>"But David Cameron went into the 2010 election with a manifesto commitment to repeal the 1998 Human Rights Act. A lack of an overall majority prevented him from doing so. But Home Secretary Theresa May reiterated the promise to scrap the act at the party conference last year."
This gives me a flashback to when statisticians found that the number one issue that predicted whether or not a Brit voted for Brexit was their opinion on the death penalty: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36803544
Assuming the predictive link goes the other way, does this mean that a referendum on the death penalty would be somewhat likely to go in favour of reinstating it?
Shortly before the EU Referendum, support for remaining commanded a similarly small majority but then lost. Those supporting Leave ran a more effective campaign, including making use of data gathered online, targeted advertising via Facebook, and mostly emotional arguments. So I would be very concerned if a referendum were to be held on capital punishment.
MPs of all parties are overwhelmingly against reintroduction and there is no chance of it passing in a free vote in the House of Commons.
If that referendum were to be held in simple yes/no terms it would be a mess for exactly the same reason as Brexit - all the 'yes' voters would be voting based on a different understanding of the outcome.
(Note this is far from the only reason why Brexit is a mess).
I remember that at the time, people were saying that leave and remain were running equally distasteful and underhanded campaigns. Now they're saying that Remain was worse. I think the memory might be getting socially Orwell'd.
The "remain" campaign operated the same playbook as during the Scottish Indyref: talking up the economic disadvantages, threatening a hard border between England and Scotland, and so on. This was successful in that campaign - but at the same time it got labelled "Project Fear". So in the Brexit referendum any suggestion that car plants would close etc got dismissed as "Project Fear".
Remain was nowhere near as dishonest as Leave, especially if you look at what the Electoral Commission said. Not to mention the two contradictory Leave campaigns.
> people were saying that leave and remain were running equally distasteful and underhanded campaigns
I don't know who was saying it? I think everyone can agree (even the courts) that Leave campaigning was far more underhanded both in terms of veracity and in terms of legality.
> they're saying that Remain was worse
Worse in terms of less effective and less emotionally appealing, yes. Again that is fairly universally acknowledged.
This gives me a flashback to when statisticians found that the number one issue that predicted whether or not a Brit voted for Brexit was their opinion on the death penalty: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36803544