Quote Originally Posted by Peter View Post
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.....
It goes a bit deeper than that. Essentially, you're saying is that EU membership has eaten so deeply into the bones of this country's democracy that it is simply too complicated and damaging to separate the two without killing the patient. This rather confirms what every Eurosceptic has been saying for the last 40 years.

If we cannot democratically unhitch ourselves from this monster, we are admitting that our democracy is not just undermined, but actually dead. The inescapable conclusion would be that the people may not govern themselves because the politicians and bureaucrats have sold their democratic birthright for a mess of pottage. The notion of national self-determination would be dead and we would effectively be told we must accept vassalage.

The consequences of such an admission are potentially disastrous - far more so, I would argue, than any negative short-term economic consequences.