Nicola Sturgeon resigned this year, after failing in her earlier pledge of delivering a 2nd independence referendum. As there is no way for Scotland to do this without the Westminster government giving permission, it seems pretty unlikely for now. Possibly the best chance is that Labour fail to win a majority government and they need the SNP to prop them up, meaning a 2nd referendum could be part of the deal. Still, Keir Starmer has ruled this out, at least for now.
2. EU membership
For a long time a second EU referendum was the cause celebre of remainers, and was official Labour policy in the 2019 General Election. Polls suggest a large majority of people would prefer to rejoin. That said, the 2019 election could be seen as having put this one to bed. 'Get Brexit Done' was clearly a large vote winner for the Conservatives, and, more importantly, was a vote-winner amongst people who the Conservatives won from Labour. What this means in practice is that Labour would need to be confident that backing a new referendum wouldn't lose them votes in order to advocate for one. Don't expect Labour to break their silence on this any time soon!
Polling collected by https://www.whatukthinks.org/eu/opinion-polls/poll-of-polls-uk-eu/
3. Electoral system change
This has been in the news recently, as some Conservative voices have spoken out about potential future Labour plans, saying that they need to run any potential change past the people in a referendum. Labour's conference, in 2022, backed a change to the UK constitution to adopt a proportional voting system. However, Keir Starmer has made it clear that he is against it. I don't expect either a voting system change or a referendum on this one, especially as Labour look set to win a majority under First Past the Post anyway.
4. Northern Ireland
Now that Scotland looks like it is remaining as part of the UK (for now) the other potential issue could be Northern Ireland (sorry Wales). Polling suggests that a majority of people in Northern Ireland would favour unification, and demographic changes suggest that Catholics now outnumber protestants there. Once again, the key lies in how much the Conservative and Labour parties are willing to consider it, and the Conservatives won't, and Labour have now ruled it out.
5. Death penalty
The reintroduction of the death penalty, abolished in 1965 in the UK, enjoys some public support, with recent surveys suggesting that over 50% of people are in favour of this for certain crimes. The UK government, as a signitory to a raft of international treaties, is required to oppose it, and officially does, and is also constrained by not being able to extradite foreign nationals to countries where the individual may be subject to the death penalty. There is little doubt in my mind that the public *would* support this if it came about, but would a mainstream party be likely to ever support it? It would require leaving the European Convention of Human Rights, but the Conservative Party have more than flirted with this idea.
Interestingly there is a close correlation between those who support Brexit and those who would support the death penalty, as shown in the article below.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36803544
So, in summary, whilst there is no shortage of issues that could be asked, the main factor in determining the future of UK referendums is whether the Labour and Conservative parties want them. And to that, the answer is no.
Further reading:
https://constitution-unit.com/2016/07/25/is-there-a-future-for-referendums/
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