With a deadlocked parliament, the possibility of an unfavourable deal and both parties so deeply divided on Europe, it may start to appear that the only way out of the impasse is a second referendum in which the government’s deal is put it to the people for legitimation.
That appears unlikely at the moment. Yet a referendum on Europe appeared even more unlikely when,
in 1971, Tony Benn proposed it to Labour’s national executive but failed to find a seconder. James Callaghan presciently declared that for a divided party, the referendum might well prove a “rubber life raft into which the whole party may one day have to climb”. The Conservatives too may come eventually need that life raft.
Nigel Farage said that a further referendum would be needed: there is no doubt that Brexiteers would have continued their campaign to take Britain out of the EU and they would have had every democratic right to do so. But so equally do those who have doubts about the decision.
Brexit after all raises fundamental, indeed existential, issues for the future of the country. That is why the final deal needs the consent not only of parliament, but of a sovereign people.
Lord Butler