OK, I get it. You didn’t like the result of the referendum. Almost every day since then your news feed has had some comment about Brexit, very often making disparaging remarks about those who voted for it. You’ve been an enthusiastic supporter of those seeking to rerun the referendum because you didn’t like what happened.

I sat back and didn’t challenge any of these for the sake of keeping the peace. I even tried muting you so that I wouldn’t see your comments, but you go too far.

You came on to my wall and, in the guise of a question, compared supporting Brexit with fascism. That is an inane comparison. It is wrong and very, very offensive on several levels, not least given what the Nazis did to gay men, and I am very disappointed that you would not understand that.

You then came back on to my wall and suggested that I should be humbly grateful for gay rights that you erroneously believed were due to the EU. That is wrong and offensive.

Your comment suggests that my sexual orientation, and said pathetic gratitude, should govern how I vote. That is also wrong and also offensive.

When I explain this to you in reasonably civil terms you go off on a hissy. How dare you now try and take the moral high ground? If you were genuinely just trying to ask questions, which I very much doubt, then you are displaying a quite shocking level of ignorance about the history of Europe. I think it’s more likely that you were just continuing your relentless Facebook campaign against leaving the EU and your denigration of those who support it.

Even May understands why Brexit, or some compromise, must be delivered. There hasn’t been a government since universal suffrage that has enjoyed a majority of the popular vote. (A few have come close, but no cigar!) The referendum was a binary choice – the most powerful example of democracy – and a majority voted to leave. The fact that the politicians cannot agree on how to deliver that verdict is their failure. It is obfuscation by those calling for a further vote when they say they are being democratic, when their clear and real intention is to reverse the decision.

To be honest I don’t feel terribly strongly either way, but I voted to leave because I think we need a proper debate about our future in Europe and I was optimistic enough to hope that we would get one. Sadly, we ended up with an obtuse slanging match in which every little faction was grinding their own axe. The mere fact that Farage (an odious man for whom I hold no candle) can found a party and within six weeks capture nearly a third of the popular vote is testament to the low esteem in which the established political parties are now held.

Nobody thought this was going to be easy, but whatever solution we end up with has to have, if not enthusiastic support, then acquiescence from a real majority or the genuine resentment will continue. It’s a shame and very disappointing that you don’t seem to understand that.

(I don’t often comment on politics these days, so make the most of this one!)

We’ve seen a lot of milkshakes recently. In my day it was eggs. Although it still didn’t get you anything, unless you tried it on John Prescott, in which case you might end up with a black eye!

Earlier this week a friend of mine sent me a message on Facebook to go take a look at his newsfeed. He had resigned from the political party of which he had been a loyal member and staunch supporter for over twenty years. Brexit was a big part of that very difficult decision. He and I sit on different sides of that question, but we are still very civil to each other because we have more in common than separates us.

I have been a follower of British politics for over 45 years and for many of those I was actively involved. I now turn off the telly. Ad hominem has taken over. (For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, go Google it.) The sheer level of personal abuse now being thrown around, at both local and national level, shows the paucity of real debate. The use of chopped logic (“You voted to leave and that makes you a racist” being a particularly repugnant example) seems to prevail. The reaction of some to Thresamay’s resignation last week left me deeply saddened. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. I lived through Thatcher’s reign and I detested her and all she stood for, but I never once doubted that she sincerely believed in what she was doing.

The referendum was a binary choice – the most powerful and direct form of democracy. The arguments put forward since then that seek to invalidate the result are red herrings. The Boris Bus £350 million claim? Nobody other than the terminally gullible seriously believed it because we’re used to politicians of all tribes making outlandish claims. (And we should not give any real credence to those still predicting dire consequences, although they do seem now to have stopped just short of the frogs and the locusts and the death of all the first born). The overspending and breach of electoral law was just a side issue. It happens more often that you’d think in elections for the UK Parliament, but only rarely gets reported and doesn’t nullify the whole result.

Then there’s those who play the numbers game – the idea that you must count all those who can’t or didn’t vote. Well, the maxim of the law is Qui Tacit Consentire – which means in this case that they can be counted either way. Not only is it facile to assume that they would all vote in one direction, to consider them as supporters for one view or another effectively renders every elected government we’ve ever had as illegitimate.

And then there’s those who want to re-run the referendum. What is the point of having a referendum if you’re just gong to have another one because you didn’t like the first result. What, then, becomes the point of voting? And what happens if the new referendum is even closer? Do we have yet another referendum to check the pulse after the first two. As for the idea that whatever deal we end up with should be put to a confirmatory vote we had members of Parliament who clearly didn’t understand what they were voting on in the indicative stages, so what chance would the Person on the Clapham Omnibus have? And, in any case, that’s not how government works. We didn’t have a referendum on the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, the European Constitution or the Treaty of Lisbon.

And finally there are those that pop up every few minutes demanding a general election. Fine, but that would only take the temperature of a few hundred thousand voters in swing constituencies. And voters tend to become tribal, as a general election is not fought on a single issue.

It has become virtually impossible to have a serious debate in this country over Brexit without it turning into a slanging match. I don’t blame Cameron for getting us into this bastard shitstorm. He knew that sooner or later we would have to lance the boil of discontent around membership of the EU or one day Nigel Farage would be spitting venom across the floor at Prime Minister’s Questions. (Just let than sink in for a moment, please, Remainers!)

It is ingrained into our politics that the winner takes all. This manifests in the “yah-sucks-boo” nature of what passes for political debate, where I’m right and you’re wrong, so there, ner,ner. That has to change. A plebicite sets the broad direction and it’s then up to the politicians to make it work. Our Parliament has failed us miserably in that.

Maybe it’s time to take a tip on governance from the Vatican. Lock our MPs up in the Palace of Westminster and don’t let them out until there’s white smoke.

… you can’t play politics with people’s jobs and with people’s services or with their homes.”

That was Neil Kinnock at the Labour Party Conference in 1985. I remember it well. It was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen a politician do. For those that have forgotten or weren’t here, he was taking the Militant Tendency head on. They had been running Liverpool City Council, had been in dispute with the government and ended up deliberately making their workforce redundant just to  make a political point. Kinnock went after them bigly, a huge risk at the time, but got a thunderous standing ovation from the majority of his party.

Kinnock had a very serious point to make. A person elected to  government has a serious responsibility towards those who invest their lives in providing services to the taxpayer. These people are never to be used as pawns in a game of political chess or become the victims of grandstanding. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that Trump and his lickspittles need to learn. That, and the fact that he is not a dictator.

American politicians are jealous of the British Parliament because, by their standards, it’s easy to get legislation passed. Some in the UK would say it’s too easy and we end up with one day of democracy followed by five years of elected dictatorship. But the American system of federal government was designed the way it is so that power is not concentrated in one place – in other words you need to build a consensus if you are going to make major changes. If he ever understood this Trump has now completely lost sight of it.

The President makes a huge fuss about the country desperately wanting the wall – you know – the one he said Mexico would pay for? But just because he thinks it doesn’t make it so.  Well, firstly he didn’t get a majority at the polls, Hillary did, and he’s only President because of that weird-arse electoral college which is a hangover from the horse and cart days. Secondly, there’s the mid-terms and the massive change in the lower house. If that wasn’t a verdict on him and his bloody wall then nothing is. The Emperor is suddenly looking rather naked.

Trump may still genuinely believe that the wall is needed, although he makes a complete pig’s breakfast of producing any convincing or credible evidence. What he hasn’t got and never did have is any kind of mandate to build the bloody thing and much less to land the American taxpayer with the bill it.

More to the point he doesn’t have the right to play politics with people’s jobs the way he is. Both he and the Republican Senators who refuse to reopen the departments currently shut down are showing us what a bunch of cruel and uncaring bastards they really are. That they are so cavalier about the  livelihoods of so many public servants is a national disgrace and they should hang their heads in shame. But I really don’t think they have any.