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Theresa May has postponed the parliamentary vote on her Withdrawal Agreement but it cannot be put off indefinitely. There is only one sure-fire way for it to get through the House of Commons and that is with an amendment that it must be also ratified by voters in a referendum, or the country will stay in the EU. This would achieve three things. It would allow the Commons to sweep aside the call for a Trump-style ‘No deal’. It would accept, if through gritted teeth, that May’s negotiations define what Brexit means. It would give voters the ability to pass their verdict on it.
Instead, she has just told parliament that another referendum “will divide the country”, as if her agreement with its commitment to a long process of further negotiation will not do so. She is right, of course, that referendums are divisive and there is nothing wrong with that if they are based on honest arguments. Then, as in Scotland in 2014, they will gain losers consent. What was poisonous about the UK’s wretched plebiscite of 2016 was its contrived and dishonest nature, on all sides.
