BREXIT is a major constitutional and democratic crisis and will have damaging implications for UK elections in the future if we don't leave.

I think after so much has been said and written about the subject, two days before the original deadline it's time to strip everything back and consider the basics.

Referendums are the ultimate in direct democracy. The electorate have their say and give the government and Parliament instructions how to act. Let's not pretend they are advisory - every one held in the UK - all 11 of them since 1973 - have seen the result respected.

The 2016 referendum asked one simple question - whether we should stay in or leave the European Union. A majority voted to leave. Article 50 was then triggered, and the UK had two years to leave.

Remainers now calling for revoking article 50 are just wrong. Referendum results and democracy have to be respected. If we don't leave, why should millions who took part in the referendum ever have faith in democracy again?

Remainers - and I used to be one of them - should also consider what it would be like to take part in a referendum that produced a result that a government didn't follow.

The past two years have been all about the terms on how we leave. But the disastrous course the Prime Minister and the government set very early on led us to this point of missing Friday's deadline, and an extension.

Had the PM opted for a softer Brexit, a deal acceptable to both the EU and Parliament, we would have been in the transitional period now. It would not have pleased everyone, but it would have delivered Brexit and crucially on that referendum result.

But instead the PM pursued her disastrous deal and it led to a failed game of chicken with MPs, who did the right thing in voting it down.

And now we are stuck in a kind of hellish departure lounge, having to ask for the plane to stay on the runway because 'we are not ready yet', and with real fears the plane has broken down and might not even take off anyway.

With this PM in charge there are only two ways I can see how this play out now. In an attempt to change parliamentary arithmetic to secure her deal, she asks for a further extension and calls a general election.

Or we leave with no deal.

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