There were two letters in The Westmorland Gazette of November 2 pushing for a ‘cliff-edge’ Brexit of unknown consequence, against one defending the benefits of EU membership.

While I fear the die is cast, one letter repeated a particular error of fact whose endless repetition seems to have made it true: that the referendum was ‘binding’.

The Referendum Act did not commit the country to enact the result, and briefing papers to MPs state clearly that it was not binding.

A pamphlet delivered to all households did commit to implementing the result – a promise with no legal force.

The government was compelled by the courts to seek Parliamentary approval. Of course, as we know, this was given – in a whipped vote where the two main party leaders appear to have been ‘Leavers’ all along.

So, de facto, the result of the referendum was binding, by driving the Parliamentary vote.

Because of the rather vague question in the referendum, the only thing that needed to be delivered is ‘out’, and hang the consequences. But, let no-one kid you that all of this somehow ‘had to happen’ – that we must exit, with no alternative, purely because of the thresholds chosen and exceeded in June last year.

It was an extreme act of folly to set a 50 per cent threshold with no requirement for provincial consensus; the divisions in the country now – a mere 13 Leavers to every 12 ‘Remoaners’; Scotland and Northern Ireland set against England and Wales – are testament to that.

We are being driven over the cliff by ideologues, whose playing of the ‘democracy’ card is thoroughly cynical.

There is a huge irony in this group sneering ‘they only like democracy when it goes their way’, especially given Nigel Farage’s oft-quoted view on a 52/48 split the other way.

While a second referendum may be out of the question for practical and political reasons, it is hypocritical in the extreme to object to the principle that a people, treated as an entity with a ‘will’, cannot, in any circumstances, change its mind.

Allan Miller

Sedgwick