The BeLeave scandal means we must have a second referendum, otherwise we're no better than the Russians

Anyone fancy joining forces with me to launch a Kickstarter campaign to buy the leading members of Vote Leave commemorative Australian cricket caps? You can get them for £8.99 on eBay, so the target isn’t overly ambitious.

The only problem is that I think it would be just a tad unfair to our friends down under. After all, they’ve been taking the justified opprobrium on the chin like a bouncer bowled with an illegally scuffed-up ball. They’ve endured the memes and mockery from their opponents, and the disdain of their own supporters.

Their conduct since the scandal stands in stark contrast to the mixture of lies, bluster, threats and more lies that we’ve been hearing from Brexiteers in the wake of the revelations about the way they have allegedly broken the rules on election spending.

Not to mention their links to dodgy data firms peddling, shall we say, material of questionable veracity?

As if that wasn’t enough, there’s been the quite disgusting display of brutality towards a member of their tribe.

I’m speaking, of course, about BeLeave Treasurer Shahmir Sanni. His allegation that £625,000 was donated by Vote Leave to his supposedly independent pro-Brexit campaign organisation, before being funnelled to a digital services firm linked to the by now infamous Cambridge Analytica of Facebook data fame, has kicked off an almighty scandal.

He has been rewarded for this display of principle by being forcibly outed as gay by Theresa May’s press office. His family may have been placed at risk as a result. Yet the aide responsible remains in his job.

Remind me, how do you spell “despicable”? How do you spell “contemptible”? How do you spell “twisted”?

How much lower can a government that’s been swimming in the Mariana Trench go? They seem to have been renting Journey to the Centre of the Earth DVDs in Downing Street so we might be about to find out.

Rules are there for a reason. They are supposed to ensure that opposing sides have as level a playing field to fight on as possible.

If people treat them in the cavalier manner, like the Leave campaign apparently did, then how different can we really be from the Russia we’re all supposed to be very angry about because of how it deals with its critics?

If the PM believes in democracy as she claims to do, then the case for giving the British people the chance to vote on whatever deal the she finally comes up versus staying put is irrefutable.

“If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy,” once said Brexit Secretary David Davis.

Well, quite.

The EU referendum gave a narrow victory to those favouring a particular direction of travel. But as a lot of Regrexiters have been telling me on Twitter, they didn’t want or expect anything like what they have been presented with in its wake.

The whole process has been hijacked by a crew of ideological zealots, hell bent on something close to the most extreme of the possible options they were presented with at the outset, none of which had been put in front of Leave voters before they made their way to the ballot box.

We’ve all now had a look at the new home those zealots have been building for us, and we’ve more or less had it surveyed too. We should be able to decide whether we want to move in.

Democracy demands it. Mr Davis ought to demand it. Were he a man of principle I’d expect him to make that case in Cabinet, but as things stand I fear that he too may be a candidate for one of my Aussie hats. Perhaps he’ll surprise me. I live in hope.

But going back to the current scandal, I invite you to imagine his likely reaction, and that of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and all the other Brexiteers, had the referendum gone the other way, only for it subsequently to emerge that Remain cheated to get its result.

The clamour for a fresh poll would have been positivity deafening.

And they might have got their way. In that case, what’s good for the goose