Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Ever since David Cameron took it on himself to prise open Pandora's box and call the E.U. referendum, the only thing that's been predictable has been the utter unpredictability of what has followed.
As a member of the House of Lords, I don't have a vote. If I did, I would be motivated as much by what I don't want as what I do. I do want a Final Say referendum. So I do not want a Johnson majority.
The government should train and direct the people in their acquisition of political knowledge and ability, thereby enabling them to exercise the powers of election, recall, initiative, and referendum.
If you want a referendum, vote for the others. Or, in certain cases, you can stay at home, you don't vote and you could find yourself with a referendum by default because you didn't exercise your vote.
We must have serious dialogue between Catalonia and the Spanish state on a referendum, on independence, and on how a separation from Spain - if that's what the Catalan people choose - would be accomplished.
The E.U. referendum didn't cause divisions, but it certainly did reveal them. Many people are shocked at the result, but they really shouldn't be. What I would like to say to them is, please, don't be afraid.
I did not endorse Trump, because I had condemned President Obama for telling us what to do in our referendum. But I did say that if I was a U.S. citizen, I would not vote for Hillary Clinton even if she paid me.
A Final Say referendum on the Brexit that actually lies in front of us will give everyone a tangible and decisive vote. I and most people, Brexiteers and Remainers alike, want the same thing - the best for the UK.
People talk often of Brexit as the biggest challenge since the Second World War. It is certainly proving to be a lot more difficult and complicated than was promised by those who won the referendum campaign in 2016.
Vote Leave argued during the referendum that a Leave victory should deliver the huge changes that the public wanted and the U.K. should make science and technology the focus of a profound process of national renewal.
People took part in the referendum because they were tired of the war. They are afraid of talking about it out loud, but they have shown exactly where they stand: Yes, we want peace, and we want to be a part of Russia.
What's fascinating about doing comedy about the referendum is, because it is the first time, it is the most extraordinary atmosphere. You find that if you are making jokes about politicians, it becomes intensely political.
One point leavers and remainers agree on is that if there had never been a referendum, and this deal had been proposed as the basis for our country's future, it would have rightly been rejected by parliament and the public.
We have a Conservative leader that believes in green taxes, that won't bring back grammar schools, that believes in continuing with total open-door migration from eastern Europe and refuses to give us a referendum on the EU.
The group For Our Future's Sake will tour key marginal constituencies to ensure first that young people register to vote then, second, that they use that vote tactically to keep their hope of a final Brexit referendum alive.
The reason I say 'never say never' is because I do not think that there should be another independence referendum in Scotland - I do not think it's in their interest - but on the other hand, I am a big believer in devolution.
Imagine what we could achieve if we had more Conservative MEPs in the European Parliament in terms of getting a better deal for Britain and negotiating fundamental reform and putting that in a referendum to the British people.
It's very interesting to me that the nationalist movement in Scotland has become so positive and self-reflective rather than anti-English. The referendum in 2014 was peaceful, for all its deeply and passionately divided people.
As far as I am concerned this referendum should settle the matter. I believe it will one way or another be decisive. Britain will not want to go through this again. On the other hand if we vote to leave, this really is irreversible.
I think Scotland will become an independent country. I've always believed that. It means that if I'm right on that, there has to be another referendum at some stage. But the timing and circumstances of that will require careful judgment.
The Brexit referendum showed us to be divided, and those of us who campaigned for remain have to accept that we lost. But that does not mean that we have to agree to the deal the prime minister has brought back - a deal that satisfies no one.
Some MPs, some very senior civil servants and others, are basically conspiring - and I use the word deliberately - in order to try and prevent us from leaving the E.U. They have never accepted the verdict of the British people in the referendum.
Remember the referendum on the Charlottetown constitutional accord? The more Canada's political and business elites threatened Canadians that the country would disappear into a black hole if the accord weren't passed, the more Canadians opposed it.
Quite simply, without UKIP, there would not have been a referendum. I am convinced that the 'we want our country back, we want our borders back' message that we took across the country on an open-top double decker energised non-voters to back Brexit.
There are tradeoffs between independence and co-operation, between regulatory autonomy and market access. This means that compromises are necessary to deliver a pragmatic Brexit that protects jobs and living standards while respecting the referendum result.
Midterms behave very differently than presidential elections. Midterms, for a federal candidate, often times are a referendum on the president, where in presidential years, voters make two separate choices: one for president and one for a federal officeholder.
The key to stopping the hard-right nationalist forces poised to pounce on Brexit isn't going to be finessing a reprieve for the status quo. It's about actively creating consent for meaningful change, and expanding democratic participation beyond a second referendum.
For months, people have been asking my views about the Scottish independence referendum, and I've been saying, 'It's not my country; I don't live here. Much as I love Scotland, I think it would be inappropriate to express a personal opinion regarding Scottish politics'.
One might have thought that Brexit would be a wake-up call for the American media. Yet, just as in the U.K. referendum, 'Russia' became the buzzword in the U.S. election that the political and media establishments thought would scare people into voting for the status quo.
In Britain ever more, they will realize that Brexit, well, has consequences - economic, commercial, partnerships. Perhaps during the referendum the impression was given that once the Brexit button was pushed everything would take care of itself easily. Well, that is not true.
Think about your friends on the Left - are they tolerant of people who aren't for gay marriage? Or of people who are pro-life? These used to be just political differences, and now they are a referendum on what type of person you are and whether you can be in someone's life at all.
When the Canadian confederation took place in 1867, a lot of people in Quebec said, 'Could we have a referendum?' They said, 'Oh, no. In the British tradition, the Parliament can do anything, excluding changing a man into a woman, and, therefore, no referendum' - and that was that.
Clearly, if it is sensible to hold a referendum on independence, it is crucial that we have one on marriage. It is the only way the country can move forward on this issue. Let all those who have a view on this subject place their trust in the Scottish people and let Scotland decide.
One of the big learnings both out of the referendum, and out of 2017 general election is that parties that don't have a professional network on the ground slightly lose the ability to hear what local people are saying, so we've reestablished our network of campaign managers out in the field.
You see it with Brexit, you see it in Donald Trump's election, you see it with the fact that neither of the main parties ended up in the final round of the French presidential election, you see it with the Italian referendum being defeated, you see it in a lot of ways - the political revolution.
Remember, I'm the guy who didn't want the referendum - I wouldn't have had it if I'd been prime minister. But you have to respect how people voted because this was partly about political alienation, so if the response to political alienation is to ignore it, that's a recipe for more political alienation.
If the states and territories do not sign up to fundamental reform, then my message is equally simple: we will take this reform plan to the people at the next election - along with a referendum by or at that same election to give the Australian Government all the power it needs to reform the health system.
I was one of the actors in 'Braveheart,' and that had a huge impact on the political scene in Scotland. One of the results of that, in 2014 there's going to be a referendum in Scotland as to whether Scotland is going to be independent. A great deal of that was brought to the nation as a result of 'Braveheart.'
As transparency campaigner for more than 10 years, I have long had a sense that something was not quite right about the E.U. referendum. I warned back in November 2017 that the leave campaign seemed to be awash with dark money that may have circumvented rules designed to uphold the integrity of our democratic process.
Why don't we hear more about and from Asians when it comes to race in America? Are Asians the new Invisible Man - there but not there? In some ways, yeah. Blacks and whites are always carping about the metrics of racism. And any conversation about immigration reform is immediately flipped into a referendum on Hispanics.
I don't want to have anyone else as Prime Minister other than David Cameron, and if people spend their time thinking about some of this stuff, then they are getting in the way of two things: one, a fair, open, fact-based referendum debate; and two, the Conservative government continuing afterwards in a stable and secure fashion.
Argentina has elected a centre-right president, Mauricio Macri. Bolivia's Evo Morales, having lost a referendum that would have allowed him a fourth presidential term, spends his time muttering about CIA plots and issuing threats to jail journalists who persist in reporting influence-peddling scandals. The economy is a sputtering shambles.
The U.K. voted for Brexit and a lot of weak-willed, lily-livered people will say 'yeah but the people did not know what they were voting for, they had no idea of what this was going to entail.' Those are the people who are saying 'lets get a second referendum, let's make the people aware this time that there is, in fact, a lot more to this.'