Future determined by 17 million voters

LIKE many Brexiteers, Jayne Isaac (Western Mail, August 2), when articulating her competing argument on this very important subject, tends to base her concluding views on many false premises.

Using emotive terms such as “desperate” and “anti-democratic” to describe Remainers detracts from the rational thinking essentially needed at a time, when in a troubled and austere state, the UK is seeking the best solutions to get us out of this mess.

It can be contended that the UK type of democracy is not an entirely “true” democracy because empirically, a significant proportion of its electorate do not cast a vote.

It perhaps, can be better and more accurately described as a “representative democracy” and by its very nature is ill-suited to resorting to referenda.

To take this further, let’s revisit the raw figures produced as a result of the 2016 Referendum.

Out of an electorate of 46 million plus, Leavers returned a figure of 17 million plus and the Remainers a return of 16 million plus.

Therefore, those who did not cast their vote numbered close to 13 million.

For those genuinely interested in government by democracy they should consider it alarming that such a significant large proportion of the electorate has chosen not to participate in it.

The sobering and glaring figure that emerges is that 17 million voters out of a total of 46 million voters have been allowed to determine such a monumental outcome when in the first place they were not endowed with the sufficient expertise needed to understand the complexities that prevailed in tackling such a perplexing constitutional question. Is this really to be considered the will of the people?

How this large residual proportion of the electorate would have voted will never be known.

But what cannot be ignored is that anecdotally many have stated they did not vote because they did not understand what they were exactly

voting for.

Also, there are 22 countries around the globe who have a system of compulsory voting.

Failure to cast a vote will incur punishment. Among these progressive democratic countries are Australia, Belgium, Luxembourg and Greece.

Therefore, I would contend in contrast to our “representative democracy” that a similar referendum result from such countries would justifiably be more acceptable as a conclusive outcome, thus, obviating the unpleasant and deep division we are now all experiencing as a result of this illfated Referendum.

On the subject of a second referendum, is it not the case that this is exactly what we have already done by holding the second referendum of 2016?

By a Referendum in 1973 we voted, albeit again by a wafer thin majority, to join the EU.

Also, let’s not forget prior to joining the EU, in industrial and trading terms, we had the reputation of being “the sick man of Europe”.

That progressively changed for the better once we became well established into the EU. D Williams Rhoose