A no-deal brexit (currently the most likely outcome) cannot be voted down by Parliament. It is, by its nature, not a deal and therefore cannot be voted on.
That is nonsense and you know it. You cant compare this with a single, reactive foreign policy issue or a minor civil rights issue within an election manifesto. IF for no other reason than that those decisions were not justified solely by the fact that people voted for them.
This was a single issue vote on one question. Possibly the most incomprehensible and complex question in our constitutional history.
Yes, people voted leave. They didnt vote for specific versions of it and we have no idea what they wanted from it (although we can make a guess in certain areas).
The process since has shown just how complicated it is. Each side is quick to point to a betrayal of the voters on various fairly minor detailed points but its all *******s.
If it was clear that voting Leave meant a hard Brexit what are we having these negotiations for?
I expect that a large number of Leave voters never believed that a hard Brexit would happen, mostly because so many people kept telling the public that a hard Brexit wasn't in either sides interests.
I'm really struggling to see a way out of this that doesn't at some point involve asking the people if they want a hard Brexit.
The point is that all votes have obscure and unpredictable consequences that not every voter can be expected to understand. That is not a reason not to have the vote, however.
The logical conclusion of your position would be that, because the matter is simply too complex and obscure for voters to understand, they ought never to have been allowed to make a democratic decision on it.
I said before the referendum that they should not have been given the opportunity to vote for the leap in the dark. We negotiated the terms of staying, we should have set out the issues and requirements of leaving.
The interesting point is where does the legitimacy of parliament sit if it fails to ever agree a brexit deal? What is the shelf life of that referendum? Can it be surpassed by an election where a clear mandate to drop all this nonsense is given?
After all, the sovereignty of parliament is what this is all about isnt it.....
We're having these negotiations because our leaders are too weak and remain-focused to have negotiated properly. Hard Brexit (ie walking away) should always have been our basic negotiating position, allowing for concessions to be made where both sides could agree. Instead, our government has gone into negotiations trying essentially to remain in the EU in all but name - something for which they had no mandate and which they could never deliver.
You could make that argument about literally any conceivable vote ever, even something as seemingly binary as for or against the death pelanty.
After all it’s highly unlikely “ordinary people” would truly understand the moral and ethical complexities behind the issue.