I admit that even I can get bored by Article 50. Or rather by those who say it cannot be opposed because the 'people have spoken'.
For the record, I know we had a referendum. I know that as a result people voted to leave the EU. And I think that is, as a result, what politicians must plan to do.
But let's be clear about what people did not vote for.
No one voted for Theresa May's exit plan. She did not have one last June. No one was sure she ever would.
No one voted for Theresa May's exit pan now. Despite a White Paper she still has not got one. No one is sure she ever will.
No one voted to leave without knowing the consequences, which must be why the vote was advisory. We still do not know what those consequences are. As such it is reckless to leave, as yet.
No one voted to leave the single market. That was not on the ballot paper.
No one voted to leave the EEA. Again, that was not on the ballot paper.
No one voted then to leave, come what may (or May). Rather they said to our politicians was 'we want to leave, but leave the detail to you'. That has to be true: the detail was not on the ballot paper.
So I accept that we will leave the EU.
But it would be complete and reckless folly to leave without knowing the likely outcome. And as we don't, and as the government will not say, the only possible response to a proposal to trigger Article 50 now is to say no.
That does not mean the response to proposing Article 50 will always be no. It can't be, whether I like it or not.
But it's entirely wrong to presume that because Article 50 must at some point be triggered opposing the way that it is proposed now defies the will of the people. Actually, opposing now is about ensuring that the will of the people is enacted properly and without harm arising as a result. Nothing could be defined as a more appropriate fulfilment of the democratic duty of an MP than that.
And it's a travesty that so many MPs cannot see that.
I mourn the political wisdom we no longer have.
I mourn for the lack of courageous politicians.
I mourn for democracy itself.
I accept 'the will of the people'. But I refuse to believe they wanted their will executed badly. But that is what they will get because we have, on the whole, a feeble political class.
No wonder we are in trouble as a nation.
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Absolutely spot on. Except the spelling. But hoo am eye to tawk!
Sorry – in a mad rush this morning
Let me look again
(Have now done so: it was not good!)
I loved May’s ‘exit pan’in the original post!!!
Something to do with when things get too hot in the kitchen perhaps?
I won’t say where I wrote that one…..
Or what time I started this morning…
Richard – you may be familiar with George Lakoffs work on language and framing, and how ‘liberals’ have fallen into a deliberate trap set by Republicans in the US and to a degree the right in the U.K.. By using their language and terminology and merely responding using the same terms, we reinforce their arguments. Obamacare vs Affordable Healthcare is a perfect example – you never hear it referred to by its proper name, which also describes what it really is and what it delivered. Instead the language pandered to innate racism and hostility to Obama. There are many other examples – check out Lakoff if you’ve not seen his stuff
Similarly, if we accept and keep referring to the so called ‘will of the people’, we are doing the Mail’s job for it. We know that this is only a 1/4 of the UK population and one that has been profoundly lied to, be it about the impacts of immigration or the negative effects on trade and the economy. They certainly did not agree to what we are seeing now, as you yourself have cogently pointed out. As part of building a different narrative, to at the very least ensure the softest of Brexits, we need to stop using their language and use our own. That means consistently framing the social, economic and political sabotage that is Brexit in terms that both undermine it and people can pick up quickly.
Might this lead to vigorous attacks from the Mail and the usual suspects? Yes. And maybe even loud protest from some sections of the populace? Yes. But I’d rather that than the even deeper divisions that we will see when people are inevitably disappointed and those on the right double down and blame migrants and other minorities along with the EU for problems that will absolutely be of their own making. Let’s have the trouble now whilst we still have the chance to make a difference to the outcome. No more of that insidious UKIPish, ‘will of the people’.
Well said
Yes indeed – nevemind the ‘will of the people’ more like the ‘shrill of the people’in my view.
Interestingly the front page of the i is “No instant end to EU migration after Brexit” – something that the Mail didn’t see fit to report anywhere in the paper (just returned from stint in the community shop).
It wouldn’t do to let all those keen Brexit voters know they are not going to get what they want
When that realisation sinks in is when the trouble will really start
I think it may be very slightly but there is some way to go
I could better accept the “will of the people” claptrap if the people were afforded the right to regularly express their will via Referenda. Do we still want a monarchy? Should there be a return to Capital Punishment? Should the House of Lords be abolished, or substantially reformed? This list of things which would attract 100,000 votes on the petition website if that was what was required to trigger a referendum might be quite large. But the truth is, referenda are not part of our way of doing things, and never have been. This particular event is the culmination of a plot which over at least the last twenty years, to demonise the EU, and which has been crystallised through Cameron’s sleazy and ill thought out plan to undermine UKIP, and dissenters in his own Party. The will of the people has nothing to do with this decision. It goes forward because the right wing press hold a large part of the population in its thrall, mainly for reasons related to immigration worries rather than economic concerns, and MPs are frightened of the power generated, which they think threatens their meal tickets.
Agreed DaviR, , and better men than I have have pointed out the insidious nature of referenda
Countering our dominant right wing press, and manipulative use of social media are massive challenges that we have to find away of addressing. It is undermining parliament and our institutions, as well as leading people down the garden path. Though over a cliff might be a better metaphor
So where do we start? Who is doing this already that we could actively support?
Indeed. I think leaving the EU is a bad idea an that the referendum campaign was obscene. I don’t use that word lightly but I was nauseated by the leave campaign and disgusted by the remain campaign. And decision made given the vast amounts of misinformation and uncertainty is unlikely to have been a well informed one.
The future is always uncertain but very much more so since Trump is turning out as every bit as totalitarian as he seemed during the election campaign.
Given that we are leaving the EU we need to go for something like the Norway model. If we don’t like it in a few years then things will be much clearer and we can move on.
People need hope and clearly many people have it as the UK economy is growing. My understanding is that this is fueled almost entirely by consumer borrowing. I worry that this hope is hopeitude (http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-people-need-hope-not-hopeitude-1.2718229) and will vanish.
May’s extreme Brexit is something that existed in the mind of the far right but could never had been sold as a coherent Brexit plan. I feel history is being rewritten; a the hallmark of a totalitarian regime.
I very strongly share your last sentiment
It may be what makes me most worried
Unfortunately there are many people who do believe that the will of the people should be obeyed what should we say to them
What I just wrote
Say you agree
But it has to be done properly and the government is not doing that
Asking it to be done right is not opposing but is instead supporting the will of the people
But that argument while fair in theory is fatally undermined by the fact that the people pushing for it to “be done right” are the same people who previously campaigned hard for Remain.
The Leave voters simply do not believe the remainers are fair or neutral in deciding what “to be done right” actually means………..they rightly think this movement is another attempt to stop Brexit through undermining it!
Only leave campaigners or those previously neutral can push for this soft Brexit deal because no one trusts remainers intentions.
I know you’re easily persuaded by fools
Some of us aren’t
The problem is very few politicians or members of the electorate have any “benchmark” to judge whether the leaving of the EU is “done right.” The fact that the UK’s share of global trade has halved since 1980 and yet the electorate since then has failed to elect any government with any workable strategy to remedy this decline tells us all we need to know about the future outcome of Brexit in relation to the UK economy.
1) that it should be an all party debate that takes place and that once it is triggered:
2)point out that all of the people all of the time can’t be right
) everyone badger their individual and separate MPS to call for a bill introducing proportional representation and banning political campaigning in the final two weeks leading up to the election with an EXTREMELY SEVERE penalty for violations- be introduced, then immediately followed by a general election the minute the dreaded Article 50.is triggered
We should say that it is not the “Will” of the people but the OPINION of 17.5 million people from an electorate of 46.5 million – Robin Stafford is right about how desperately we need to pay attention to language. It was the OPINION of an ill informed public on both sides, most of whom could’nt possibly have have been able to make a rational judgement about all the implications such a choice would entail, especially given the barefaced lies they were told. I would include myself here, as someone with a degree and post graduate qualification and a strong interest in how politics affects our daily lives. I would have to confess that my remain vote was as much with my heart as my head. It is only since the summer, when, ironically, I had to take redundancy from my very busy and stressful post teaching in Further Education, that I have had the time to read and research the wider implications of what it would mean to leave.
Interestingly, I have just come out of the very relevant, film “Denial”,and as Deborah Lisptadt says in the final moments, regarding free speech, people can of course have opinions but if they tell lies they must be held to account.
This “will of the people” mantra (mantra is too benign – “Nuremberg chant” might be more apt), and the related “leave it all to May”, strikes me as being the nationwide equivalent of a married couple who know they want a divorce, but decide to leave the whole settlement up to the divorce lawyers – May’s Government on one side, the EU on the other.
In reality, NO couple would dream of doing that, but would seek to instruct their respective legal teams to get the best settlement they could.
The Referendum result was that, and no more: an instruction to our legal team, which might include even reconciliation, for parties to divorce are encouraged to consider reconciliation; failing that, to consider ADR (alternative dispute resolution), and only in the direst of circumstances, to resort to the Courts and the law.
The “will of the people” chanters want May to embark on an acrimonious lawsuit straightaway, and even more ridiculously, for her not to check back with the litigant spouse, to check whether she is following that litigant’s wishes.
All I can say is, bizarre – like the trial in “Alice in Wonderland”, and “Off with her head”, except for the woeful fact that the “her” is the whole, probably soon to be Disunited, Kingdom.
I have long been a regular reader of this blog and just want to say thanks to Richard and the regular commenters for providing a good read. I am very concerned about the direction we are going in and have just left the Labour Party (which I stayed with in the belief that further destabilising the opposition this country so desperately needs was not the answer) because I simply cannot support a party that is aiding and abetting the destruction of our representative parliamentary democracy from within.
I was very struck by Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech and just how often she used the word ‘I’ – no attempt to hide her hijacking of the referendum result to pursue her own narrow interests. There is an interesting disconnect here: the ‘will of the people’ mantra is clearly being used to hide the fact that the government in fact has no legitimacy for its actions as traditionally understood within the parameters of the UK’s democratic conventions. And yet when the Prime Minister makes key speeches all we hear is ‘I’. ‘I’, ‘I’, not ‘We the people’.
I would second the comments about Lakoffs’ work and the media above and have just read Mark Thompson’s Enough Said, which is an interesting analysis of the media over the years and how perhaps a grim future can be prevented. It is the media and the ‘opposition’ who should be highlighting the ‘I’, ‘We’ disconnect and what it means for our democracy. But I am not feeling very optimistic…
Many thanks
Www have been subject to a coup, without most people even realising
The parliamentary Tory Party is largely composed of business men, accountants, solicitors, financiers, bankers etc..
In their daily life outside of parliament these people would never, ever, advise anyone to act without considering the implications in some detail; the presentation of a credible business plan would be a prerequisite for moving forward.
And yet, faced with the need to determine the financial future of our country, they sign off a blank sheet of paper.
How can one explain this?
Dogmatic folly
The referendum vote was entirely advisory.
What people did (or did not) vote for on 23 June is just one of the pieces of information our elected representatives (in Parliament and in the executive) can interpret as they wish. They can think people did vote to leave the single market, or they can think the people did not do so. It is up to them now.
Parliament has now voted on a Bill to delegate power to the PM to issue the Article 50 notice – something Parliament could have done without the referendum.
The referendum is irrelevant now – Parliament has acted.
What I find puzzling is the Brexiteer argument that 52% to 48% establishes the “will of the people” that must be respected by all who believe in democracy, but that democracy and the democracy and will of the people as expressed in 52% voting for Clinton and 48% voting for Trump should result in the latter becoming President. The will of the Electoral College, maybe, but the will of the people?
Re the “Will of the People”: the precedent was surely set back in 33AD when a Roman colonial administrator offered the choice to the people of which of two should be executed and which should be released. Vox populi, vox dei? the people chose the terrorist Barrabas, while the pacifist carpenter-rabbi was slain in as particularly unpleasant way. History has surely judged that Pontius Pilate was abdicating from his responsibility when he deferred to the popular vote and failed to ensure that justice be served.
I like that
Rees Mogg has been quoted as saying Brexit would be a “wonderful liberation” which even if you subscribe to the debatable view that the EU is an empire that is not based on conquest, says loads about his psychology. I conclude that the current Tories are religious zealots. It is significant that Ken Clarke, now the wrong side of 75, was alone among the Tories to vote against the article 50 bill.
Markets are a religion. Austerity is a religion. Brexit is a religion. They are articles of faith. The facts don’t matter.
So the opposition shouldn’t be accepting the will of the people unless they think the will of the people was for economic suicide — and even worse – with Trump as a senior partner in our rescue.
Brexit doesn’t seem to be as popular as it was and I think holding hands with Trump is likely to make it less so. We’ve got a while to go before it actually happens and in the meantime we have to use ‘economic suicide’ as a riposte to the wonderful liberation.
I do like Andrew Dickie’s lovely divorce comparison (and yes, I’m in favour of reconciliation) but we mustn’t forget that, as Princess Di almost said, there are 28 people in this marriage.
That is either an orgy or a marriage of convenience.
I think either are preferable to being a wallflower holding hands with the towering Mr Trump.
Richard, in the context of this post and any other about Brexit I suggest George Monbiot’s most recent article in The Guardian should be complusory reading. It says more about where Brexit will take us and why than any other article anyone is likely to write (including your sterling efforts).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/02/corporate-dark-money-power-atlantic-lobbyists-brexit
I think his concluding paragraph says it all: In April 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt sent the US Congress the following warning: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.” It is a warning we would do well to remember.
I have no doubt whatsover that this is also the reason why we see the US president and his advisers being so anti EU (just listen to the views of the person he wanted to appoint to the EU post). We may recognise the Eu/EC as an entity that has primarily become a slave of neoliberalism. But to those Monboit discusses in his article it is a powerful bloc of democratic states that can and does still stand up to corporate power. That they can’t abide. As indeed is so much the case with our own government, and most of those on the right.
The corporate state is what we’ve got
Monbiot’s article is terrifying, but isn’t the EU still signing up to CETA?
What if Article 50 is only half the story, and the Inner Cabinet is already conducting a ‘Hard Brexit’ against everything European?
Has anyone here heard of Euratom? Look it up on Wikipedia if you haven’t, it’s the European (not EU) body for nuclear technology, research and safety management.
The scientists and engineers at Culham – a research centre near Didcot that includes a fusion reactor, among other projects – are now in limbo. As are NET and ITER, the commercial demonstration fusion reactors, and all the British people and engineering contracts associated with them.
They are not trivial projects: EurAtom is (or was) a major international research and safety-management organisation and it was critical to the UK’s electricity sector.
We left it a couple of days ago. No announcement in Parliament, and very little media coverage. We’re just… Out. By fiat.
I am pretty sure that there are other mini-Brexits by fiat in the pipeline. Possibly, a few that are done-and-dusted and gone, and I never heard a word of it.
It’s not difficult to foresee a ‘burn everything but their coal’ approach to everything that falls outside the Article 50 process – and a few things that really were inside it but the Brexiteers will do it anyway – taking hold among the headbangers and hardliners.
The ‘hardliners’ being the current cabinet, and I leave you to check them for signs of repeated impacts to the head.
… And the outcome being a de facto Brexit, Article 50 or not, preceding an urgent and determined effort by the EU27 to get Britain out as fast as possible, within the rules that they respect and we, increasingly, do not.
My wife has go quite vexed about the absurdity of Euratom
She’s not a nuclear scientist but in microcosm it seems to symbolise so much that is going horribly wrong
This means that the French and the successors of the Framatome consortium will, within a generation, become Europe’s only designers, builders and operators of nuclear installations – fuel separation and fabrication, reactors, reprocessing, storage, decommissioning.
Friends of mine at Imperial College are involved in restarting the Nuclear Engineering courses – closed down in the 1980’s with the decision to ‘buy in’ Westinghouse Pressurised Water Reactors after the failure of the AGR programme – but it’s not an inviting prospect: the career options are the nuclear weapons industry, or being permitted to manage a plant designed and built by engineers from an advanced country.
… And we’ve shut ourselves out of the market, and the international management structure, of Britain’s pre-eminent nuclear engineering expertise – decommissioning.
Your wife is right to be vexed: and I will reiterate my belief that this is not the last of the non-EU ‘Mini Brexits’.
Nile
I have visited Culham and have spent much time as RAL (Rutherford Appleton Labaratory) also with a Didcot Address as a Particle Physicist (PostDoc at the University of Sheffield and CERN WA69 in the ’80s). There weres issues such as Irish nationals being on EU rates rather than UK citizens on local rates.
Levaing Eurotom is philistineism and antli European Zealotry of the highest order. It is a straw in the wing of what is to come I’m afraid. I’m really so horrified on so many levels it is difficult to know how to start.
Sean Danaher… Now that’s a name I remember. If you went to school with Paddy Regan – now Professor Regan, of the Department of Physics at Sussex University – then we may well be acquainted.
Presumably its because “While Euratom is a separate legal entity from the EU, it is governed by the EU’s institutions.”
But surely we cannot exit it without putting something else in its place?
Apparently we can
Although it would be exceptionally unwise
And so will be exceptionally costly
splitting costs 27 ways has a benefit
“I accept we will be leaving the EU.”
Not necessarily. To do this properly will take years.In the meantime people may change their minds. As the Brexit minister David Davis once wrote “a democracy that cannot change it’s mind ceases to be a democracy.” We could even be into another generation which will need to have their say.
This is why the brexiteers are worried. They need to get this through quickly before people change their minds. That means either a bad brexit or no brexit. If public support for brexit starts to weaken some of our politicians may rediscover their courage. For such a major nation changing event as this 52% is nowhere near stable enough.
Don’t give up hope.
I can change my mind!
I unapologetically do so when the facts change
I treat it as a sign of maturity
I could not agree more but the problem is that people probably vote on perception and not facts.
Changing perceptions is not easy
Whatever you might think about the invocation of article 50, the vote is the most decisive vote in British politics for 100 years with 2 exceptions; 1) Stanley Baldwin getting 52% in the 1931 GE, and 2) ironically enough the vote to join the Common Market in 1975 which won a staggering 67%, and the only ever thing that comes close is the election of our dearly beloved JC, whose even most devoted followers flounce off at the slightest whiff of fake news at his failings.
Anyone daft enough to think they can avoid invoking 50 is indulging in cheap gesture politics, currying favour with their “remain” constituents. That is why there was a 3 line whip, and that is why the first bill had to go unopposed. And so it was except by those willing to embarrass themselves.
The rest is a matter of dust settling; having had the vote Parliament has really nothing to bargain with. Tautology Theresa she might be but Brexit means …. If the White Paper is empty is it empty for the very simple reason we have little to bargain with. It’s not as if we can refuse to accept what the EU offers us, as we have no chips left. The bargaining would really have to have been established before the vote, whilst Cameron was wining and dining or is that whining and dining? We are beggars at the table.
When we go to that table, maybe its time to actually consider what was on the minds of the “Leave” brigade? Possibly much the same that was on the mind of the reluctant “Remainers”. Top of the list will be some guff about loss of jobs, real or imagined; pressure on services real or imagined; and on the gross gravy train of corruption that our appointed and elected “representative” have had the pleasure of mixing their metaphors with their noses in the trough (cite; the Kinnocks champions of socialism).; last but maybe most important the EU has become a neoliberal corporate whore, representing the elites.
For me own part I felt claustrophobic, even dirty, tainted with the George Cross on the day the vote was announced. Welcome to Little Britain, a Britain where the bigots have won. But the EU only as itself to blame. Most people feel let down by it, even many remainers like myself. The age group most enthusiastic to joint the EEC in 1975 are now the very same people 41 years older that perceive the EU to be a failed project.
Hmm – I (reluctantly) voted to leave. I am not a bigot, knuckle dragging racist, or any of the other things people accuse me of, as they are obviously superior. I find these accusations extremely insulting and even Jolyon Maugham has called for this behaviour to stop.
I know this will not ‘make the cut’ but if it does, then the reason I voted leave (deciding at the very last minute) was that:
– I didn’t want our country being effectively run by Tusk & Juncker types
– Their response to cameron’s feeble attempt on reform tells me why that they thought we would never leave so they didn’t need to bother responding properly.
– The EU response to the referendum result just reinforces that (UK must be punished)
– I didn’t want an EU army – as the UK will no doubt have to send thousands of it’s young men to die freeing everyone else from some nonsense they have got themselves into.
– There are lots of other things to do with culture and immigration control where I think the UK should be free to decide whether we want towns in Lincolnshire to be effectively turned into East European enclaves The residents clearly don’t.
What do you mean by Tusk and Juncker types they seem quite reasonable compared with right wing people like Fox May and Johnson and have little involvement in how are country was run
Max, I’m of the view that, until claim and counter claim stops, and people try to work together to make the best of a pretty bad sitation, a terrible outcome awaits us all, Remainers and Leavers alike. If we can work together, there will have to be agreement on whether we rely on facts or alternative facts, unlike those on both sides who made their respective cases, to come up with some effective alternative to that with which we are faced.
With the greatest respect for the despair you evidently feel, any working together simply won’t work if those who blame the EU exclusively for this situation don’t recognise equally the failures of successive governments that have sold us out to big business/neo-liberalism and, worse still, have done so primarily to hang on to power.
We all need to remove the blinkers.
Max
I agree that the EU has its problems and like Nick I feel your frustration but you do not make things better by creating the opportunity for something worse to replace it!
The UK – England – could have got the EU to improve its process by using its MEPs to make friends and allies and push for change whilst a member. It has never done this – preferring instead to stage manage what ever PM is in (usually Tory) as single handedly seeking change for the better – stupid really as the PM does not bloody work in Brussels – but there you go!
The reason for not seeking change in an orchestrated way is that since the 1980’s all political parties in Government in the UK – especially England – have been just as neo-lib as parts of the EU are accused of being by people like yourself.
I also feel (as I have said before) the English commitment to the EU has always been rather lukewarm because of neo-lib tendencies to want markets to be totally free of rights and obligations which is what the EU treaty is all about really.
Oh dear, Max, none of your reasons for leaving seem to to take account of the fact that leaving will make the UK people poorer.
As for an EU army requiring the UK to send thousands of young men to die. On the basis of evidence from the recent past, the EU need do nothing because that is what we have NATO and the US for!
There is very much more immigration control permitted under EU regulations than were ever excercised by our former Home Secretary and now PM. Labour regulations are even now not properly enforced and then the austerity narrative wrongly claimed there was no money when there is and refused to increase spending when population increased.
In short, your vote was against the UK government rather than the EU.
And that government now wants to leave the EU with, as Chaz Wyman indicates, no chips to bargain with.
And that’s another fine mess they’ve gotten us into.
MayP – please don’t tell me why I voted the way I did when I’ve tried to explain it honestly. It was a very close call. All governments since then are responsible for what happened last June (e.g. no transitional arrangements for accession countries in 2004)
In 1975 I voted to stay in the (then) EEC. That’s what I wanted us to be in, maybe with some additional integration in the travel areas (Visa free maybe as we now understand the USA/UK arrangements)
Free movement should have been between equivalent economies. For example UK is around 1350 Euro per month & Romania is 330. Free movement clearly must have put pressure on the lower end of the UK labour market.
Just my opinions, which may help the debate on this blog.
I’m not ready to concede defeat. We should be arguing for a second, confirmatory referendum. A constitutional change of this magnitude should not be decided on a simple majority. In the USA a constitutional amendment requires a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress and then ratification by 3/4 of the individual States.
Nobody knew what we were voting for in June 2016. We should be demanding a confirmatory vote when the Art.50 negotiations are complete. Only then will we truly know what we are voting for.
I agree that we committed an act of the grossest folly
I hope we will recover
Whether we can stop this, I do not know
Do not forget what the referendum about? It was given by Tory Party leader Cameron as an election ploy to get him into power in 2015. There were no mass protests on the streets about the EU. There was disquiet in Tory ranks, mainly pensioners, who were defecting to a single issue immigration party named UKip. In a close election the defections may mean the Tories may lose. Cameron thought the population would never go for it, but would stop the desertion of members from his party, and votes, to UKip. In his mind he had nothing to lose. The population did go for it, by a whisker. The spineless prime minister ran away immediately, resigning from parliament.
BUT! The referendum in reality was a gloried poll. It had no power, not being a binary we are in or out vote. It came out roughly 50-50%. This meant the government was supposed to assess the public mood in a referendum and take this into account in its analysis/assessment. As the referendum was clearly an election ploy, Brexit should have been discarded.
The prime minister ran away with his replacement, May, telling us the referendum was ‘democracy’. Since when has a glorified poll been democracy? The answer is never. Also the party that pushed through Brexit has about two in three of the 2015 election vote (about 75% of the electorate) not wanting them in power. Most do not want them in power. Theresa May, the PM, is shouting about about a glorified poll being democracy.
Both Tory leaders, Cameron and May put their party first over the long term interests of the nation.
If the UK had proper democracy, not a system that gives 100% control to a party with one third of the vote, it is highly unlikely none of this would have happened.