Home Secretary Theresa May insisted Tories could win back voters but rejected calls to bring forward a referendum to counter the UKIP threat.
STANLEY, Falkland Islands, March 10 (Reuters) - Residents of the Falkland Islands started voting on Sunday in a sovereignty referendum that seeks to counter Argentina's increasingly assertive claim over the British-ruled territory.
When in 2002 activists gathered the 10,000 signatures needed to ask the National Assembly to debate their request for multi-party elections, the regime responded with a counter-referendum in which 8m citizens were persuaded to vote for a constitutional amendment to declare socialism "irrevocable".
But the teams of lawyers deployed by the claimants, interested parties and interveners, some of whom are crowd-funded, counter that the referendum was merely consultative and that a decision to leave has not yet been taken.
If the map doesn't get 41 votes in favor, there'll be a referendum on this map and whatever counter map proposed by the dissenting aldermen in the March election.
It was being emphasised that no one thought a Lib-Lab deal was a certainty, and news of the panicky Tory counter-offer on a referendum on AV could destabilise a deal.
For Maduro, the decision to increase controls, which comes a month before municipal elections that could amount to a referendum on his presidency, is a counter-offensive to his enemies' attempts to oust him.
Additionally, since the last referendum, the Irish government has sought to counter voters' worries about their country's neutrality by securing an exemption from a plan enshrined in the treaty to establish a European Rapid Reaction Force.
"This is a regrettable and frankly counter-productive decision... the only way to get a referendum on the EU is to return a majority Conservative government.
Azevêdo said he felt "uncomfortable" being dragged into the UK's referendum debate but thought it was right to counter a great deal of misinformation about the UK's future as a WTO member.
The Falkland Islands government decided to counter Argentine claims by scheduling a referendum on the status of the islands, saying that it wanted to "send a firm message to Argentina that the islanders want to remain British".
