The myth that Article 50 is a one-way street

With the predicted failure of the government to get its Brexit deal through the Commons, the Labour leadership is said to be aiming to initiate a general election via a no confidence vote with plan B, a second People’s Vote incorporating a no-Brexit option. Let us suppose that this time the choice is remain.

Or, indulging in a bit of make-believe, suppose after the debate a Commons majority writes off Brexit altogether as a car crash waiting to happen. In reaching that conclusion, they harness the grave breaches of electoral law and information regulations committed by Leave campaigners as wiping out the legitimacy of the wafer-thin Leave vote. Perhaps it even dawns on some of our less numerate legislators—finally—that to describe the Leave vote by 37% of the registered electorate as expressing the will of the people is an arithmetic absurdity, a mathematical monstrosity.

Since well before the prime minister activated Art 50 of the Treaty on European Union,