We should not allow the threat of violence to obstruct our democracy

There are many powerful democratic arguments in favour of a second, Final Say, referendum on Brexit. There are also many perfectly legitimate reasons to object to such an exercise. They have been widely aired. What is, however, not an acceptable way of opposing a further vote on Brexit is to threaten violent action, however obliquely.

Consciously or not, too many in senior political positions who should know better have been doing just this. The most recent example has dropped from the lips of the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay. Commenting on the violent verbal abuse hurled at Remainer Tory MP Anna Soubry, Mr Barclay said the incident showed how “divisive” the Brexit debate had become. He then elided that point into another, adding that holding a second EU referendum to break the Brexit deadlock would be “hugely damaging to our democracy; to our politics”.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. And how ironic it is that a further, and essential, exercise in democratic legitimacy should be thwarted by the threat of undemocratic direct action by a few small gangs of hot-heads.

Mr Barclay is hardly alone. The former leader of Ukip, Nigel Farage, has said, a little oddly, that he would “don khaki, pick up a rifle and head for the front lines” if Brexit were frustrated – words that are at the very least open to misunderstanding. Barry Gardner, Labour shadow international trade secretary, said last autumn that a second referendum could lead to “civil disobedience” and would be “socially disruptive”. That was before the Labour Party conference backed the notion of a referendum if a general election failed to materialise, so perhaps Mr Gardiner has reconsidered his prognostications about civil disobedience. As in most areas, on this subject Mr Gardiner is unlikely to be crystal clear about whatever it is he does think.

There is a further problem with this sort of talk, which is that it actively encourages those most susceptible to suggestion and violent reaction to redouble their efforts, only this time not demonstrating for Brexit, but to actively disrupt a democratic national vote. Who knows what lengths some of them might go to in order, as they see it, to protect their country from treachery and treason?

It is rather like those old examples of journalists who used to report that “trouble is expected” at some event, with it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most notoriously – and a real warning from history – there is the faintest echo of the Enoch Powell line about foreboding and “rivers of blood”.

It is perfectly true, such is the emotional state that many on both sides of this debate have frothed themselves into, that there will be unhinged individuals who will take all sorts of action in the coming months, second referendum or not. Some will certainly be enraged by it. Yet that is not, and can never be, an argument against the free and fair exercise of democracy. If, as some people are claiming, the second referendum is an attempt to “frustrate” Brexit, then so what? The 2016 referendum result did not close down debate, or force everyone to sign up to some sort of compulsory Brexit orthodoxy, imposing a one-party pro-Brexit state in the UK. We did not even do that during the Second World War, when the Commons debated motions critical of Winston Churchill’s handling of the war. Hitler was not subjected to such scrutiny in the Reichstag. This is what makes Britain a democracy.

When Theresa May makes such claims about “frustrating” Brexit in the chamber of the House of Commons, the SNP MPs delightedly and loudly proclaim their determination to do just that. They are open and honest about it. They are entitled to do so – just as Nigel Farage and Ukip were entitled to campaign against the EU for decades before. No referendum can shut down debate or stop people thinking – and, for that matter, rethinking – their views. Seeking to frustrate or reverse Brexit, or perhaps in due course rejoin the EU, is not some sort of crime, an act of treason on a par with trying to burn down a naval dockyard or violate Princess Anne. It is a simple act of political judgement.

It has always been the case that some people regard Labour voters as nothing better than communists and Russian spies, for example, but that has never prevented us from allowing a general election or a Labour government to be formed.

So we will have arrived at a strange place if sovereignty is not allowed to rest with the people as a whole or with parliament, but is instead subject to a veto exercised by a self-appointed bunch of patriotic guardians with union jacks draped around their shoulders wandering abound Westminster yelling insults at MPs and broadcasters. They are not a silent majority, but a very noisy and silly minority. Some of them, a faction within a faction, may have their minds so bent by events that they seek to sow violence.

The assassination of Jo Cox, the thinly veiled threats of the far right and some half-baked murder plots against politicians remind us that there are men and women of evil out there. Their business is to frustrate democracy. That is why they are dangerous, and that is why they should not be given undue weight and encouragement by ministers and other politicians. The fighting talk has got to stop.