• THE dramatic developments in the Brexit debate over the week have shown why Jonathan Livingstone (March – tell politicians the people need a say on the Brexit deal, March 21) is right and David Cheeseman (What next after a betrayal on a manifesto commitment? March 21) is wrong.

On Saturday a million people, including hundreds from Camden, congregated in central London to join a march on parliament to demand a people’s vote on the final deal.

Organisers think the number was even greater than the protesters who marched against the Iraq War. Just as history has acknowledged that the anti-warriors were right, it is becoming clearer day-by-day that a referendum is the only way out of this mess.

On Monday the prime minister decided she could not put her deal to parliament for a third time because she knew that yet again she would not get support of even enough Conservative MPs to ensure it passed.

It is a dreadful deal whose main job is to come up with a backstop arrangement for Northern Ireland that is only necessary because of Theresa May’s insistence that 17.4 million people voted for us to leave the customs union and so leave us marooned from the largest goods trade area in the world. I don’t remember that on the ballot paper.

It is no surprise, as Mr Livingstone says, that voters in just two out of 650 constituencies would support the withdrawal agreement. So given that the people don’t like it and the Commons won’t support it, is it a good idea, as Mr Cheeseman says,
to “agree a deal and move on”?

Later on Monday MPs tried to take control by giving themselves the power to hold indicative votes on which option they preferred, only for Mrs May to say she might ignore them. What a mess!

As of Tuesday morning, more than 5.7 million people had signed a petition calling for Article 50 to be revoked to give us time to have a proper debate about leaving the EU and to hold a referendum. The website link is https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584.

With government ministers and MPs flailing around, the only option is to hand the decision back to the people.

We were only asked to give our view in 2016 because neither the government nor MPs could agree. It would not take a year – the UCL Constitution Unit has shown how it could take six months. Three years on and, to quote Mrs May, nothing has changed.

Perhaps this year, the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre when the government chose to kill and injure rather than listen to people calling for democratic reform, is the time allow voters to take back control.

PHIL THORNTON
Lisburne Road, NW3