Have you ever sat watching TV or listening the radio in mute outrage? I feel as if that’s what I’ve been doing endlessly for months. Almost every time there’s been an interview about Brexit, the interviewer has ignored or skated round the most obvious questions. I’d almost call it a conspiracy – except that then you’d mark me down as paranoid.

I’m writing this as we await the “meaningful vote” on the Government’s referendum deal on 15 January 2019. And I’m wondering how it can be that Britain is saddled with a Parliament packed with people advocating a policy that clearly no longer has the support of the majority of its population.

A lot of these politicians seem determined to achieve some sort of Brexit “because it was in our manifesto”, or because the public voted for it nearly three years ago. They don’t seem to care that there’s now such a strong groundswell of opinion against it. No wonder so many people have lost faith in the political process.

Meanwhile the media, who should be championing the views of the populace, are instead caught up in their own process. To take a simple example, when Theresa May’s Government says the failure to agree a Brexit deal would be “a catastrophe for democracy”, why do interviewers consistently fail to ask, “Why? Exactly what aspect of democracy would be undermined by taking stock, and testing current public opinion?”

In the BBC’s case, the organisation also seems paralysed by a terror of appearing to favour one side or the other. This is especially bizarre, given the rather contradictory fact that ever since the referendum of 2016, the BBC has adopted a base position that Brexit is inevitable. It may well have given air time to Remainers, but always with the prevailing assumption that their stance is dissonant, marginal and even heretical in some way. There’s been a hidden partiality in the entire tenor of its reporting, which rather makes a mockery of its supposed even-handedness.

Incidentally, on the day of the vote I noticed a typical example of this weighted reporting in an article on the BBC web site about the implications of the vote for the value of sterling. It suggested a small surge in its value if the doomed deal were approved by Parliament, and even went so far as to say that a delay in implementing Article 50 would also see a rise. But nowhere did it describe the implications for the pound if Britain were not to leave the EU at all. Why not? Surely that would see the biggest possible rise in sterling’s value?

I have every respect for principled Leave supporters. They’re just as entitled to their opinion as I am to mine. Of course they want to implement the 2016 referendum. So would I, in their shoes. But there’s a big difference between holding a view and claiming that it is supported by a majority, when in reality that majority has shrunk to a minority – which is what all current opinion polls suggest.

Admittedly, the claim that the Leave vote was influenced by lies and illegal spending is a nebulous one. It’s probably true, but hard to quantify – as is the belief that many people were voting against austerity and poor government, not against the European Union. Rightly or wrongly, voters in democracies are not required to explain or justify their decisions.

What is not tenable is the claim that it would be a “betrayal” in some way to disregard the result of the 2016 referendum by holding another. This is simply making a mockery of the very notion of democracy. It’s what despots do after they’re voted into power.

Sadly the media seem conspicuously incapable of pressing this piece of hard logic on politicians. So here are the questions I would ask Brexit advocates in their shoes – the questions I crave to hear, but so often don’t:

• Given that nearly half of voters favoured Remain in 2016 in spite of the lies and disinformation spread about the alleged benefits of Brexit, how can you constantly claim that “Britain” voted for Brexit? What about the 48 per cent who didn’t, those who have changed their minds, and those who didn’t or couldn’t vote last time – perhaps because they were too young then?
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• Since the public know far more about the implications of Brexit than they did in 2016, why would it be wrong to allow them to restate their opinion in a second referendum?
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• If it could be proved that the majority of the public no longer want any kind of Brexit, would you still insist on implementing the 2016 referendum vote regardless?
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• If the 2016 vote was democratic, why would another one not be?

If I were in the interviewer’s chair, I would not allow evasions or distractions until I got answers to the above, or at least an outright refusal to answer.

That’s easy for me to say, of course, when I’m not in the hot seat. I realise a media interview is not a court of law or an inquisition, and politicians are not compelled to participate. The very process of conducting an interview and actually eliciting meaningful answers is a political one (with a small “p”), and I greatly admire the most skilled practitioners of the art. But even they are not immune to following the question sheet instead of probing for real answers.

History will not look kindly on those who have consistently failed to do that, and have allowed themselves to be obsessed with process to the detriment of substance.

I’m a writer, not a politician or an activist. My fondest wish is to get my novels in front of readers. Yet as Britain stumbles towards the disaster that is Brexit, I’ve had to hijack my own blog in order to voice my anguish over this miserable, misconceived saga.

And as the UK Government embarks on a programme to convince the country to applaud the ludicrous Brexit deal it has just signed in Brussels (I’m writing this in November 2018), I can’t resist voicing my disgust at the cynical, manipulative, transparently dishonest and unrepentantly revisionist way they’re trying to convince the British people that it’s a “good thing”.

What I can’t understand is why so many politicians who claimed to be Remainers in the past are so determined to endorse this ridiculous so-called deal, instead of standing back and questioning why we need to proceed with Brexit at all. If they all stood firm and simply said, “Let’s not do this,” it would go away – and a according to recent polls, a reported 54 per cent of the population (at least) would give a wild cheer.

Instead, they insist that their Brexit plan respects the will of some mythical majority who want it. What majority? A tiny majority of voters may have opted for Brexit two and a half years ago, but why does that mean we must disregard what voters want now, with their much greater understanding of the implications of leaving the EU?

Governments are happy enough to call snap general elections if they think the sway of public opinion happens to favour their party more than it did when they were voted into office – so by that standard, what is wrong with testing the current popular view of this infinitely more far-reaching measure? Why not check whether people really meant it when they voted to leave the EU, and find out how many of them would vote that way now?

It seems to me that there is absolutely no defensible argument to justify the implementation Brexit against the apparent wish of a majority of the current population – or to deny that population the opportunity to test public opinion in a confirmatory referendum.

Therefore I can only assume that the parade of pro-Remain MPs advocating Theresa May’s half-baked Brexit deal are revealing monumental self-interest – elevating their own political fears and ambitions far above the long-term best interests of United Kingdom. Shame on them!

Either that, or we’re experiencing a “King’s New Clothes” phenomenon of unprecedented magnitude, in which politicians are not merely disporting themselves naked because that’s what their leader is doing, metaphorically speaking, but are rushing like lemmings to follow their leader over a cliff. And that’s without confronting that other kind of  “cliff edge” – the no-deal Brexit scenario we’ve been warned about for months.

I have to assume they’re not that stupid … but if not, what am I missing?

If you see a book cover flagged up against this blog, and it’s for my novel Alternative Outcome, I have to smile at the appropriateness of the title. Ironically, that book has nothing to do with Brexit, but I’ve written another novel that does! It’s called Never Going to Happen, and it sets the Brexit debate in the context of a fast-moving thriller. It’s on Amazon, and was published under the pen-name Anders Teller.

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times: the Brexit referendum vote must be implemented because it represents “the democratic will of the people”. What utter, unmitigated nonsense!

When future generations look back on this whole fiasco, this is possibly the aspect they will regard as the most bizarre. How could a flawed, two-year-old vote on a bland, unqualified question – leave or remain? – seriously be considered a true democratic mandate? Why should the citizens of today and tomorrow have their futures dictated by something so insubstantial when it’s already in the past?

Hey ho, say the Brexit supporters; that’s democracy for you. Live with it. But they can’t escape the greatest weakness – but perhaps it’s also the greatest strength – in the whole concept of any referendum, and especially this one. Quite simply, it’s the time lag between the vote and its implementation.

Whether or not you consider the referendum outcome fair or reasonable, the fact is that it couldn’t be acted on overnight. There was a process to go through. As we all know now, that process was destined to take a minimum of two years and nine months. That’s the time lag between the vote itself and the date on which Article 50, Britain’s departure, is due to take effect in 2019.

No one can lay blame anywhere for this time lag. In nation-changing developments like this, such a thing is inevitable. There are so many issues to agree on, so many decisions to make; there’s so much new law to put into place.

“The Britain which is approaching the Brexit date is not the same Britain as the one responsible for that fateful vote “

But no one can deny the reality of the time-lag either. It has happened. Brexit supporters need to live with that. What it means is that the Britain which is approaching the Brexit date is not the same Britain as the one responsible for that fateful vote. Electors are now more savvy. They know what they’ll be losing by leaving the EU as well as what they might have to gain. They are far less ready to be taken in by lies about the likely outcome.

Opinion polls in the latter half of 2018 have repeatedly shown that in a new referendum the remain camp would stand a good chance of winning. So standing back from this, what do we have? A Government determined to implement a ill-informed decision taken more than two years ago, despite widespread and growing evidence that the majority of its citizens no longer support it.

What possible, conceivable logic could there ever be in any rational society for driving through a world-changing decision like Brexit on such an utterly flawed basis?

“What possible, conceivable logic could there ever be in any rational society for driving through a world-changing decision like Brexit on such an utterly flawed basis?”

That decision, moreover, could take at least a generation to reverse. Some people compare the referendum to an election vote, but snap elections can be called overnight, and the political direction of a country can shift in a blink. Brexit can’t. If we leave the EU, for many UK citizens it will effectively be forever.

Some people worry that a second referendum would throw the country into a new period of chaos, but this is simply a fear whipped up by pro-Brexit panic. If we voted to remain in a new referendum, we could simply halt the Brexit process, and life would go on as before. Yes, there would be a lot of rethinking and some pretty massive political fallout, but we’re still in the EU now, and we still would be after the vote.

If, on the other hand, by some strange quirk we voted again to leave, well, hard or soft, Brexit would be ready to roll. Again, nothing would be lost.

The time lag is the enemy of Brexit supporters, which is why they are becoming increasingly strident in shouting down anyone who dares to suggest a rethink and a new public vote. They’re determined that yesterday’s suspect vote should dictate the shape of tomorrow.

“The time lag is the enemy of Brexit supporters, which is why they are becoming increasingly strident in shouting down anyone who dares to suggest a rethink and a new public vote.”

So should we have any sympathy at all for the fact that the Brexiteers have had to hold their breath for two and a half years before they could get their way? No! Let’s just be thankful that the time lag was necessary. Think what would have happened if we’d somehow been forced to quit the EU the day after the referendum. Decisions of this magnitude need reflection, and arguably two and half years has barely been enough.

Meanwhile, young people are overwhelming opposed to Brexit, and the longer we wait to implement it, the more of them will be around to oppose it. No wonder the leavers are so worried.

“You can’t undermine democracy with more democracy” – David Lammy, MP

But what about the Brexiteers’ insistence that the two-year-old vote was democratic, and must be upheld at all costs? The MP David Lammy has knocked that one conclusively on the head. “You can’t undermine democracy with more democracy,” he’s pointed out. In other words, it can never be wrong to ask people if they’ve changed their minds.

Two years ago the Leavers were delivering a constant cry: “Brexit means Brexit.” It’s time to put forward another one: “Democracy means democracy.” In a rational society, democracy is a dynamic thing. It doesn’t simply stutter to a halt at the casting of a vote.

“In a rational society, democracy is a dynamic thing. It doesn’t simply stutter to a halt at the casting of a vote”

To put it another way, why should a generation of citizens have to suffer the outcome of Brexit for a decade or more, when in the two short years since the original vote it has already become increasingly clear that the majority don’t appear to want it?

That’s the truly democratic question we should be asking. And we should be asking it now, in a public vote.

Peter Rowlands

If you see a book cover flagged up against this blog, and it’s for my novel Alternative Outcome, I have to smile at the appropriateness of the title. Ironically, that book has nothing to do with Brexit, but I’ve written another novel that does! It’s called Never Going to Happen, and it sets the Brexit debate in the context of a fast-moving thriller. It’s on Amazon, and was published under the pen-name Anders Teller.