Mal Fletcher comments on the leadership of Brexit.

Are we to become a nation that keeps voting until we come up with the "right" answer, as defined by either political elites or lobby groups?

I voted Remain in 2016, but with huge reservations about the direction of the EU, with special regard to "ever closer union". Recent moves toward forming a European army reflect that those concerns were not without merit.

A unified army might be sold as a means of policing immigration, for example. In reality, it constitutes another plank in the building of a platform for a uniform political establishment, a United States of Europe.

In 2016, I like many other Remainers accepted the referendum result. I still believe that Britain is innovative and productive enough to make a go of this in the longer term.

Some have argued that holding a second vote, with a no-Brexit option, would be no "big deal", because we already hold parliamentary elections every few years. There is, however, an obvious difference between the two types of vote.

We do hold national elections every few years, but we don't cast a vote and then overturn that vote before our elected representatives have had an opportunity to act on its decision. That's exactly the scenario represented by a vote to overturn the Leave result.

We'd have voted to leave the EU and then told to vote again before that vote has been carried out.

Former government leaders who insist that Britain hold such a vote are demonstrating the type of political pomposity that caused many people to vote Leave in the first place.

It is time for the British government to look beyond the walls of Westminster, explaining to the electorate, in clear terms and as concisely as possible, the potential wins and losses contained in the proposed Brexit deal.

It is time for those MPs - if not parties - who oppose the deal to explain why they are doing so, in non-partisan terms.

In short, it is time to at least make a start toward a process of long-term national reconciliation while creating the best platform for the UK's long-term future.