‘Wizard,’ said William. ‘Super,’ said Ginger, in William and the Moon Rocket (1954). More recently we have had Alex Salmond, the leader of the new Alba party (a grand coalition embracing albinos, Albanians, albatrosses and Albigensians) declaring that it can achieve in Scotland ‘a supermajority for independence’.
Is a supermajority even a thing? (This form of question, with thing, has been asked by the Americans since about the year 2000, according to the OED.) The Guardian has found evidence that the term supermajority is puzzling voters. How big is it? Does it have a legal effect?
Again, it is America that came up with supermajority. In Congress, a two-thirds majority is needed to override a presidential veto. In Britain, the granting of a referendum is a power reserved to the parliament of the UK, and neither there nor in the Scottish parliament does a supermajority (in excess of a simple majority) have any constitutional effect.
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