By ‘Leave elite’ – do you mean the cross-party Vote Leave campaigners like Lord Lawson or John Mills? Or are you referring to the Eurosceptic campaigners like Farage, Johnson, Liam Fox, Ian Duncan Smith, etc? I’m genuinely not sure what you mean. All I can say is, given that the PM promised to put the question of EU membership to a referendum and assured the public the result would be binding, it would be disastrous for Cameron, or his successor, to now ignore that commitment and put the question again to MPs in the hope that they would veto the plebiscite. It would hardly be an endorsement of the democratic process. It would also completely shatter what little confidence exists among the general population in their government. It would be foolish to turn around and effectively disenfranchise over 17 million people who formally registered an emphatic vote of no-confidence in the EU. It can be widely debated whether Cameron should have put this question to the people in the first place – but having done so, and having promised to abide by and respect the result, the government is now effectively bound to the decision to leave. The nation is clearly divided – but democracy often requires us to live with majority decisions we don’t like or agree with.

I have to say, I admire Cameron for fulfilling his election promise. There have already been too many instances in the Eurozone where the general population has been sidelined and deliberately ignored. Do you remember when, during the height of the Greek sovereign debt crisis in 2011, Papandreou promised to put the EU summit’s austerity measures to a referendum in Greece? He was immediately summoned to Cannes by Merkel and a “ballistic” Sarkozy and ordered in uncompromising terms to cancel any plans for putting austerity to a Greek vote. De Gaulle (who believed that direct democracy should be regular process in the system of government) would have squirmed uncomfortably at the part his compatriots played that day.

Perhaps I have not answered your question? If so, I’m sorry. Direct democracy is always a fraught business but, as I said, having taken the decision to ask the people, the will of the majority must now be respected by ‘elites’ on all sides. To do otherwise, would undermine the legitimacy of the entire government and of the democratic process itself.