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It was the first nationwide referendum to be held for some thirty six years and was legislated for under the provisions of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and is to date the first and only UK-wide referendum to be held on a domestic issue. Turnout was low ...
The Act brought together two different constitutional aims of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition: . The Liberal Democrats had long promoted an alternative to first-past-the-post elections [3] and so the Act legislated for the holding of a national referendum on whether to introduce the Alternative Vote system for the UK Parliament in all future general elections.
Referendums had been widely opposed in the past, on the grounds that they violated the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. The first major referendum (i.e. one covering more than one local government area) to be held in any part of the UK had been the sovereignty referendum in Northern Ireland in 1973. [10]
The European Union Referendum Act required a referendum to be held on the question of the UK's continued membership of the European Union (EU) before the end of 2017. It did not contain any requirement for the UK Government to implement the results of the referendum. Instead, it was designed to gauge the electorate's opinion on EU membership.
Many local elections were also held on this day. The referendum concerned whether to replace the present "first-past-the-post" system with the "alternative vote" (AV) method and was the first national referendum to be held across the whole of the United Kingdom in the twenty-first century. The proposal to introduce AV was rejected by 67.9% of ...
Long title: An Act to establish an Electoral Commission; to make provision about the registration and finances of political parties; to make provision about donations and expenditure for political purposes; to make provision about election and referendum campaigns and the conduct of referendums; to make provision about election petitions and other legal proceedings in connection with elections ...
MPs declared EU Referendum stances. Of the 650 MPs in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom 637 had declared their voting intention before the June poll.158 declared for Leave and the remaining 479 declared for Remain. Of the 158 pro-Brexit MPs 138 were Conservative, 10 Labour, 9 Ulster Unionists and 1 UKIP.
On 29 October 2004, the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw ruled out holding a referendum in 2005 as this would have coincided with the UK holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. [4] He said that the referendum would be held in early 2006, providing Labour were re-elected in the 2005 general election.