Talk:Parliamentary votes on Brexit

Requested move 9 April 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved. See general agreement below to rename this article; however, there is little agreement as to what title to use. The requested title received the most support, while other suggested titles were also supported, such as Meaningful Vote and United Kingdom parliamentary votes on Brexit. In accord with the closing instructions, "...while consensus has rejected the former title (and no request to bring it back should be made lightly), there is no consensus for the title actually chosen. If anyone objects to the closer's choice, they may make another move request immediately, hopefully to its final resting place." Kudos to editors for your input, and Happy Publishing! (nac by page mover) Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  16:59, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

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Meaningful vote → Parliamentary votes on Brexit – Although the original move is disputed, the mover raised a good point that this page is not only about "meaningful vote", but also included other votes like amendable motion and indicative votes. — 158.182.173.246 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.  158.182.173.246 (talk) 06:04, 9 April 2019 (UTC)--Relisting. B dash (talk) 13:06, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose The story of how we got the meaningful vote is a story in itself, to have one and when it should take place. This is actually an argument in favour of removing the stuff about the amendable motions and indicative votes and putting it into the Brexit withdrawal agreement. I've already moved the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019 to its own article and I tried (in vain) to keep all this non-MV stuff to a minimum and a sub-topic to prevent this article turning into a skip diff and diff. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 12:12, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support WP:NPOV policy says that we don't use loaded terms like 'Meaningful' Unibond (talk) 14:29, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

That's already been settled at this RfC. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 17:04, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support I think we should start with good article organisation, and then pick relevant names, rather than shaping content to fit the existing names. Where once we'd all expected a single meaningful vote, the Parliamentary process has metastasized. There has been a series of additional votes. Where appropriate, this content can be spun off into separate articles, as The Vintage Feminist thankfully did with European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019. However, I believe most of the indicative votes fit better here: reliable sources have talked about them in the context of getting a meaningful vote passed, with a very common comparison being made between the several MVs and the indicative votes in terms of numbers voting for and against. It makes sense to have this material in one article. Given that, we then need a name for the article and while I was in favour of "meaningful vote" as a name previously, now the article does cover more than that, we need a different name. So, I support a move to "Parliamentary votes on Brexit". Bondegezou (talk) 15:07, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

The problem with that is eventually someone says, "Gosh this 'Parliamentary votes on Brexit' article has become quite big we should spin off the 'meaningful vote' bit to its own article." Surely it would be better to have a section on 'Parliamentary votes' within Brexit withdrawal agreement with all the indicative votes with a link to "Main - meaningful vote" and then on "meaningful vote" reduce the extraneous indicative votes and motions. Ahead of the third MV Theresa May promised to resign sooner if it were passed. In years to come when students will do their PhDs on the MV. I don't think that it should be subsumed this way, it would only be a matter of time before someone says, "Do we need all that history of how the MV came into existence?" which would lessen how notable the conflict on getting it passed was. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 16:51, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, someone can come along and say anything they want, and I'd say that would be an inadvisable split of the article. We have a set of votes that RS tend to talk about together, so let's have them all in one article. It's one 'story', albeit a complicated and long one. I agree with you that we need to keep all the history of how the MV came into existence, yes, but that history is also the history of how we ended up with the indicative votes as well. It all goes together.

Obviously, as the situation continues to unfold, I reserve the right to change my opinion depending on what happens next! Bondegezou (talk) 17:49, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose, Support votes being moved. I Agree with The Vintage Feminist here, the additional votes stuff (including indicative votes) really should just go into the Brexit withdrawal agreement article instead. As it is part of a bigger picture than just the "meaningful vote", which is actually well described throughout the remainder of this article. - Wiz9999 (talk) 21:08, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support renaming, per Bondegezou. It makes total sense to keep the votes on the WA (i.e. the meaningful votes) together with the indicative votes, and hence the term "meaningful vote" is not descriptive anymore. ― Heb the best (talk) 09:09, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
• Comment I think that all this has been superceeded by Wiz9999 post below: Talk:Meaningful vote#Split Off Votes --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 15:30, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Why? If consensus is not to split off votes, then we still need to consider the proposed re-naming. Bondegezou (talk) 15:45, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: If this page is proposed to move to United Kingdom parliamentary votes on Brexit, I would like to support. Here are the reasons: 1. We should clearly know which country or region's parliament votes on Brexit from the title, so "United Kingdom" should be added to the title. 2. This article is about United Kingdom parliamentary votes on Brexit withdrawal agreement (so-called meaningful vote) and the alternative scenarios of the Brexit withdrawal agreement (so-called indicative vote). In conclusion, this article is about United Kingdom parliamentary votes on Brexit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2409:8900:1B12:DD1E:3FF0:B204:345F:38BD (talk) 08:46, 14 April 2019 (UTC) — 2409:8900:1B12:DD1E:3FF0:B204:345F:38BD (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Oppose, Support votes being moved. I also agree with The Vintage Feminist here, same reasons as Wiz9999. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:47, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support rename to something. At least capitalise to Meaningful Vote. It reads an ambiguous as something from voting theory. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:59, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support anything by the same reasoning as SmokeyJoe. The title is going to create false expectations for readers unfamiliar with the topic once Brexit inevitably ends up resigned to the annals of history. Daß Wölf 23:58, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Split Off Votes

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I propose to Split the Meaningful vote#Votes section out from this article and merge it into the Brexit withdrawal agreement#Votes section, as that is a much more suitable location for the majority of this information rather than proceeding with renaming this article (or merging it in its entirety into Brexit withdrawal agreement). The initial sections of Meaningful vote go into great detail about the background of this PM backed "Meaningful vote" process and would not be appropriate within the Brexit withdrawal agreement article.
However, it would also be debatable if the votes on the three(/four?) "meaningful votes"/"votes on withdrawal agreement" should also go along with the rest of this split section.
Please discuss below, and indicate your overall view on the split with "Oppose", "Support, All Votes", or "Support, Only Other Votes" - Wiz9999 (talk) 23:10, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support, Only Other Votes As per my intro. - Wiz9999 (talk) 23:10, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support, Only Other Votes but I think intros should include wikilinks to MV e.g. in the section "Vote on "motion in neutral terms" (29 January 2019)" - Following the government's defeat in the [[Meaningful vote#First "meaningful vote" (15 January 2019)|first meaningful vote]] Section 13 of the 2018 Act required that the government put down a motion... etc. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 01:44, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Why split the background to why Parliament got to vote on the matter from the actual votes? All the votes, the several "meaningful votes" and the indicative votes, flow from those same decisions that this had to be decided from Parliament. They are all related to each other, all one story. Reliable sources talk about them together, e.g. comparing the votes for/against in the indicative votes to the meaningful votes. Leave everything together. Also, putting the indicative votes into the Brexit withdrawal agreement article makes little sense when the indicative votes have often not been about the Brexit withdrawal agreement, but have been about alternative possible agreements, or about doing without any agreement, or about the process (e.g., having a second referendum). Bondegezou (talk) 07:50, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose split. The WA is a result of a UK/EU negotiation, while the votes is an internal UK thing. We should be careful not to mix those together. The process in the HoC is so involved, that it deserves its own article, i.e. this one. Also, if we were to split the votes out, I would argue that this page should either be renamed to something like "Section 13 of European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018", or just be merged into the article on that act. The term "meaningful vote" now have a stronger connotation to the actual votes than the process by which the holding of such votes were agreed, so should redirect to wherever the votes are talked about. ― Heb the best (talk) 09:22, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
• Suggestion Create an article "Parliamentary votes on Brexit" and put the non-meaningful vote stuff there with intros (as I described above) that include wikilinks to MV e.g. in the section "Vote on "motion in neutral terms" (29 January 2019)" - Following the government's defeat in the [[Meaningful vote#First "meaningful vote" (15 January 2019)|first meaningful vote]] Section 13 of the 2018 Act required that the government put down a motion... etc. The issue here is the subsuming / watering down of the significance of MV rather than where the non-MV stuff goes. MV1 was the biggest defeat in UK Parliamentary history and Theresa May offered to resign as Prime Minister this summer if MV3 had been passed on 29 March, that makes MV far more notable than these other ancillary votes. At the moment we are giving the ancillary votes WP:UNDUE weight, mixing apples and pears. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 17:02, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

The text can make clear the significance of different votes. We don't need radical re-structuring to achieve that. Bondegezou (talk) 09:44, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

I thought you wanted there to be an article named "Parliamentary votes on Brexit", diff? I'm suggesting having MV as a daughter article to it. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 16:06, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

I am unclear what you think I want. What I do want is to keep Wikipedia's coverage of all the votes together, because that's how RS have reported on them. If they're all together, then "Parliamentary votes on Brexit" would be a sensible article name. Bondegezou (talk) 16:10, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

With (a) MV as a daughter article or (b) renaming MV "Parliamentary votes on Brexit" (which radically re-structures it from diff plus MV3 to what we have now)? --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 19:51, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

You have a point in that the current setup might give undue weight to some votes, but on the other hand parliament taking control of the agenda and first holding indicative votes and then passing an act, both against the governments will, is also historic and highly significant. Perhaps this undue-ness can be resolved by expanding the sections describing MV2 and MV3, and then removing the vote-boxes from the 13. march-section. ― Heb the best (talk) 09:54, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

I tried to keep other votes as sub-headings diff and keep the vote-boxes just for the MVs diff so the article would not become a WP:COATRACK, but they just ended up being reverted. Also the internal battle within the Conservative Party for the meaningful vote to even exist was significant too and should not be under-estimated. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 16:06, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose some parliamentary votes are related to each other. Splitting the article will be confusing for the readers. --158.182.178.117 (talk) 02:40, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose split. I get the arguments for splitting, but all of the votes described in the article do stem from the requirement for parliamentary approval to be sought. I think any split would result in two articles constantly referring to each other. I agree with having a separate article for the Act though, as that is special as legislation. Thanks, GreyGreenWhy (talk) 18:44, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
• Support. This makes sense. - Ssolbergj (talk) 15:55, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. The Withdrawal agreement article should just be about that topic and not get bogged down in also rans. All the surrounding shenanigans belong in subsidiary articles. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:42, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Removal of full results

I think we should remove the full results from this page, since it is an indiscriminate collection of information. It should be enough to summarize this, like it is done under the first MV. If a reader want the full result, they can follow the source to Hansard. This would also bring the size of this article down significantly, since each of the three hidden tables seems to use about 72K bytes. ― Heb the best (talk) 09:35, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

It's not indiscriminate: it's put in context and meaningful (if you'll excuse the pun). Bondegezou (talk) 09:46, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Which of the four criteria from WP:INDISCRIMINATE do you think the full results breach? If its - Excessive listings of unexplained statistics. Statistics that lack context or explanation can reduce readability and may be confusing; accordingly, statistics should be placed in tables to enhance readability, and articles with statistics should include explanatory text providing context. If so then they are contextualized and in collapsed boxes. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 15:22, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

December 2019 Parliamentary vote

Why hasn’t the result from the second reading of the withdrawal bill been added to this article? (2A02:C7F:5622:2000:8CBD:A14F:7900:C4C6 (talk) 14:51, 21 December 2019 (UTC))

Because you weren't here to do it. We are all volunteers. It depends on someone (anyone) having all of the time, inclination and ability. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:30, 21 December 2019 (UTC)