David Too wrote:
Surely the only democratic solution is to allow people to vote on whether to accept the deal on offer?
Oddly enough, David, I wouldn't
automatically agree with you there.
The reason is that we have a
representative democracy, in which we elect MPs to use their own judgement to make decisions on our behalf in Parliament. The deal is that if we don't like what our MP does, we have a chance to vote them out at least every five years. Our MPs are representatives, and not delegates who have to do what the voters demand. I am sure that you will know this - but an awful lot of people don't!
So normally I am OK with my MP taking decisions on my behalf - even though I didn't vote for her. I can always try again soon to replace her!
However, in the case of Brexit, it is clear that there is no majority in the Commons for any single course of action. In that case - and only because of that - I would agree that the solution is to refer the question back to the people. I would, however, note that determining the question(s) to be asked, the options to be placed before the people, and how the result of the referendum is determined - if you have three or more options then you will never get a clear majority for any one - are themselves very difficult questions, and likely to run into the same problems as Brexit itself has.
Where our representative democracy failed was when the majority of MPs voted two years to ago trigger Article 50, without having the faintest idea of what form Brexit would take. For that alone, most of them should have been voted out at the subsequent General Election. Instead we have the ludicrous situation where the likes of Yvette Cooper and Dominic Grieve, who voted to trigger Article 50, have very belatedly discovered their cojones (YC is, after all, Mrs Balls

) and are now attempting to delay or reverse things.
If I hadn't stopped voting for any of the major parties over 20 years ago, I'd stop now!