When challenged on this mornings Marr show, that the General Election back in June was a mistake, Theresa May used the words above. It is hard to make sense of these words in the context of a Parliamentary system that adopted the Fixed Parliament Act. Following on from the comment by Prime Minister May, the above tweet appeared. I have great respect for, Siobhan Benita who stood in the 2012 Mayoral Election as an Independent candidate, and gained over 80,000 votes, beating UKIP and the BNP. I agree with Siobhan that in the light of the comment by Theresa May, that if it is not a mistake to offer votes to people, then to argue that we will not be given a chance to endorse the basis for our departure seems very suspect. The comments by Theresa on the Brexit arrangements were tested by Andrew Marr who asked Mrs May if she would resign if she failed to get a deal from the EU. She refused to answer the question, pointing out that her focus was on getting the best possible deal that would work for both the EU and for the UK.

It is clear that each of the 27 nations will need to approve any deal as well as for our nation to approve it and it is entirely within the gift of all 28 countries including the UK to decide whether to approve the proposal at Cabinet level, at Parliamentary level or at electorate level. If Theresa May is serious in her comment made this morning, then offering each of us an opportunity to approve the proposed deal seems to make sense. However that is not the only way of following through on the comments made this morning. What about when we commit large sums of money to replace Trident. The fact is that we are signatories to the nuclear non proliferation treaty, yet our Government is committed to buying new nuclear weapons. The same is true when it comes to going to war or supplying weapons to nations such as Saudi Arabia. It is inevitable that refocusing our nations decision making around referenda and other forms of voting opportunities would change our culture, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. In the last 15 months I have observed and participated in numerous discussions on social media which have been stimulated by people claiming to know what 17.4m voted for or why the rest of society did not vote to leave. I am confident that we all voted for different reasons and I find it frustrating when people claim to know what motivated their fellow voters and when challenged, refuse to accept that they cannot read the minds of other people. It is clear that polls are regularly wrong, and so perhaps we can shift our focus away from polls and instead make referenda and more regular votes the way we run the nation and our local communities?