@abimF1

I wrote before about how Twitter - all social media, in fact - changes us. It can become an echo chamber, reinforcing our prejudices and stereotypes, narrowing and limiting the world for us. But it can also become a gateway to a whole new world, full of interesting people living lives very different to our own.

I guess I'm foolish enough to believe that that could be a positive thing. That exposure to other people, living other lives, can be enriching, that it can bring us all a little closer together in an understanding of our shared experience. That it might just make the world a slightly better place. 

But nothing is wholly good and good is not possible without bad.  With that connection to other people's lives comes an exponential exposure not just to all the happy events that life can offer but the sad ones, too.  So it was with @abimF1, who died last night.

I didn't know her personally, so I can't claim any of the grief her family and friends are feeling. I watched her struggle from the other side of the world through my iPhone screen, which is to say I saw very little of what she was going through - only what she chose to reveal. But she was a positive presence in my feed; brave, funny, feisty... I liked her and I wanted her to be well. We interacted a few times, mostly on a Sunday, talking about the Grand Prix. I enjoyed those contacts, and I'll miss them. 

RIP Abi; you fought hard and now it's time to rest. 

Nothing and everything has changed.

History makes fools of us all but let me begin with a prediction: the UK will not leave the EU. Perhaps, as you read this at some point in the future, you can laugh at my foolishness - we'll see. For now, here in the past, let me explain why I believe that to be the case.

As I understand the legal situation (which is to say, tenuously), the process for a member state leaving the EU is contained within Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.  That article sets out a two-year timetable for leaving which, once invoked, cannot be halted without the unanimous support of the remaining states. It's the nuclear button and the current Prime Minister has expressed his intention not to press it, leaving it for his replacement.  Until the article is invoked, Brexit remains unstarted and the UK's position within the EU - legally at least - remains unchanged. 

So what happened yesterday? It's a tired and overplayed metaphor but imagine your spouse tells you they want a divorce. The moment after that statement, what has changed? Nothing and everything: legally, your position is unchanged but everything is different. That's the position the UK is is right now.

Europe has long been an issue for the Conservative party, thanks to a small number of fanatics and made worse by the rise of the UK Independence Party. For short-term expediency, David Cameron offered a referendum on continued membership of the EU as a way of keeping his party together.  There was no treaty change (or proposed change) justifying requiring a referendum and I don't believe he ever expected to carry out his promise; his party's victory in 2015 came as a surprise, not least of all to him.  Leave to one side the fact that the UK has little history with referendums (the first UK-wide referendum didn't happen until 1975) and that a situation as complex as membership of the EU is precisely the wrong type of issue to answer in a binary yes/no, in/out way. This was a political decision and a political referendum.  How can I be so sure?  Because the legislation enabling the referendum contains no clause binding the government to its outcome.  This, it seems to me, is significant.

So, a pointless referendum called for short-term political expediency with a result that even some who voted for the outcome are now regretting: Scotland wants a second independence referendum; Sinn Féin have called for a referendum on the reunification of Ireland.  Referendums are breaking out everywhere and the UK faces the very real possibility of breaking up.  

But, some might argue, the people have had their say and that is democracy. Well, yes and no.

It's true that a referendum is an example of direct democracy but the UK is a representative democracy, which means the people elect representatives to make their decisions for them.  And the majority of those elected representatives do not support the idea of the UK leaving the EU.  They see it, in fact, as an unmitigated disaster for the country.  How can a largely pro-European government sensibly and in good conscience negotiate the very thing they don't want - exit from the EU?

And then there's the matter of the PM. Cameron's resignation is the one sensible thing he's done in all this. How can a group that campaigned on getting rid of "unelected bureaucrats" and "ruling elites" accept an unelected Prime Minister, chosen by an elite group of Conservative activists?  If, as seems likely, Boris Johnson will lead the Conservatives in October, I predict he will not invoke Article 50, either.  Johnson no more wants to leave the EU than Cameron did; his move to the Brexit campaign was a breath-taking act of political opportunism that even his larger-than-life persona may struggle to disguise.  As difficult as the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act of 2011 makes it, the answer has to be a General Election.  The results of a General Election can, through some canny political tap-dancing, overrule the results of a referendum.  

But in the meantime, as all this plays out, incalculable harm will have been done to the UK economy and its reputation.  For the sake of one man's weak leadership, the worst side of our nature has been encouraged.  The very poorest, weakest and most vulnerable in society have been demonized and punished; opinion and belief has triumphed over fact; "expert" has become an insult.  The UK will not leave the EU but the country has done great harm to itself in the process, whatever the result of the vote had been yesterday.  Nothing and everything has changed.