Nothing could be simpler than changing your Will. You simply alter it to take account of a new situation, including your new grandchildren perhaps, and it’s done. Nobody objects that you have betrayed your first Will by making another, and if they did, you would think it mighty strange.
Not so with the will of the people. The decision of 2016, corrupted and flawed though it certainly was, must stand forever, or for at least 20 years in Nigel Farage’s opinion. Why should that be? After all, it was only supposed to be an advisory result to be considered by parliament. Primarily because David Cameron promised that whatever the people decided, the government would carry out. And that promise rapidly attained the force of a biblical commandment, to be implemented come hell or high water.
A second Brexit referendum will not be sanctioned “under any circumstances” insists Theresa May, because the 2016 decision was sacrosanct: any deviance is betrayal.
Underlying this apparently high minded devotion to democracy one senses a certain punitive element, like the strict parent who says “I told you once, and I’m not telling you again”. Across the channel, the translation is more like “The Brits have made their bed, and now they must lie on it”.