Referendums don't settle things!

Hat tip to Tim Oliver on the Democratic Audit blog for this piece which highlights something that's been bothering me for a while.

When politicians and commentators say referendums will settle an issue 'for a generation' or for any length of time, they're wrong!

The 1975 EEC referendum has always been the example used to back this up. If a referendum happens in 2017 as David Cameron promised then it will have been 42 years between the two votes. But in between those two the issue was anything but 'settled'. In 1983 Labour's manifesto called for immediate withdrawal from the EEC. By the mid 1990s the Conservatives were ripping themselves apart over the issue and despite attempts by the leadership to resist 'banging on about Europe' the PM was forced to commit to a new referendum for exactly the same reason as Harold Wilson was.

Other examples are even less supportive:

• Scotland had a devolution referendum in 1979 which failed because of a turnout technicality (which my Scottish father is still annoyed about). There was then another in 1997 on devolution again, the 2014 independence referendum and, given the SNP surge since that result and the likelihood of hung parliaments for the near future, another one seems pretty likely. Indeed Nicola Sturgeon was very clear that it was only Alex Salmond who promised not to hold another vote, not the SNP as a whole.
• The 2011 Alternative Vote referendum was, obviously, a crushing defeat for change but with a hung parliament expected this year and upwards of four parties obtaining a significant proportion of votes, it's again not unreasonable to expect something to happen in the next parliament. In 2011 retaining the current voting system was clearly in the interests of both the Labour and Conservative parties who, in 2010, accounted for 66% of the vote. Depending on this year's result, that won't be such a sure calculation and it's easy to see the Labour and Tory high commands being tempted by the idea of all those second preference votes from UKIP and Green voters.

With both Scotland and the EU, whatever the result of the referendum the losing side (in both cases, the 'change' side) becomes ever more devoted and agitated. In the aftermath of a vote to stay in the EU, UKIP won't go away, they'll talk about how the media was biased and how the public were duped. They'll go after businesses which opposed their position publicly and campaign outside BBC offices.

Referendums don't settle anything unless they result in a decisive change to the status quo. For the losing side they're just a hurdle that can be overcome next time. Because there will be a next time.