Since the General Election was called, the Labour Party has made a ‘final say’ on Brexit - another referendum - a key plank of its platform. However, Labour’s proposal undermines our country’s democracy.

The Labour Party claims that it will negotiate a new, better deal with Brussels and then leave the final decision with the public, offering us a choice between Remain or a new Labour-negotiated deal as a ‘credible leave option’.

But a new vote on Brexit would snap the link between taking a democratic decision and enacting it. Only enacting a decision ensures that democracy has force and meaning. Without this link, national votes would become mere opinion polls rather than acts of meaningful democratic choice.

And by offering the choice to Remain after we rejected this option in 2016, the Labour Party is aiding the rich and powerful in the class wars of the future. It is inviting the establishment and its allies to resist any future democratic decision they don’t like. Whenever the rulers face a democratic decision in future, they will know that if they mobilise their powers of resistance, they could halt and eventually overturn any national vote that they oppose.

Decision-making by the majority would cease to be the means to generate legitimacy, so, coercion would expand. There would no longer be a democratic means to take decisions.

By its nature, a ‘final say’ on Brexit entails that the 2016 referendum was not a final say, and that therefore democracy is not final either. A ‘final say’ on Brexit would be a significant historical defeat for democracy not only here in Britain but in the world at large. If a majority decision can be delayed and then eventually overturned in a leading liberal democracy such as Britain, what hope would there be for those struggling elsewhere?

Will Podmore

Clavering Road, Wanstead