You knew that there was something fishy about the Brexit referendum. Well, you were right.

Imagine walking to your local polling station to vote in the next UK general election. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and you are going to take part in the noblest and holiest of democratic rituals. What could possibly go wrong?

When you approach the station, you notice a great commotion. People are screaming, faces are contorted in rage and disgust. What on earth could possibly have perturbed the traditionally dignified atmosphere of a British election?

It transpires that this year the government has decreed that there should be only two choices on the ballot. The first is Tory, the second is Non-Tory, a Frankenstein coalition composed of Labour, British National Party, UKIP, LibDems, Greens, Monster Raving Loony Party, and so on.

What a travesty of democracy! The government is trying to dupe the great British public! A huge crowd of enraged citizens converges towards Westminster, the Prime Minister and her minions are quickly rounded up and led to the Tower to stand trial for high treason.

Hold that image of a Conservative Prime Minister being led to the gallows for attempting to trick the public into voting for an absurd mishmash of incompatible political parties in the back of your mind, it will come in useful later.

Let’s move on now to something entirely (!) different.

On the 23rd of June 2016, UK citizens were asked a very simple question: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”. The question had just two possible answers: “Remain a member of the European Union” or “Leave the European Union”.

Let’s write these options side by side:

Remain, Leave

See how neat the choice was? British democracy at its best: simple and to the point.

Or was it? Let’s examine more closely the two options on offer.

Remain was a straightforward choice. By voting Remain, you knew exactly what you were getting, there is after all just one way to Remain.

What about Leave? What did that mean in practice? On what kind of terms was the UK actually going to leave? Norwegian style? Canadian style? An acrimonious no-deal falling back on WTO rules? Some magical new formula that would allow the UK to “have its cake and eat it"? Or, more realistically perhaps, an uncomfortable compromise forced on the UK by an overpowering EU? There is an infinite variety of ways of leaving.

So, the real options on offer were more like:

Remain, Norwegian, Canadian, No Deal, Have Your Cake And Eat It Too, Whatever The EU Decides, …

Oh dear dear, what dreadful confusion!

But all is not lost, we can restore some sanity by ordering the Leave options in order of ‘softness’. Under the softest option, the UK remains part of the common market and keeps the four basic freedoms of movement of people, goods, services, and capital, while regaining control over some sensitive sectors, such as fishing in UK waters. Under the hardest option, the UK leaves without a treaty and falls back on WTO rules to trade with the EU.

So we get:

Remain, Soft Brexit, … , Hard Brexit

There, a bit better. There are still infinite choices but they are at least neatly ordered.

All that is left to do now is to select one of the choices on offer. Tricky, but doable.

Let’s start with Hard Brexit. Why would you opt for that? Obviously, because you greatly value national sovereignty. So much so that you are willing to accept the economic damage caused by the partial loss of access to the huge European market. We might be poorer but we shall be freer!, you say. Fair enough. But what if you cannot get a Hard Brexit? What would be your second choice? Would that be Soft Brexit? Certainly not, because Soft Brexit implies an almost complete surrender of sovereignty to the EU. The EU will set the rules, and the UK will have to accept them without discussion. Well, that’s no good. If you cannot get your way, your second choice will have to be .. Remain. With Remain, the UK will still have a place at the EU table. It won’t be fully sovereign, it will be co-sovereign together with its partners. That is still much better than no sovereignty at all.

What about Soft Brexit? Why would you support that? Presumably, because your biggest concern is about jobs and business opportunities. Nothing democratic about an empty stomach!, you say. Very reasonable. But what if you cannot get a Soft Brexit? Would you opt for Hard Brexit? Certainly not, because Hard Brexit implies the greatest degree of economic damage. So your second choice will have to be .. Remain.

But wait a second, if Remain is closer to Soft and Hard Brexit than Soft Brexit is close to Hard Brexit, then there is something seriously wrong in the way that we ordered our options!

The real order was this:

Soft Brexit, Remain, Hard Brexit

The Brexit options are not different shades of the same thing, they actually fall into two opposite sides, with Remain somewhere in the middle!

But if Soft and Hard Brexit are incompatible then conflating their votes was like adding apples and oranges, an elementary logical fallacy that we are taught to avoid in primary school (You were not paying attention, were you Dave? Too busy imagining yourself as a future Prime Minister, maybe?).

What the referendum ascertained was simply that there was a slight majority in favour of one of the options ending in “Brexit”. But guess what, the Monster Raving Loony Party and the Labour Party are not compatible choices just because their names end with “Party”, and neither are Soft and Hard Brexit.

Ask a stupid question and you will get a stupid answer. The referendum that had to provide a clear and final answer to the EU question, produced a stalemate. Remain, the first choice of a plurality of citizens and the second choice of the vast majority, was thrown out in favour of a mishmash of incompatible Brexit options, none of which attracts the support of more than a minority of citizens. ¹

To add insult to injury, since the referendum the British people have been berated as a bunch of ignorant morons by .. a political and intellectual elite so feeble-minded that it still has largely not realised that they have been duped.

So there you have it, this is why it is impossible to get out of the current mess. No matter what kind of deal, or even no-deal, Mrs May had offered parliament it would have been voted down because there isn’t, and there has never been, a majority either in parliament or among the public for any of the incompatible Brexit options.

A careless and cynical Prime Minister tricked the country into entering an unsolvable maze; the UK cannot Remain, as that was voted down in a flawed referendum, and it cannot Leave because no conceivable formulation of Brexit is acceptable to more than a small minority of MPs and the public.

For over two years, another Prime Minister has been robotically banging her head against the walls of the maze, refusing to see that there is no way out unless a second referendum is called to finally offer people concrete and consistent choices.

So .. David, it’s such a beautiful day, what about a short walk to the Tower?