There’s a right way – and a wrong way – to hold a referendum

Personally, I love referendums. It’s the notion that the people really can have things their way which is so pleasing, unlike the normal state of affairs when every issue of importance is bundled up in a party political package in a general election which makes it effectively impossible to unpick, say, your candidate’s approach to assisted dying from their party’s approach to income tax.

My favourites are the ones when, as with the Swiss vote on banning minarets, the people listen carefully to the considered  opinion of big business, the churches and the major parties…and then go and vote exactly the opposite way.

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Douglas Murray

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I do, however, take a dim view of referendums where the whole thing is stitched up – in the Irish vote on gay marriage, for instance, the funding given to the two sides was so wildly disproportionate as to compromise the whole thing.