Irish Citizens' Constitutional Assembly, image ibid
Like many people who passionately want the UK to remain in the European Union, I have struggled with feelings of denial about the referendum vote. I wish it hadn’t turned out the way it did. I wish I could magic it away. But it is important to recognise that what happened, happened. British people were told that they would get a chance to vote on a perfectly clear question: whether Britain should remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union. They were told that the decision would be decided on the basis of a simple majority of the British electorate as a whole, including expatriates, but not including those under the age of eighteen or European Union citizens resident in the UK (who voted in the Scottish referendum). The result was that 52% voted to leave.
Since then, wishful thinking about the result, my own included, has been sadly revealing, I think, about the fragility of the democratic commitments of the British intellectual elite, which has managed to exhibit almost every anti-democratic instinct exhibited by elites in fragile and emerging democracies.
