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This isn't about who did or did not win - it's more a question of what did they win?
I.m not a brexiter - I voted remain. And my preference if we are to exit, is that we do it in a staged and controlled fashion that doesn't cripple our economy - but ... with hindsight, given that that was never going to be acceptable to the stronger brexiteers, we'd have been better off going for a clean break from the start and planning for that.
As it what we are currently looking at is something nobody is happy with. I would favour a new referendum. There are enough people who voted brexit in expectation of something very different (both sides lied constantly during the campaign, and most Brrits, myself included, are woefully uninformed about Europe and our relationship with it) to warrant a new vote.
If I order an expensive piece of kit off the internet and when it arrives it is a pile of shit, I can send it back and get a refund.
For a lot of people who voted to leave they have just received a steaming turd through the post instead of their spanking new piece of democratic freedom.
The first referendum we voted on whether we wanted to leave europe - it was a fairly amorphous proposition and barely anybody knew what that would actually mean. We voted on principle. Now I think we should get the chances to vote on details and facts.
We also used a very bizarre voting system. Almost any important decision that might change the way an institution, party or country will organise itself - the structural decisions, not just who occupies the seats - require a two third or 60% majority. We ran a constitutional vote like a party political vote and got a result much like those we get in our first past the post parliamentary elections: victory with slightly over half the vote. Almost a split own the middle between those supporting the winning proposition and those supporting the losing proposition.
To change the structure of the nation shouold require more than being able to mobilise a handful more people than the other side - it should require a groundswell of popular support.
If it is genuinely the will of the people - a majority of the people - that we leave, then a new referendum will confirm that.
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