Who has dibs?

Small point of order. Nothing major I’m guessing, but I am curious.

Lots of noise in the air that democracy must be defended. Ilk of dying to defend your right to speak, which as a basic concept I buy into. The people have spoken in a display of high turn-out, and now that must be reflected in Parliament, led somehow by the Conservatives, because of their General Election dibs.

So Parliament still has precedent and power to form policy and enact law — but must now be led by, what exactly? An interpretation of the referendum? The letter of the referendum? The, er, spirit of the referendum? Hang on, I’ll try and be a bit clearer about this.

For sake of discussion (the gentle and thoughtful kind) let’s assume that the Referendum was in fact legally binding, committing us irrevocably to the outcome, for however long it took to achieve. Let’s imagine the referendum were a manifesto — and the party backing that set of ideas won — what would then happen to them if the very next day, members of the leadership went on television and said that key matters they championed the previous day were now, you know, not quite true? That they then intended to pick the bits they did mean, and use that to form, you know, policy stuff? That they know what the people meant, and it’s their duty to now write in the tricky detailed stuff?

The dangerous territory, it seems to me, is that then you have a period whereby the politicians get to cherry pick what is policy -and what is collateral damage- with anything they deem in the latter camp made acceptable by the mandate they received from the people.

When asked about detail post referendum, the prospective leaders we’ve seen quite a lot of in the last few weeks, have simply melted away. It’s a sort of Anti-Spartacus cry over triggering article 50 between the incumbents, and perplexing posturing by the opposition as they scratch their heads over what they can hang on the referendum result. That sort of thing is tricky when your official position was Remain, the day before yesterday, or so.

Who has dibs then?

Anyone who was on the winning side of the referendum will feel they do, but it will mean such a myriad of things that it is impossible for any party to satisfy — and I suspect the politicians concerned know this.

Anyone who lost will feel that the lack of detail will make the volume of change, which is potentially vast, unworkable and potentially illegal — but they will be facing cries of anti-democratic arrogance, at best.

Dibs then, matter.

Is the answer a full blown General Election, before the trigger is pulled on article 50?