If, as your editorial (4 October) suggests, “referendums are part of the modern world”, then surely it is time we had, after proper debate, a piece of legislation laying down all the appropriate parameters rather than treating each one that comes along as a one-off plebiscite.
It should be clear when and on what sort of issues a referendum may be held, what the rules are for initiating a vote and the conduct of the campaign, the status of the result whether binding or advisory, the size of a majority needed on key constitutional issues and so on. Had this been done before the appalling EU vote we might not be in the ridiculous situation in which we now find ourselves.
Ian Bullock
Brighton
• Referendums may indeed be “part of the modern world”. Majority voting, however, is ancient and inaccurate. Furthermore, the rules are too few.
Hungary requires a minimum 50% turnout; Denmark uses 40%, as did Scotland in 1979. But Brexit, no.
Some ballots allow for re-runs, as in Quebec, neverendums. Scotland may soon want one. The Belfast Agreement caters for many. But Brexit, it seems, no.
The first multi-option referendum was in 1894. When New Zealand debated electoral reform in 1992, its referendum had five options. But Brexit, no; it was binary.
Referendums vary. The 1972 border poll was horrible, but ratifying the peace accord in 1998 was fine. Other votes were terrible. As Sarajevo’s newspaper Oslobođenje noted: “All the wars in the former Yugoslavia started with a [binary] referendum.” The same now applies to Ukraine, and the poll in South Sudan has also precipitated chaos.
At the very least, and as a matter of extreme urgency, the UN should change its 1947 resolution on Kashmir. If the recommended binary referendum were to be held, the violence would probably be horrific.
Peter Emerson
The de Borda Institute, Belfast
• The articles by George Monbiot (Lies, fearmongering and fables: that’s our democracy, 5 October) and David Runciman (The long read, 5 October) couldn’t have been better timed. We are faced with all kinds of potential horrors in Europe and the US, and in Britain we are saddled with an unelected prime minister, policies with no mandate from voters and a referendum outcome predicated on lies, a biased press and a disparagement of “experts”.
For democracy to function and flourish, it is vital that schools’ processes and curriculum prepare its young people. Personal, social and health education and citizenship should be statutory; subjects like media studies and sociology are important in that they show students how to read behind and beyond the text and gain insights into how communities work.
Drama strategies and exploratory discussion, collaborative activities and formal debates, negotiation between teacher and pupil regarding choice of theme and approach, mixed ability classes, flexible groupings, students sharing their understanding with the rest of the class: these learning and teaching strategies, enacted habitually, will prepare pupils to play an enlightened part in our democracy.
There need to be close and continuous links with the community served by each school – visits to the library, the market, places of worship, the police station – and talks and demonstrations in the school by local figures – the magistrate, the social worker, the nurse. Year groups and the whole school should have councils in which representatives present their classmates’ points of view and decisions made should be acted on.
By these means – many common practice in our state schools but many denigrated or abolished by the Conservatives – we could show that we take our democracy seriously.
David Curtis
Solihull, West Midlands
• David Runciman and others have had no difficulty in identifying the political difference that educational attainment can make. But it might be useful to enlarge the understanding of education that is being discussed. Yes, graduates are more likely to vote in ways that are identified with left/liberal politics but there is a bigger question about the experience, as much as that of success within it, of education that demands examination. In the past 20 years everyone at any stage of education in the UK has been taught within a context of rigorous forms of measurement, in which lines between success and failure are increasingly visible and important. At the same time the links between the education system and the often poorly and narrowly conceived demands of the economy have become ever more explicit – so much so that to “fail” in education carries with it a social message of both collective and individual irrelevance. These relationships are becoming increasingly clear to millions of people, as are the more minimal gains that some forms of education can provide. In all, the degradation of the purpose of education carries with it a resistance to it and to the views of those most closely identified with it.
Mary Evans
Canterbury
• I totally concur with Brian Barder’s analysis (May shoots herself in the foot with Brexit trigger, Letters, 5 October). It also occurred to me, reading David Runciman’s article, that those who deliberately defied the advice of “experts” nevertheless had a touching faith in the ability of Theresa May to negotiate an even better deal from the EU than the semi-detached membership we now enjoy; I doubt whether she shares it.
Revd Geoffrey White
Sheffield
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