Yes, there really needs to be some margin for really big and costly changes. One of the main reasons for Brexit being such a clusterfuck was that, once the going got tough, majority support evaporated and the exit was pushed through by what was effectively a minority government at that point, with parliament trying to make their lives as difficult as possible. It could have been less painful overall if there had been more robust agreement to go ahead with it, and therefore some degree of cooperation. Maybe 2/3 majority is overkill, but a 60-40 split should be a requirement for serious changes to the future of a country.
> once the going got tough, majority support evaporated
It's likely that majority support would have evaporated as soon as any leave deal was reached. No deal would have satisfied all the different reasons people voted leave.
Indeed; no deal (including the "no deal" option of leaving with no deal, and also the option of having another referendum) was acceptable to Westminster, which was why May was forced to leave office.
Only Johnson was able to cut that Gordion Knot, albeit by lying to people to their face.
To be fair, Parliament forced a delay from Oct 2019 to Jan 2020, to ensure that there was some sort of agreement in place. And then it passed because there was a one-year transitionary period until Jan 2021 during which the UK stayed in the single market.
And now we've voted in a PM who promises building closer ties with the EU. And eventually the generation that rabidly voted to leave will disappear. Progress marches on slowly.
I live in hope that I will see the UK, or its constituent countries, return to the EU; but events may overtake such dreams, and it would be sensible for the EU to require a supermajority of the candidate nations to be in favour of joining, just to reduce the chances of things like Brexit from happening in the future.
Yeah. I'm astonished that people aren't looking at the EU and AV referendums and thinking that we need to drastically overhaul how we conduct them in future. Guidelines have been published with some pretty obvious improvements, like the sitting government not campaigning for one side.
