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I doubt I am the only person that is frustrated and a bit perplexed by the current deadlock we are seeing in the UK parliament regarding Brexit. My question is: there appears to be a fairly well-defined list of possible options that are available:

  1. Accept the current deal being offered by the EU
  2. Continue to push and negotiate for a better deal (implying an extension to Article 50)
  3. Leave with no deal ("hard Brexit")
  4. Hold a second referendum and put the question back to the people
  5. Unilateral withdrawal of article 50

So, why can't parliament simply hold a vote on these options and go with whichever one gains the most votes (even if it is a plurality, rather than a majority)?

The deadlock seems to stem (at least in part) from the fact that each individual option requires the agreement of the majority to be put into effect, yet there is no majority agreement on any of the available options. So, why not break the deadlock by plurality?

Edit: Is there any procedural reason why such a plurality vote could not be held in the House of Commons?

smci
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Time4Tea
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    Update: something like this is actually happening, although with non-binding votes. It uses paper ballots, which I think may be unprecedented in Parliament? https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1110565857372110853 – pjc50 Mar 26 '19 at 15:55
  • @pjc50 maybe they read my question ;-) – Time4Tea Mar 27 '19 at 12:27

6 Answers6

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Unfortunately for your idea, the core voting mechanism in Westminster (and the only one which is viewed as acceptable for legislation) requires a yes/no question and a binary vote. Indeed the voting actually occurs by travelling down corridors on either side of the debate lobby. Your options 1 and 4 require such a vote (for option one, a somewhat specific motion needs to pass to ratify the deal, while for option four several votes on the bill to create a second referendum would need to pass).

In principle options 2 or 3 could proceed through plurality if the House chose, since leaving with no deal is the default position if nothing else happens and since extending the date only requires there not to be a majority against such an action (and it's already known that there is majority in favour of requesting an extension).

In fact there have been several proposals to call a series of "indicative", non-binding votes along the lines of what you propose, which could conceivably form a consensus around the most popular option, but that still doesn't mean that an option the majority would vote down has much chance (excepting option 3 which could essentially happen by accident at this point.)

origimbo
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    (excepting option 3 which could essentially happen by accident at this point.) Ironically, that is the only of the four options MPs could agree they don't want. – JJJ Mar 20 '19 at 16:23
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    @JJJ At one point or other options 1 and option 4 have met that standard. Both rather heavily. – origimbo Mar 20 '19 at 16:25
  • Yes, but no-deal is the only option they voted for not wanting. The other options they just voted away. – JJJ Mar 20 '19 at 16:28
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    @JJJ is there a difference between voting that you do not want something and not voting that you do want it? – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 17:08
  • @Time4Tea yes, you have to actually take action for the outcome you do want, especially after having already sent out an Article 50 two years ago – pjc50 Mar 20 '19 at 17:09
  • This is an interesting answer, thanks. But, couldn't MPs in theory vote in favour of a bill that would allow a binding plurality vote between more than two options (effectively overriding the core voting mechanism)? I guess I'm surprised there hasn't more talk about such an option, given the predicament we seem to be in. – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 17:10
  • @Time4Tea (re your earlier comment) I think it depends on the type of vote. If you vote for something (even if that says we shall not do X) it might make a law. Voting something away means a bill doesn't pass and isn't made into law. So a bill that didn't pass is as if it doesn't exist (unless for the purposes of bringing the bill up again and again), however, a bill that does pass exists in the record (e.g. as a law). – JJJ Mar 20 '19 at 17:12
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    @Time4Tea In theory parliament can do anything except irrevocably binding the hands of a future parliament. In practice it's very unlikely a parliament would move to allow statute to be created by a minority of its members, due to the unfortunate precedent it would create. – origimbo Mar 20 '19 at 17:26
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    @Time4Tea Note that matters of procedure are normally dealt with by changes to the Commons standing orders, not by legislation. The house can do this by a simple majority vote, and changes can be permanent or for a defined amount of time. The most common form of this is for specified standing orders to be suspended for a particular motion before the house. – Steve Melnikoff Mar 20 '19 at 17:56
  • For the record, there's a long tradition of MPs voting in both lobbies for .... reasons. – Valorum Mar 21 '19 at 20:22
  • So you had a yes/no vote on leaving the EU. But now what? Dictate your terms or come to an agreement? And who's going to agree with whatever agreement? No is an easy answer but prepare to what you say no to. – Paul Palmpje Mar 21 '19 at 21:13
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Plurality votes are notoriously open to manipulation. Let's say you are proposing something unpopular, such as a 10% tax increase. Only 40% of MPs support it.

In a plurality vote you can get the measure passed by creating two artificial alternatives - one leave taxes the same, and one to cut taxes by 10%. If half of those opposed to the measure vote each way, then the tax increase has the most votes and will pass.

No legislative assembly I am aware of uses plurality votes, at least partly for this reason.

DJClayworth
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  • I think this is a good point. I can see that issues around who gets to decide what question is asked and which options are presented could be quite contentious. Although, it seems to me that in the current situation, a decision has to be made one way or another between a certain number of quite well-defined options. It is really a 'fork in the road', where one path has to be chosen over the others. In that way, I think it is dissimilar to your tax increase example. – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 20:33
  • More extremely the government could propose 10 quite similar Brexit deals and vote on all of them together so that each one gets less than the 15% of MPs who actually want a no-deal Brexit. – DJClayworth Mar 20 '19 at 20:43
  • I think part of the problem is that the UK is in a situation where a decision has to be made between a selection of options, none of which has the majority backing of MPs. So, unless a large number of MPs can be swayed, a majority decision on any of the options may simply not be possible. I agree that a majority decision would be preferable, but if it can't be done, then perhaps a plurality decision would be the next best thing. This is a crisis situation, and unless a decision is made somehow, the default option is going to be a hard brexit. – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 20:49
  • If MPs agreed with you they would all vote to approve the option with the highest number of votes. If MPs don't agree with you then using this strategy would be imposing a path on them against their will, which is a bad thing to be doing to your legislature. – DJClayworth Mar 20 '19 at 21:00
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    Also, let's be clear THERE IS NO DEADLOCK. If nothing is passed then there is a very clear and perfectly simple way forward and it's a no-deal Brexit. Maybe not good, but clear and simple. – DJClayworth Mar 20 '19 at 21:02
  • That is precisely my point. If a majority decision cannot be found, MPs will end up having a result imposed on them against their will anyway (which they voted to reject under all circumstances). Is that really better than holding a plurality vote and going with the option that has the most support? – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 21:07
  • MPs believe so, or they would have voted for it. – DJClayworth Mar 20 '19 at 21:07
  • MPs have not had a chance to vote for the plurality solution I proposed. Also, I believe your earlier comment was incorrect (re. 15%). On March 14th, MPs voted by only a margin of 4 to reject a no-deal under any circumstances. – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 21:13
  • This answer gave me a deja vu feeling from back in 2010 when the Alternative Vote referendum was taking place :) – Tasos Papastylianou Mar 21 '19 at 08:45
  • Instant Runoff Voting would be the solution to this but it seems like the UK doesn't want that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting – Eric Nolan Mar 21 '19 at 10:23
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    I'm not sure it's correct to say no-deal would be imposed on MPs against their will. Invoking Article 50 involved accepting that unless a deal was agreed within two years, a no-deal Brexit would occur. This is what they agreed to. The fact that everyone is in denial about it now, and voting pointlessly against no deal instead of coming up with a workable actual plan doesn't change that – Mohirl Mar 21 '19 at 13:07
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    You say that plurality votes can be manipulated by splitting one of the camps but that's just as true of binary votes. For example, the 1999 referendum in Australia asked "Should we become a republic in this specific way, or stay as a constitutional monarchy?" This led to some republicans voting for the status quo because they didn't like the specific kind of republic being offered (the president would have been appointed by parliament, rather than directly elected by the people). – David Richerby Mar 21 '19 at 14:23
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    @DavidRicherby nod, but there is no way to implement "we will become a Republic in a non-specific way". You'll always end up with a specific Republic. This is exactly the Brexit problem; they voted "for Brexit" but refuse to vote for any specific Brexit. – Yakk Mar 21 '19 at 15:40
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    @Yakk It would have been perfectly possible to have a straight up yes/no vote on becoming a republic, and then a second vote on exactly what kind of republic. Brexit is somewhat different, because the UK can't unilaterally choose how that is implemented. – David Richerby Mar 21 '19 at 15:44
  • @DavidRicherby And if nobody prefers the republic you transition to more than they prefer the status quo, why is that change justified? :) – Yakk Mar 21 '19 at 15:46
  • There is only one possibility: victory, defeat or a draw. For that politicians don't always need to have an absolute majority behind them, sometimes 51 percent is enough. And the chances for such a success currently are 50:50, or even 60:60. Sometimes the Brexiters loose, somtimes the others win. – LаngLаngС Mar 21 '19 at 16:23
  • @EricNolan I think Instant Runoff would be a great solution. – Time4Tea Mar 21 '19 at 18:07
  • @Time4Tea, IRV isn't exactly perfect either, it can kill middle-ground/compromise solutions in the early stage if they're e.g. a second choice for many, but the first choice for few. The Tennessee example in the wikipedia page above mentions some other criteria which IRV fails. – ilkkachu Mar 21 '19 at 21:51
  • Can we take this to chat? – DJClayworth Mar 21 '19 at 22:57
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There is quite simply no mechanism in Parliament for a plurality vote among more than two options to exist. In order to have a plurality vote you would need to first pass a bill change to the Commons standing orders creating that mechanism, and the majority against the best predicted result would most like vote that bill down.

But even that might not work. The very next thing brought to vote might well be a binding vote to specifically cast down the result chosen from the plurality vote, and will have a majority backing that, so down it goes. There may or may not be procedures that would suffice to block this from coming to a vote, but blocking something with a known outcome from reaching the floor doesn't look like a democracy anymore.

Joshua
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  • Couldn't this be addressed by simply making the plurality vote binding, and including in the bill that sets it up a clause stating that parliament cannot simply pass a bill to undo it straight afterwards, at least within the current session? – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 20:39
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    @Time4Tea: My understanding of Parliamentary sovereignty is that it is utterly impossible for an act of Parliament to bind Parliament such that can't be undone with the very next binding vote. – Joshua Mar 20 '19 at 20:47
  • It seems that Parliament is able to vote to give away its own sovereignty. After all, the UK has voted to concede many powers to the EU over the years. Also, the deal that has currently been agreed would apparently make it legally impossible for the UK to withdraw from the arrangement at a later date (which is one of the things MPs are so unhappy about, as it would seem to amount to a loss of sovereignty). – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 20:56
  • @Time4Tea: You are now asking whether or not breaking a treaty is something Parliament can do. – Joshua Mar 20 '19 at 21:30
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    @Time4Tea They may have conceded away some powers, but as this whole mess shows, not irrevocably. – Frank Hopkins Mar 20 '19 at 22:21
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    "There is quite simply no mechanism in Parliament for a plurality vote...In order to have a plurality vote you would need to first pass a bill". That's not true, for two reasons: (1) Matters of procedure are normally dealt with by changes to the Commons standing orders, not by legislation. Any changes can be permanent, for a limited time, or limited to a specific motion. (2) Other forms of voting are not alien to the House of Commons. In particular, the election of Speaker uses a form of exhaustive ballot. – Steve Melnikoff Mar 20 '19 at 22:26
  • @SteveMelnikoff: If a change to the Commons standing orders requires a majority vote to pass, the meaning of my answer is not changed. – Joshua Mar 20 '19 at 23:01
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    " blocking something with a known outcome from reaching the floor doesn't look like a democracy anymore." Welcome to the US Senate. – AShelly Mar 20 '19 at 23:30
  • @AShelly: Turns out that's easily breakable, but the backlash cost is far too high. It wasn't called the Nuclear Option for nothing. – Joshua Mar 20 '19 at 23:36
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    @Time4Tea No, parliament has not voted to give away its own sovereignty. The current deal would make it impossible for the UK to withdraw without breaking an international treaty. Parliament has sovereignty to choose to break treaties (although it very rarely does so). – Martin Bonner supports Monica Mar 21 '19 at 11:42
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There is no reason why these options could not be put to Parliament in series.

The House of Commons works by having the government propose motions that can be passed or rejected. Motions are allocated time to be debated and other MPs can propose amendments. Finally a series of votes on the amendments and finally on the motion (amended or otherwise) are held.

The problem is that on all but one day a year only the government gets to decide which motions are going to be voted on. And the government is mostly controlled by the Prime Minister, and Mrs May only wants one outcome: her deal is accepted.

As such it's extremely difficult to get votes on the other options. The best hope is for amendments to be accepted supporting those options, but even then the Speaker of the House gets to decide which amendments will be put to the vote so it's not always automatically possible to have them attached to a government motion.

So it's entirely possible, just very unlikely due to Theresa May.

Steve Melnikoff
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user
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    "on all but one day a year only the government gets to decide which motions are going to be voted on": that's not true; it's 20 days per session. – Steve Melnikoff Mar 20 '19 at 17:58
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    Putting options in a series is exactly what the government was doing this last couple of weeks. – DJClayworth Mar 20 '19 at 20:01
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    @DJClayworth there were amendments to block things like a no-deal crash out, and a few in favour of certain things but they failed due to the way they were presented and whipping. What has been suggested is a series of free votes, non-binding but indicative. – user Mar 21 '19 at 08:55
  • @DJClayworth Is it? As far as I can tell the government have only brought two options to the house: "this deal" (more than once) and "not no deal on March 29th". Backbench amendments have forced votes on some other options, but that's really not the same thing. – Chris H Mar 21 '19 at 12:29
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So, why not break the deadlock by plurality?

As of now, the British government is no longer in deadlock. There has already been a vote on all of the listed options except for option #5 and only the second option (asking for an extension) managed to receive more than 50% of the votes. Thus Theresa May asked for a three month delay on March 20th, currently pending approval by the European Council. Holding a plurality vote would be redundant as no other option had more than 50% of the MPs support.

In three months time (presuming the EU will grant the UK an extension), Parliament will again have to choose between the options, but this time asking for an extension would no longer be possible.

JonathanReez
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    What you say is true. However, option 2 is only a temporary solution and will run out of steam eventually (a decision will have to be made). At that point, we will be back in this situation, with option 2 no longer on the list. – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 18:15
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    Isn't the extension just pushing the problem forward? It's not like extending solves the issues at hand, if anything it adds problems when it conflicts with the EU elections. Indeed, the UK will still need to make a plan for what they will do during that extension.. – JJJ Mar 20 '19 at 18:15
  • @JJJ it is pushing the problem forward, however its technically a way out of the deadlock. In three months time the Parliament will have to choose between the remaining 4 options. – JonathanReez Mar 20 '19 at 18:18
  • @Time4Tea it is temporary, but it is a solution. It was one of the options on the table and it was picked by Parliament. – JonathanReez Mar 20 '19 at 18:19
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    The EU replied that it won't approve an extension without a deal being approved in Westminster: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47636011 So there won't be any no-deal extensions, in all likelihood. – the gods from engineering Mar 20 '19 at 18:28
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    The reason that the OP is suggesting a plurality vote (where something can pass without a majority) is because no course of action has support of a majority. However as others have pointed out, plurality vote has its problems too. This is what Ranked Choice (instant runoff) voting was designed for. But that’s unlikely to happen either. – Alex Mar 20 '19 at 22:48
  • @Alex I think Instant Runoff is possibly an even better suggestion than my plurality vote idea. I like it! – Time4Tea Mar 21 '19 at 18:05
  • @Fizz no short-term extension. A longer extension is also on the table, should the UK choose to share its special day with the long standing April Fools' day. – JJJ Mar 30 '19 at 01:57
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Let's say the government proposes this and this vote is carried out. Then a majority of MPs are getting something they don't want (otherwise that outcome could be passed as a normal vote by simple majority). In particular, the government may get an outcome it doesn't want, the majority of parliament doesn't want but would have to carry it out (well, that would be part of the earlier proposition of this system, otherwise the vote would be meaningless). This isn't ideal.

Aside from that, those options aren't a one-time thing. These actions have consequences and once you choose an option, you have to follow through:

  1. For example, if you accept the current deal, many laws will have to be passed (which requires a majority, again).

  2. If they decide to keep on negotiating the impasse isn't broken, they will just have one more option if a new deal is negotiated, but there may be no majority for that one either.

  3. Leaving without a deal is like opening Pandora's box, it's not something that solves all existing problems, instead many more choices (e.g. what will be the policy on allowing EU citizens coming to the UK? How are goods coming in checked?) will have to be made and that requires a majority in parliament to do so.

  4. A second referendum also doesn't help if there is no majority in favour of it. In the proposed plurality vote, do MPs commit to respecting the outcome? Even if that means disrespecting the current referendum outcome? If the outcome is to leave without a deal, what instructions does that give the parliament / government with regards to the previous point?

All in all, it's not that easy. And if MPs do decide they want to work together to get a certain outcome, they can just do that. They wouldn't need the plurality vote. For example, the leaders over the parties could meet, decide an outcome, whip their MPs and don't care about a few people not voting with their decision. Obviously, the problem is that the parties aren't willing to compromise in such a controlled setting, they're not going to allow a vote (for which they don't really know the outcome) and then magically decide to respect that.

JJJ
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  • I see what you are saying; however, the more possible options there are available in a given situation, the smaller the chance will be of finding a majority agreement on any particular one (because the vote is being split more and more). In that case, to me, a system that relies on a majority vote seems a little inappropriate. Is there anything in UK Parliament procedure that would prevent such a plurality vote being held, in principle? – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 16:17
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    @Time4Tea I am not that familiar with the system, but I think they could agree to hold the vote and agree* to uphold the outcome. The problem is, parliamentarians won't be likely to do that. *I'm not sure to what extent they can agree, I think there's no problem with just agreeing, but it's probably difficult to make that agreement binding by law (though that might be a different question). – JJJ Mar 20 '19 at 16:22
  • "laws will have to be passed": the bill that authorized Article 50 also authorised ministers to make whatever changes to post-EU law they require through the statutory instrument mechanism. Yes, that's a terrible amount of power to transfer away from Parliament. – pjc50 Mar 20 '19 at 16:49
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    @Time4Tea normally there's no problem with not having a majority to do anything; the status quo prevails and nothing changes. Belgium managed without a government at all for about 500 days a few years ago. However, there was a majority for Article 50 two years ago. That gets us here. Like parking your car on a railway crossing, doing nothing does not mean status quo, it means getting hit by a train. – pjc50 Mar 20 '19 at 17:11
  • @pjc50 I think this a good point, which I think reinforces my point, that a majority voting system is simply not suitable for resolving the current crisis. If there is no majority agreement on any of the options, and enough MPs cannot be convinced to back one option, then we either defer to a plurality vote or we get hit by the train. – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 17:27
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    @Time4Tea In any system which purports to be a democracy, you can't fix problems by making one-off changes to the rules. If it is clear that elected representatives don't actually "represent" anything beyond whatever they feel like doing on an ad hoc basis, that is a bigger political problem than a disorderly exit from the EU. – alephzero Mar 20 '19 at 18:09
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    @alephzero why not, if a majority of representatives are willing to support such a one-off, exceptional deviation? That would seem fairly democratic to me. – Time4Tea Mar 20 '19 at 18:12
  • @Time4Tea Why would MPs who didn't support the 'plurally popular' option vote to change the rules. If they were willing to give up on their preferred option to compromise on the most individually popular then they would do so in the current system. – Mark Perryman Mar 21 '19 at 15:09
  • @MarkPerryman How would MPs know which is the most individually popular option, unless a plurality vote were held? – Time4Tea Mar 21 '19 at 18:06
  • @Time4Tea Because canvassing the opinions of MPs before votes is usually pretty good. To seriously break the deadlock and come to a parliamentary compromise, needs a series of votes with the least popular option eliminated at each step, ending with a straight choice between the two remaining options. – Mark Perryman Mar 22 '19 at 09:14