Whatever happens in the Scottish Parliament elections on May 6, Westminster should apply new thinking to all future referendums in the United Kingdom. Central to this new thinking should be the principle of ‘informed consent’. Electorates should be as well informed as possible about the likely consequences of their vote.
The Australian constitution (a British Act of Parliament of 1900) supplies the model. It requires that the constitution may only be modified by a referendum on a detailed proposal which has already been agreed by the Australian parliament. Thus in the 1999 Australian referendum on the monarchy, the voters did not vote on the bare principle of monarchy, leaving the politicians to sort out the details afterwards. They voted on, and rejected, the specific proposal to replace the Queen with a president elected for a fixed term by parliament.
Most of the 13 referendums in the UK since 1973 have more or less conformed with this principle.
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