No Second Referendum

Since the EU Referendum at the end of 23 June and the shock result, there have been calls for a second referendum. An online petition has well over four million signatories. The Labour leadership candidate Owen Smith has promised a second referendum. There are plenty of precedents for this, including Ireland which first voted to reject the Lisbon Treaty in 2008 and then accepted it in a second referendum a year later. In the immediate aftermath of the result, there were the regrexiters who were reputedly shocked to discover that the Brexit side had won and wanted to change their vote - so a second referendum would be good, right?

No. I really think this is a bad idea. I have four reasons for this and I'm going to set them out in ascending order of importance and significance.

1. I don't think we'd win.
   For all the talk of people regretting their vote - I doubt it's a real thing. Some will, sure, but the powerful psychological mechanism of cognitive dissonance means that people do not want to think they've done something stupid. A small upturn in the economy, some bad but plausible arguments, or plain bullishness, will probably make people want to approve the choice they made. And by calling the second referendum the Remainers will hand them an argument: it will look like a crude attempt to gerrymander a vote and that message will be rammed down everyone's throats right through the campaign.
      This is the least powerful argument, I think, because in general I don't think it's a great argument to say that we shouldn't hold a vote because we won't win.
    
2. You want to go through all that again?
   The atmosphere in the campaign was appalling. The outrageous lies of the Brexiteers, the dog-whistling race-hatred of Farage and others, the racial abuse unleashed since, the artificial chest-beating nationalism of the tabloids, the murder of Jo Cox. I don't remember feeling so miserable about British culture and politics and society. Do we really want to go through all that again? And this time in an even more poisonous atmosphere where the people who claim they 'won' see the second referendum as a coup?
    
3. It's profoundly undemocratic
   One fact about this referendum is that it isn't binding. This is a fact. Parliament could have chosen to make it binding in the legislation (like they did with the AV Referendum) but they specifically chose it not to be binding. The Brexiteers who now pop up and say that Remain 'lost' don't know what they're talking about. A non-binding referendum is not 'lost' any more than an opinion poll is 'lost'. To treat the referendum as if it were binding is to rewrite history.
      And that's what we'd be doing if we called for a second referendum. No one ever said there'd be a second referendum in the run-up to the vote (well, Boris Johnson did, but he's an idiot) and it seems crazy to suddenly announce that the first referendum was, what?, provisional, dipping a toe in the water of public opinion and that the next one will be the real thing.
    
4. It's not necessary
   As everybody now knows - because we've all become constitutional experts - nothing happens until Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is triggered. And no one has triggered it yet. This morning, the Government made clear that the article will not be triggered this year. And until it's triggered, we haven't left the EU. The new PM, Theresa May, has rather cleverly declared 'Brexit is Brexit', one of those phrases that is like Doctor Who's magic paper: it means what you want it to mean. She's also suggested that there will need to be a 'UK-wide' decision to trigger Article 50, which, on the face of it, looks like Scotland have a kind of veto - and Scotland strongly voted to Remain.
      And then there's a strange Catch 22. The EU are saying they won't begin trade talks until Article 50 is triggered. And we can't start trade talks with anyone else until we've actually left. There may be some wiggle room here - it's hard to imagine the EU bothering to censure us for beginning trade talks outside the EU while the Article 50 process is underway (although some member countries might demand that we are stopped). But the US are currently saying they won't start trade talks until we've left (which would have to be 2019 at the earliest). We surely won't want to trigger Article 50 without a good idea what our post-Brexit trade deal would be - but we can't know what our post-Brexit trade deal would be like until we trigger Article 50.
     Now to be sure, at some point we will have to decide whether we are leaving the EU or not. But equally, at some point, the referendum's writ runs out. By that I mean: if the government triggered Article 50 now, I think most people - angry though we'd be - would say they could do so on the mandate from the referendum. But equally obviously in, say, 40 years time, if for some reason we hadn't left the EU, it would be absurd to think that a new Government in 2056 could use a vote in 2016 as a mandate. So, at some fuzzy point between now and then, the mandate expires. I think that could be quite soon, if the economic consequences become clear and/or the mood of the country changes and - particularly - if a new government is elected on a manifesto to remain.
      Now, you might say, your third argument was about democracy; wouldn't it be terrible to let things slide until a democratic vote ran out of legitimacy? Not really. Because - and the Brexiteers really hate it when you mention this - they won less than 52% of the vote. Cameron's bizarre claim that the referendum had revealed the 'will of the British people' to leave is nonsense. It revealed that the British people are very evenly split on the matter. It's no clear mandate for such an extraordinary action. (And, let's remember, it was not a binding referendum: I can't stress this enough.) What would be undemocratic would be to act on the views of the 52% and ignore those of the 48%.
      But, you might rightly come back, not to leave the EU would be to allow the views of the 48% to trump those of the 52%. Indeed so, which is why I think it is appropriate to wait and see what the true picture is. That campaign was so unsettled, so fractious, so filled with extraordinary and outrageous lies, so punctuated by violence and bigotry, that the best compliment we can pay our democracy is to see how things settle.
      It may become clear that the EU finds it can accommodate some new associations between member countries. It may be that the EU collapses in a wave of euroscepticism. It may become clear that we will decimate our economy or worse by leaving. It may become evident that we can thrive very happily outside the EU. None of these things are clear yet. It may be that some sort of interim deal is drawn up that keeps us in while we negotiate, allowing us to draw up a deal without triggering Article 50 as Ian Dunt suggests in this quite brilliant piece. After that there might be a referendum or an election to decide whether we trigger the Article.

However, if we have a second referendum now, we just cement the Brexiteers' case and we'll be on a one-way street to exit.

The Corbyn Dilemma

OH MY ACTUAL GOD. WHAT THE F**K IS GOING ON?

The Labour Party is in an utter mess and it's entirely of its own devising. The Tories haven't had to lift a finger and we're in a state of near-complete dysfunction. It's a total disaster.

THE STORY SO FAR: last summer, veteran left-winger Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party with a huge mandate of 59.5% of those who voted. In other words, more than all of the other candidates put together (the second-placed candidate, Andy Burnham, got 19%). The campaign saw a huge boost in membership for the party (with something like 110,000 new affiliated supporters who got to vote by paying a bargain price £3). This youthful groundswell campaign transformed itself into 'Momentum', an attempt to sustain that, um, momentum and shape the grassroots campaign, spreading support for Corbyn's Labour Party. The problem has been, from the start, that Corbyn has little support in the Parliamentary Labour Party. Some MPs simply refused to serve in his shadow cabinet though others decided to see how it went.  This uneasy truce collapsed after the EU referendum, at which point 20 MPs resigned from the shadow cabinet and 172 of them declined to support him (against 40 who did) in a vote of no confidence in his leadership. Now Angela Eagle has decided to challenge him for the leadership, but it looks likely that the membership will still support Corbyn. So then what? Does the Labour Party split as it did in 1981? Does Momentum try to deselect the rebel MPs? Or does it struggle on with this disconnected between the leader and the MPs, between the membership and the MPs, between - it seems - the wider electorate and the party?

It's painful to anyone who is a Labour supporter, but it's painful for the country as a whole because we are in the most extraordinary and dangerous times. Brexit has stirred up nothing good whatever: a fivefold rise in race-hate complaints, the pound at the lowest level against the dollar for over 30 years, industry freezing jobs and investment, the promise of more deregulation of capital and more austerity for the workers, all because the right wing of the Tory party are trying to steamroller the country out of the EU. The debate has reopened awareness of the terrible divisions in our society, the areas of the country left abandoned by generations of political leaders. The Tories won't do anything genuine to help them; only Labour has made it an historical priority to alleviate conditions for the poor. And our democracy needs an opposition; that's how it works: the Labour Party is one of the key checks and balances that stops bad things happening.

But what the hell are we going to do? I am genuinely completely torn about this. I voted for Corbyn. I like the man. I'm a member of Momentum, in fact. I'm usually drawn to the left of the party, in part intellectually, in part emotionally. But this is a crisis and all this speaking from the heart crap needs to stop. I want to try to think dispassionately about the pros and cons of Corbyn. We can all pick and choose arguments to support what we want to believe. So I'm going to try to argue either side of the case as well as I can.

First, the case against Corbyn.

• The Polls. The polls are not good. The Tories are in complete disarray. They have been bitterly fighting each other most of this year. And yet a recent poll has the Tories on 38% and Labour on 30%, the worst position for a Labour opposition leader after nine months since records began. A poll for Sky News (I know, I know) asking who would make the best Prime Minister, Corbyn, on 18%, comes third after Theresa May (on 62%) and Don't know (on 20%). And even among people who you might expect to be most sympathetic, he's not doing well: a poll of members of five major Trade Unions for YouGov has found that between 58% and 66% of each Union's members think he is doing badly as Leader of the Labour Party and between 58% and 62% think he should step down either now or before the next General Election. Polls can be wrong, of course.
• Strategy. The Corbyn-era Labour Party has been strategically inept. There are countless moments where sharp, clear, inspiring opposition is needed to rally support and yet we've had confusion and blurred ideas. And not just - as in the vote over Syria, where the divisions have been between Cabinet members - but sometimes leading members of the Corbyn team have made foolish blunders: think of John McDonnell using Chairman Mao's Little Red Book at the Dispatch Box. Time and again, open goals have been missed: Iain Duncan Smith resigns in fury, and rocks the Government by sensationally claiming that the Tories's austerity mantra that 'we're all in it together' is a lie; at the next PMQs, Corbyn doesn't even mention it! Three weeks before the EU Referendum voters were still unclear what Labour's position was. Jeremy Corbyn was hardly a tireless defender of the Remain position he claimed to hold: refusing to appear on platforms with David Cameron and claiming in interview that he was only 7/10 in favour of Europe. Way to rally the troops. Since the result, serious allegations have suggested that his office deliberately sabotaged the Remain side, perhaps because they didn't really believe in the case.
• Policy. The party hasn't yet managed to find an eye-catching and imaginative way to present Corbynism to the electorate. Where's the equivalent of Blair's Minimum Wage? They had 'People's Quantitative Easing' - which is a good policy - but it's hardly headline-grabbing stuff and it's not been put well. Nationalising the railways would be popular and do the service a lot of good, but while Southern Rail has been imploding over the last week, we've not heard a peep from Labour. And what about some big bold ideas? What about PR? Where are they on Scotland? What about redistribution?
• The PLP. Well they are almost all against him. And that's not good. Maybe it is, as Corbyn's fervent admirers say, because they are all Blairite scum. But they're obviously not and to pretend that the only positions on the left of British politics are Blairism or Corbynism is to be pitifully ignorant of left-wing politics. The PLP does have some unreconstructed Blairites in there, sure it does. But it also represents a broad range of left-wing positions. And most of them are against Corbyn. Whether you like that or not, that's the situation we have here, and it's not good enough for Corbyn's supporters to talk about his mandate from 250,000 Labour members; the PLP who voted against Corbyn have a collective mandate from the voters of around 7.5 million.
• The press. Corbyn has faced an almost entirely hostile press. I'm not talking about ridiculous bullshit about Corbyn not singing the national anthem. But Labour under Corbyn seems to have found no way of getting its message across - even in the parts of the media that are prepared to give him a hearing. What does Seumas Milne do all day?
• Anti-semitism. And then the anti-semitism row. This is, like it or not, a problem for Corbyn. He has spent his life in circles of the British left whose rightful commitment to Palestinian self-determination has sometimes gone hand in hand with the replication of the worst anti-semitic tropes. There are the continual accusations from some Corbynistas that journalists or other commentators are in the pay of 'Zionism' (hey guys, why don't you just come right out and say there's a secret Jewish conspiracy to control the media?). When Ken Livingstone went, it seems, completely barmy and claimed Hitler was a Zionist, it took a full day for Corbyn to suspend him from the party. This isn't good enough. The crass and utterly misleading moral equivalence drawn between Israel and numerous terrorist groups - including Corbyn himself at a press conference designed to put Labour's supposed problem with anti-semitism to rest suggesting that 'Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states' as if democratic Israel (for all its many many horrific faults and war crimes) can be simply equated with Isis.
• Supporters. There seems to be a Jeremy Corbyn cult. For some of Corbyn's supporters, Jeremy can do no wrong. Any time he does something inept or misjudged, the supporters immediately insist that it's all a conspiracy by a hostile press (the exact same arguments put forward by Andrea Leadsom's supporters at the weekend). But no, sometimes the press just reports the stupid things he does. No mature political party should drift into personality cult territory, but this is what we have now, culminating in the preposterous #WhatYouDoToJeremyYouDoToMe campaign. We have to be able to criticise each other in the Labour Party without talk of betrayals or treachery. But things have got even worse recently, with heartbreaking reports of people being shouted down at meetings, threats of deselection, and - after Angela Eagle decided to stand against him - a brick through a window at her constituency offices.
• Corbyn. The man himself. Well, he's just not an inspiring speaker. He doesn't reach out beyond his core support. His PMQ appearances have been lacklustre and drab. His stump speeches have been dry, monotonous and quiet. Not everyone has to have the communication skills of Tony Blair, but Corbyn is very drab. And yes, I 100% agree with him that we should have a different kind of politics, where we don't have to reduce everything to soundbites, where we can debate in a civilised way, and offer evidence. But the EU Referendum and everything since suggests he has less than failed to implement that: British politics is going the other way. He seems embarrassed by leadership - or at least that part of leading that means capturing the fears and hopes and worries and aspirations of people who need you and finding a way to express it back to them so that they feel listened to and understood and believe that change can come.

But there's a case for Corbyn. Parts of this case have the same headings.

• Mandate. He did win a huge mandate from the membership. In a field crowded with candidates he trounced everyone else. He won by the rules; he drew thousands and thousands of people into the party. And of course we can say, but these are the core support and he has to reach out beyond them, but why join a political party if your democratic and decisive vote is going to be ignored? (No one would be talking about a second referendum if the Leave camp had scored Corbyn's 60%.) The Labour Party now has over half a million members and, yes, that's core but it's also way more than any other party in Britain and more than Labour (or anyone else) has had probably since the seventies. It should be possible to build on that enthusiasm to create a formidable popular electoral force.
• The Press. Yes, the press are ranged against him, but of course they are. We have a heavily right-wing press in this country. What are we just going to bow to the moguls and say we can only have a Labour Leader that Rupert Murdoch and Lord Dacre approve of? Some of Labour's policies are popular: the press were divided over Syria; even the tabloids would think twice before defying their readers and condemning rail nationalisation. And a broad digital media strategy would find ways of getting Labour's message out and marginalise the Mail and the Express and The Sun and all that bullshit.
• The PLP. Some of the PLP have acted disgracefully. The attempted coup, in which a series of shadow cabinet ministers serially resigned, was not an act of comradely debate; it was not an exchange of views over policy: it was intended to humiliate Jeremy Corbyn and nothing more. It was trying to embarrass him out of power. Launch a leadership challenge; hold your vote of no confidence if you must. But booing your own leader at PMQs is contemptible.
• The polls. Yes, they're bad. What do you expect? Divided parties do not win elections: wasn't that Peter Mandelson's mantra? And let's not kid ourselves we don't need a ruthless electoral genius like Peter Mandelson right now. But with the PLP (and various grandees, including Mandelson himself) knifing Corbyn in the back non-stop since he was elected, how can anyone expect him to be riding high? You can't defend your rebellions on the basis of low poll numbers when it's the rebellions that's partly to blame. (Oh and some in the PLP say that Corbyn can't have it both ways, having been a serial rebel: maybe, but that cuts both ways - you can't beat him with the stick of party loyalty if you withhold it whenever you please.)
• Policy. And this is the key thing. I've said above that I'm not yet convinced that Jeremy Corbyn knows how to be the leader of a major party. But I think John McDonnell has emerged as a bit of a star; a charismatic, thoughtful, interesting thinker with some great ideas. There are new ideas in Labour and in politics. Socialism is back on the table in a way it hasn't been for forty years. Angela Eagle launched her leadership challenge and described herself as a socialist. Theresa May's policies - opportunistically perhaps - include putting workers on the boards of major companies and targetting pockets of longstanding poverty. These are signs that Corbyn has pulled that Overton window a little further to the left.
     And the thing is: these are the policies that are needed. After the thirty year Thatcher experiment came crashing down in the Banking Crisis, we have been limping on with the zombie-neoliberalism of austerity economics, but it's intellectually bankrupt and its malign effects are everywhere for all to see. They are, in part, responsible for the fuck-you aggression of the Leave vote in some of the poorest parts of Britain. The Labour Party didsome great things under Blair and Brown, but they did not get at the very roots of poverty and longterm unemployment. With Corbynism, the Labour Party has a chance to become something more than simply the hand-wringing managers of the neoliberal project. There's a chance for profound social and economic change for the better.
     Because what's the alternative? This is the most infuriating thing about the PLP. They have undermined and opposed Jeremy Corbyn but when have they ever offered anything remotely coherent to rival what he stands for? Angela Eagle - who I admire, by the way - launched her leadership challenge with an almost entirely policy-free appeal to Labour to support her. This was the problem last summer: all the other candidates had swallowed the Tony Blair playbook, talked a good talk, stressed their personal qualities, but offered nothing genuinely new. And they're still offering nothing new.
     I get as frustrated as anyone that Corbyn seems to think his political integrity is more important than winning an election; but the rest of the PLP want to win, but offer no sense of what they'd do if they did.

So I'm torn: the arguments against Corbyn are numerous and powerful; the arguments for him are fewer but stronger.

So what it comes down to is this. I don't see how Corbyn can lead the Labour Party any more. He lacks some qualities of decisive leadership and an ability to reach out that the Party desperately needs. But to abandon socialism and drift back to Blairism is not what anyone needs. For what it's worth, I also think excluding Corbyn from the leadership ballot would be a disgrace and a disaster. Let him lose a ballot with dignity, but exclude him and the party will split. If he wins, the PLP need to suck it up and serve the Party and the country. We can't dump Corbyn without a clear alternative. I don't know what Angela Eagle stands for yet or if her self-declared practical socialism means anything and that itself is astonishing. We've all been lamenting the post-truth, post-fact, post-argument politics we've found ourselves in: to offer yourself to lead the Labour Party without mentioning a single policy is profoundly depressing.

But while we debate all this, the Labour Party, my party, the party of the people, this country's main opposition, is tearing itself apart and leaving us all at the mercy of the Tories. God help us.

Left-Wing for the Last Time

So we're about to have our first baby and I'm looking forward to finally abandoning these immature, even childish, left-wing convictions that I have held since my teenage years. It's about time I moved on, grew up and became am unthinking reactionary, and I'm already grateful to our forthcoming baby for helping me achieve this life goal.

At least, that's how I assume it works. It's certainly what that person on Twitter told me a couple of years ago when I argued we should not bring back the death penalty. 'What about for child murder?' said my interlocutor. 'No, not even for that.' 'You'd feel differently if you had children,' came the reply.

Maybe having children unlocks a secret part of your mind. Ideas that previously seemed obviously stupid will now seem brilliantly cogent. The secret logic behind right-wing bullshit are instantly disclosed to you. We all become like the kid in The Sixth Sense: I see dead arguments...

I've had quite a few conversations like that. It amazes me that people treat having a baby as if it by itself befits them to pass judgment on a great variety of social matters. It's there in that endlessly dreary sentence-starter 'As a parent..' as if this three-word clause is an open sesame that entitles the speaker to pronounce on the EU Referendum or the merits of an independent nuclear deterrent.

And the thing that I find really weird is that these claims that you'll become much more empathetic when you have a baby typically come from rather conservative people. Okay, this is anecdotal, but it's always right-wing people telling me I will become right-wing when I have a child. And that - of course - is a very selective attitude to what empathy means. Having a child will make me empathise with children, not with the murderer; with the people who needed protecting with Trident, not the people it will kill.

Now, of course, having a baby doesn't disqualify you from commenting on these things. It'sirrelevant, that's all. In fact - given the hilariously contradictory advice we've been given from various (lovely) people about feeding, sleeping and more - babies seem to be wildly different, which means that I'm not even sure having a baby makes you much of an authority on having a baby.

Like the rude simpleton I saw on the train two years ago who was singing along with her toddler in a quiet carriage - when someone asked her very politely to keep the volume down a little, she retorted 'She's my kiddy!' as if that's an answer to anything. I don't know why but some parents seem to treat their having had a baby as an enormous personal accomplishment that testifies to their greatness as a personal, when the evidence is that billions of people - geniuses and idiots alike - have had babies and it confers no automatic virtue on them.

This has all come up again because of the Conservative leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom who, in an interview with the Times, declared that having children gives her a special suitability to my Prime Minister because she has 'a very real stake in the future of the country, a tangible stake' and directly contrasted her position with the childless Theresa May: 'she possibly has nieces, nephews, lots of people, but I have children'. Andrea Leadsom quite rightly called the interview 'beyond disgusting', though her pitiful attempts to pretend she didn't say those things were undermined by the release of the transcript and the recording.

And do listen to that recording. You can hear that simpering sense of self-righteous entitlement all over the way she moves from the careless and dismissive 'nieces, nephews, lots of people' (that clumsily vague 'lots of people' tells us what little significance she gives to these other attachments) and then with the vaulting horse of the word 'but' she offers the treacly affirmation" but I have CHILDREN'.

What's so bad about that, though? Surely the kind of undoubtedly distinctive and unique love and responsibility parents have for their children has some kind of value. Is it unreasonable to think it might become some kind of rehearsal for a wider commitment to society?

Alas, yes, it's unreasonable. First because the evidence is that parenthood does not have that effect. If we're talking about Prime Ministers, the childless Ted Heath took us into Europe; the four-time parent Tony Blair took us into Iraq. Clement Atlee and Margaret Thatcher both had children: one built the welfare state, the other tried to dismantle it. Their various children seem not to have been decisive.

Second, because of Andrea Leadsom herself, whose possession of children seems not to have given her any empathy for homosexuals, whose marriage rights she refused to support, or indeed animals, given her vocal support for fox hunting.

Third, because the implication of this is that having no children makes you somehow less altruistic, less concerned for the future, gives you less of a stake in the world. And that, unfortunately, is nonsense and offensive nonsense at that. Think about it: all of us have hundreds of attachments throughout our lives - to friends, family, lovers, neighbours, other fans of Game of Thrones, fellow citizens, political bedfellows, Facebook friends, celebrities, Twitter followers, fictional characters, and even, if you're very nice, fellow humans. Why isolate one's feeling for our children? To single out your attachment to your children actually implies closing off of our sense of responsibility, not opening it out.

The pointis that even if it were the case that having children completely changes your view of politics (and, hey, that seems to me unlikely but possible), that doesn't say that your new view is correct that we become better people, more open, more caring. It seems just as plausible to say that parents become more selfish, more concerned to protect their children even at the expense of the wider good.

So quote these words back to me in a month, but I don't think becoming a father (touch wood etc.) is going to make me a better person, or a worse. What I do think, though, is that the way Andrea Leadsom views being a mother has made her a much much worse person.

What Are We Going To Do Now?

PREVIOUSLY ON BRITISH POLITICS: David Cameron promised a Referendum to buy time with his Eurosceptic backbenchers and to take the wind out of UKIP's sails. He thought he'd be in Coalition with the Lib Dems and they would block it. He also thought he'd easily win. But he ran a negative, patrician, but honest campaign and didn't bank on his opponents lying and fanning the flames of vicious racism. His opponents, on the other hand, did not expect to win. Neither side prepared for this result and no one is doing anything.

So what are we going to do now?

There are so many problems. The Referendum has revealed - and exacerbated - some deep faultlines in our country: between the old and the young, between graduates and non-graduates, between the rich and the poor, between the urban and the rural, between Scotland and England, between London and the regions, between racists and anti-racists. There are so many divisions here, it is almost impossible to say which is most fundamental. Is it having a degree that tends to make you more pro-EU? Or is it having an above-average income? Which causes which? (Do middle class people go to university or do graduates tend to end up in middle class jobs?) The Referendum was meant to end a debate; instead, it's torn it open.

And our political leaders are silent. They don't know what to do. Cameron seems to want to wash his hands of it. George Osborne, as he does at moments of crisis, has gone to ground. Gove and Boris have no intention of grabbing the wheel. It is a dangerous thing when democratic leadership falls silent.

In that silence, Farage has been doing the rounds, seizing his moment to press an extreme - and I mean extreme - right-wing agenda. In his first major statement after the result, he claimed it was 'a victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people', thus casting the 48% as unreal, peculiar, and indecent. He has advocated the full privatisation of the NHS. In the past he has advocated relaxing gun laws. His 'Breaking Point' poster was a clear, intentional dog whistle to the neo-fascist right that your time has come. No leading politician has made such statements since Enoch Powell and he had the decency to argue his case. And let's remember, Farage is not even an MP - he has tried to get into Parliament on seven separate occasions and the voters have rejected him every time.

Comparisons with the Nazis are overdone, but Godwin's Law should not make us hesitate fatally in seeing him for what he is: a would-be fascist leader of Britain. Gove and Hannah and Johnson and IDS have already distanced themselves from Farage, but will that be enough? You let him drive your train, boys, and it's still moving.

Daniel Hannan MEP was quick to backtrack on the claims made by the Farage wing of the Leave camp that Brexit would mean an end to immigration. He was immediately met by fury: from the Remainers who saw this as yet more lies and hypocrisy from the cynical Brexiteers; and from some Leave voters who believed that in voting to leave the EU, they were voting to cut or end immigration. In the aftermath of the result, horrifying stories have been circulating of immigrants being abused in the street and told they are being sent home; signs were left outside primary schools in Huntingon saying 'No More Polish Vermin'; in Newcastle yesterday, a revived faction of the National Front (remember them?) unfurled a sign reading 'STOP IMMIGRATION. START REPATRIATION'.

Rewriting History

In response Leave and Remain are both trying to rewrite history. The Remain camp have been flocking to a petition calling for the Referendum to be re-run on the basis that it didn't hit 60%. Too late, guys. We may not like the result, but that's the result, and it would be outrageous to change the rules after it's been run. In fact the petition was set up at the end of May, which was too late even then, but Remainers are only signing it out of magical thinking. (And anyway, seriously? You want to go through all this again?) The Referendum can't be annulled and should not be annulled.

But the Leave camp are trying to retroactively rewrite the Referendum rules too. Some of the Brexiteers are demanding that the process to begin withdrawal starts immediately. But actually, hold on. The Referendum is not legally binding. It is - and this is important - effectively a vast, formal, state-run opinion poll. It is an expression of the public's opinion. If the Brexit camp wanted it to be binding, they should have made that case before. Neither side can retrospectively change the rules just because they don't suit them.

In fact, they're both right in hindsight. It would have made things clearer if the result were binding, but to make that result seem just, a higher threshold should have been set before it triggered EU withdrawal. But here we are.

Now, you may think that even if the Referendum is not legally binding, it is politically binding. So no Parliament cannot just ignore the Referendum as David Lammy has suggested. To do so would lead to rioting and uproar and push a substantial amount of the population even further towards the arms of the far right. It would also be, more important, morally wrong. It would be a monstrous thing if the Government or Parliament simply ignored it. In that sense, I agree with all who say the Government must accept the result.

But what is the result?

It's that 51.9% voted to leave and 48.1% voted to stay.

In other words, the Referendum has taken the view of the people and the view of the people is split. In this sense, it is surely wrong to say, as David Cameron did in Downing Street on Friday morning that 'the British people have made a very clear decision'. They have made anything but. And don't take my word for it: in May this year, Nigel Farage himself said that a 52% victory for Remain would not end it; it would need a two-thirds majority to put the matter to bed. 'The people have spoken', said Bill Clinton after the 2000 Presidential Election, 'but it's going to take a while to figure out what they've said'.

A Referendum is not like a General Election either. In a General Election, even in our very imperfect first-past-the-post system, there is a degree of proportionality. We elect a Parliament which usually reflects a range of views and out of that Parliament comes a Government (which reflects one strong strand of voter preference). The Government is scrutinised and, sometimes, held in check by Parliament. There is no such thing here.

To treat the Referendum as having a 'winner' is to misunderstand what the Referendum is. It's an opinion poll - a very important one, for sure, but still an opinion poll. And opinion polls don't have 'winners'. This Referendum has told us what the people have said and to treat it as a winner-takes-all competition is a mistake, and would be to ignore what the people have said. It would be as profoundly undemocratic to rush out of Europe on the basis of this Referendum as it would be to ignore it.

Accepting the result

So the Government must accept the result. And that means acknowledging that more people in this country voted the leave the EU than voted to Remain. But it also means that almost half the voters do not want to leave. How can the Government act on that?

Well, they've started. David Cameron, very wisely (or possibly very lazily), has decided not to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which sets out the mechanism for leaving the EU. He has said that it is for his successor to do so and, surely, he was right to say this. He would have been embarking on negotiations that everyone knows he did not want; the Brexiteers would have suspected his motives (was he not pushing for a good enough deal so as to prove his predictions right?); the Remainers would be on his back asking him to slow down (why is he rushing into leaving anyway?); and in the background the jostling for his position would continue unabated.

But until Article 50 is evoked, we are not leaving the EU. We now have three months to see what effect the Referendum will have: will we see signs of tipping into recession? Will the implications of losing EU regional funding become clearer? Will we see a brain drain? Capital flight? Will the impossibility/undesirability of ending immigration become obvious? Will Scotland move decisively towards independence? Will the Northern Ireland Peace Process begin seriously to fall apart?

And how will Europe react? Will we find that there is room for manoeuvre with our EU membership? Is some kind of associate membership possible? Are new kinds of concessions possible that would form a kind of compromise? It was striking that, even in the 48 hours after the Referendum result, the EU's leaders went from insisting that Britain start withdrawal immediately to saying perhaps there is no need to do anything hasty.

Who will press the button?

Because literally nothing happens until Article 50 is evoked. As the legal expert - and, incidentally, lifelong Eurosceptic - David Allen Green observed on Friday evening: 'If the Article 50 was not sent today, the very day after the Leave result, there is a strong chance it will never be sent.' Because as soon as we notify the EU of our intention to leave the clock starts ticking and, pretty much whatever we do, two years later, we're out.

So who would press that button? It's an entirely practical question. David Cameron isn't going to. Boris Johnson, who will probably be the next Tory leader (though a Stop Boris campaign has already started in Tory ranks), almost certainly doesn't actually want to leave. Farage has no power to do it; nor does Hannan. Gove doesn't seem a plausible Tory leader. Iain Duncan Smith wasn't a plausible leader. Theresa May won't want to pull out. Unless, somehow, the mood of the country is clearly expressed on all sides that we should be leaving the EU, such that our Prime Minister is forced to do it, literally, there is no one who will press that button. And if no one presses it, we are not going to leave the EU.

My risky prediction? In October, Boris takes over; back room negotiations have been continuing with Europe and it becomes clear that we will not get a deal that is in our interests; Boris says that if it comes down to a choice between in the European single market and being outside it, he feels, reluctantly, we should be in it, but he has won a few (face-saving) concessions and on that basis he will call a General Election and fight to remain in. UKIP will win a lot of seats (30-40), mostly at the expense of Labour. But the House of Commons will have a new mandate for staying in. And Article 50 is never invoked. In six months' time, it would be difficult to say the Referendum still has the authority of a mandate. With every day that passes, we look more likely to stay.

As David Allen Green has put it, invoking, of course, Waiting for Godot:

One single good thing has come out of this: we will never have another referendum in my lifetime.

How BoJo Saved Blighty

Well cripes, it was quite an adventure. Where to start? Ah yes, I remember now: one day, jolly, pudgy, mop-haired BoJo was on his way to a meeting of the Big Blue Gang when he had an idea. 'I know,' he thought, 'let's not use the big playground any more!' That sounded like a jolly good lark and his friend 'Mental' Micky agreed and so they went here and and they went there standing on boxes and saying things to persuade people. BoJo enjoyed talking to people because they all cheered him and called him a legend and said 'good old BoJo, he won't let us down' which made him feel warm and happy.

But then they had a vote of all the children and they voted to leave the big playground. BoJo was confused.  That wasn't the plan at all. The plan was just to go here and to go there and to stand on boxes and have people cheer him and say 'good old BoJo, he won't let us down' not actually do the actual thing he was actually asking them to do. 'Cripes,' thought BoJo. 'Does no one understand rhetoric any more? What happened to a classical education? O tempora, o mores,' he mused.

But old friend, 'Stinky' Dave, who BoJo thought was a bit of a dur, decided to give up being Captain of the Big Blue Gang and BoJo thought, 'hullo, I'd like to do that' because, quick as a flash, he realised it had opportunities for going here and going there and standing on boxes and have people cheer him and say 'good old BoJo, he won't let us down'. So when some of the gang came to him and asked him to be the next Captain, he said 'rather!' and he said it very loud and people laughed.

It took quite a long time for 'Stinky' Dave to pack up his things and in the meantime other gangs got bored and they stopped swapping conkers with the Big Blues and rarely, if ever, came to play. And life got a bit boring and people couldn't afford stickers for their albums or sweets for their pockets or coloured laces for their shoes. And the children got a bit nervous and thought maybe the big playground wasn't so bad after all.

So the day came when BoJo got to be Captain. It was a lovely day, he got to stand on a box and people cheered and most of them said 'good old BoJo, he won't let us down', except Nasty Nigel who was busy having a piss in the Big Playground.

BoJo saw that people weren't happy. They weren't cheering as loud as they did before. In fact he thought he heard some people booing. And BoJo didn't like that one little bit! So he got his chums together and together they had a plan, which BoJo didn't like, because he thought plans for for girls, but 'Mental' Micky made him promise and he thought, why not? Sounds like a lark.

'When we said we don't like the Big Playground,' said BoJo standing on a box the next day, 'we meant that it's a bit far away and it smells funny -' (Nasty Nigel smiled a shy smile at this.) '- and sometimes we have to play by other people's rules and children from other gangs get to play in our tree house which is weird'. People cheered and agreed.

'But I'll tell you something else about the Big Playground: some of the other children are quite funny when you get to know them and it's a very good place to swap conkers - and I LOVE swapping conkers!' said BoJo. And people cheered and agreed except Nasty Nigel, who needed a wee.

'So let's make this all above board and clear,' he said, 'It doesn't feel quite right at the moment and I think maybe we want to stay in the Big Playground after all, so let's have a vote for Best Gang. If you think the Big Blue Gang is best vote for us and we'll stay in. If you really want to leave the Big Playground, vote for Nasty Nigel and his Little Wee Gang.' Everybody laughed, because it was actually called the Wee Little Gang.

And the children were relieved and they voted and the Big Blue Gang did well and Nasty Nigel's Wee Little Gang didn't do quite so well and everyone stayed in the Big Playground after all butNasty Nigel was made to clean it up first.

And BoJo went here and he went there and he stood of boxes and people cheered and they all agreed 'good old BoJo, he won't let us down'. And BoJo didn't really understand what he'd done but he liked the cheers and that, my friends, is how BoJo saved Blighty.