Un essai au format d'Ecricome

Proposition : Referendums are often described as the purest form of democracy: instead of trusting their representatives, the people decide for themselves. The United Kingdom has used them to settle its two most divisive constitutional questions of recent decades, Scottish independence in 2014 and membership of the European Union in 2016. Yet the very questions that seem to call for a popular vote may be those a referendum is least able to settle.

Admittedly, a referendum confers a legitimacy that no parliamentary vote can match. When 84.6 per cent of registered voters took part in the Scottish referendum, the result, a 55.3 per cent vote against independence, carried an authority that a vote at Westminster would have lacked. On questions of sovereignty, letting the people decide seems only fair.

However, a binary choice is ill-suited to complex issues. The 2016 ballot asked voters whether to leave the European Union, but not on what terms. The narrow margin, 51.9 per cent to 48.1 per cent, left Parliament to negotiate an outcome that no one had voted for in detail, and the country only left on 31 January 2020, after three and a half years of deadlock. Moreover, a close result does not settle a question so much as freeze a division, since the losing side rarely accepts that the matter is closed.

Referendums are therefore best reserved for clear and simple questions, ideally with a second vote once the terms are known. Used as a substitute for deliberation rather than its conclusion, they may divide a nation more than they unite it.

Décompte : 258 mots, dans les deux fourchettes indiquées par Ecricome (250 mots à 10 % près, 300 à 50 près). Ce qui fait la note. Un plan concessif en deux parties, adapté à la longueur ; une problématique par paradoxe (the very questions… may be those… least able to settle) ; des chiffres exacts, chacun analysé (la participation donne la légitimité, la marge étroite fige la division) ; une conclusion qui répond et propose. Langue : per cent en toutes lettres, décimales à point ; not… so much as ; the very questions ; ill-suited to. Une faute fréquente évitée : a referendum confers et non give (qui serait correct mais plat).