How about if they were promised one thing, and voted for it, and it turned out to be impossible and based on lies and fraud?
