However much they still argue, Leavers and Remainers should be able to admit by now that it wasn't agreed in June 2016 what Brexit involved and was meant to achieve. The Tory government and party was as confused and at odds about it as the Opposition and the bewitched, bothered and bewildered British public.
Leave, yes. But stay in or get out of the Customs Union and Single Market? Global Britain? Sovereignty? Turbo-charge the economy? Freedom from an unelected EU? Preserve the democracy we fought two world wars for? Solve the Tory party's problems? All and much more found a home in an artful slogan, 'Take Back Control'.
Failure then wasn’t just an Eton mess up, or about a sinister European Union outwitting a feeble UK, or even because Mr Nigel Farage's reputation for only saying what people were thinking proved hollow.
The reason Brexit failed to deliver is 'Take Back Control' became a promise to deliver everyone's fantasy; and the referendum was a fantasy that actually delivered the means to do it.
A couple of clarifications to start.
Look up a dictionary and it will tell you democracy is 'Government by the people'. This strict verbal definition may then be expanded to 'Government by the people either directly or through representatives'. In short, there is direct democracy and indirect or representative democracy. But note these terms are for different forms of democracy. It is essential to remember democracy is first a form of government.
Democratic government varies by society, but it shares the same broad content of ideas and values everywhere: the separation of the powers; votes for all; equality before the law; freedom of expression and religion; the pursuit of an ever-increasing body of individual freedoms now viewed as human rights; a commitment to peaceful change.
Put these ideas together with the two forms of democracy and we would need to speak of 'direct democracy democracy' or 'representative democracy democracy' to tell the difference, which would swiftly become unendurable. Normally, the term 'democracy' is assumed to mean the latter and so it is here. Who or what 'the people' are, and their precise role and influence in it, are left open to the usual arguments.
Under British representative democratic government (now 'democracy' for short) problems are not passed to 'the people' at large for an expedient Yes/No solution. To see why that is, consider - Should you change your job? Would you sell your house? Is it okay to marry if you have political differences? Real people expect proper information, a chance to ask questions and to have second thoughts about important decisions in their lives.
Yet after what is now widely acknowledged to have been a glorified advertising campaign or travelling circus, the referendum gave the British people one shot at it in just such a Yes/No option. The question seems childish, Not Suitable For Adults: 'Should the UK remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?'
Defenders of the Brexit referendum insist 'the people' were able to answer this question adequately because they are intelligent or act out of self-interest. This may or may not add one uncertainty to another.
But real people's intelligence or lack of it, like their self-interest, is hardly relevant if they have been denied information or fed false information. It is not insulting to real people or 'elitist' to point that out. Statistics - voter turnout, the numbers and percentages voting Yes and No, however both sides quote them for support - are also irrelevant in that case.
All these points challenge our loyalties and will be argued indefinitely in with Brext as part of Britain's history.
And many other points challenge us: the claim the close vote 52-48% was an 'overwhelming' result; the fact that the referendum was only - and explicitly - advisory; that prime minister Theresa May nonetheless took it as a 'mandate' to action Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and leave the EU without agreed terms; Boris Johnson's flippant 'oven-ready' deal, Gas Mark Four in the microwave. A dog's dinner or not?
But for all those who stand by the referendum as 'democratic' - who believe that direct democracy is superior, somehow more genuine or 'real' than representative democracy ... who believe in 'the will of the people' - a last point is fatal to these arguments.
When the 52% voted Leave, they could do nothing to get what they voted for done. Even if we suppose 'the people' could know exactly what 'Take Back Control' meant and had the same end in mind when they voted, the problem remains. 'The people' could not make it happen because, whether 'the people' exist or not, they do not govern.
The referendum breached Britain's democracy to grant an illusionary empowerment to thin air. Fancies and fantasy ran unrestrained. The result was not the dramatic win for Leave that it first seemed, but a guarantee that any future Brexit would fail to meet expectations. Under democracy, all hopes, all aspirations, still come back to government, which will do no more than government can do.
Polls show people have their doubts about Brexit now; doubts about direct democracy will follow; we are likely to be wary of referendums in future. All is not lost. The good news is if people change their minds and turn against the government for getting things wrong, they can vote that government out. Not in a referendum, though - that doesn't work. An election does.
Among other benefits, democracy is a form of government that allows for peaceful change. All told, it's probably the best we can get. As long as that means a representative democracy democracy.
72.2% of registered voters voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum, slightly less than 3 in 4. In numbers, around 33,577 million voted. The estimated population of the UK at the time was 65.6 million. 52% thought the Brexit campaign was not "fair and balanced" and 35% disagreed strongly that it was. Referendums are not democracy. They are referendums.
