Democratically, the basic problem is this: there is no way a 51.9% share of a 72.2% turnout (so ~37.5% of voters) provides a remotely comfortable mandate for major constitutional change.

It’s the worst possible result - a 3.8% margin of victory which is neither quite small enough to easily ignore, nor quite large enough to take as an actual mandate.

1.27 million votes is still a Big Number, though.

Compare 1975, when the referendum on whether the UK should join the then EEC was won by 67.2% to 32.8%. Some may not have liked it but no-one could argue with that result. Turnout slightly smaller than this time, but still a clear answer to the question.

This time it’s perfectly reasonable to say ‘it’s about 50/50 and we not only shouldn’t but can’t and mustn’t do anything drastic’. Massive constitutional change of this sort, if it must be taken to referendum, should require a clear majority. Something like 60-65%. That doesn’t seem unreasonable, and it is astonishing to me that something like this wasn’t put in place in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

Meanwhile, drastic things have already been done, such as the bloody thing having happened in the first place, the perfectly reasonable - if essentially meaningless so far - EU response that we in the UK can fuck off as quickly as possible please before we do any more damage, and the utterly fucking terrifying open racism of so very much of the Leave campaign and the Leave support.

Of course not all Leave voters have done so on the back of racism. But they have all done so in league with it. I have friends who voted Leave who do not yet realise this and who may never realise this. These are by and large not people who think about politics much and if I haven’t raised the point with them it is because I know they will get defensive and start defending the idea of voting along with the fascists when they happen to agree with a tiny part of what they are all voting for. And that is not an argument which will go anywhere helpful.

I also have far too many friends of friends who have turned out unexpectedly to have openly voted Leave because they actually turn out to think there are too many immigrants in this country. Those are not friends of mine, and it has been terrifying to me - as a third generation immigrant myself - to see first-hand how fucking easy it is for demagogues to get traction among people who don’t generally care much for politics and stir up the very worst in them.

Then there’s the Lexit crowd, precisely none of whom have provided any justification for going along with the fascists. Because there is none and can be none.

And finally, the people who Laurie Penny mentions in her fine article, linked here, where she says ‘when all you have is a hammer, all problems start looking like David Cameron’s face’. Which is all very well, but also lurches into the territory of oh, these poor people are so fucked, you can’t possibly expect them to understand complex things like politics. And here’s me thinking that the Labour movement was supposed to be all about people who were so fucked they had no choice but to get a very fucking good understanding of politics PDQ.

Which it used to be, but hasn’t been for too long.

Obviously it’s completely crazy talk but if the Labour movement actually made some kind of effort to connect there it might just gain some traction. Instead everyone wants to knife Corbyn because of unpleasant things he said about their mate in 1994 or whatever else their problem with him may be. Over here in the Green party we’re far too busy hugging trees and thinking about the planet to bother with that kind of shit, but someone urgently needs to deal with the fact that UKIP are moving in and need to be confronted, directly, at grass-roots, with a better and non-shit alternative.

And the vote was so close. If they’d extended the franchise to 16-18s we wouldn’t be having this conversation, because it would have been 52-48 the other way: in referenda on major change you need a clear majority in favour to proceed; anything else means you don’t. The tiny majority in favour - what we have - is the nightmare no-one wins result.

[originally posted as a comment on the MeFi mega Brexit post]