The argument goes like this. The referendum of 2016 was the greatest democratic exercise in our history. It resulted in a decisive vote to leave the European Union on good terms or none. The wishes of the slim majority for leaving are to be treated as those of the British people. To frustrate them is therefore treacherous and undemocratic. For more than three years, Parliamentarians have felt obliged to pay lip service to this sentiment and simply nibble round its edges. But the time has come for honesty —what can the referendum really tell us about the right way out of our current predicament?

The first problem is that it was a completely illegitimate way of resolving an issue that is fundamental to this country’s interests and is one which people feel strongly about. Democratic institutions are not just designed to produce a decision. They have another equally important purpose, which is to accommodate those who disagree. Without some institutional method of accommodating our opposing opinions and interests, we simply tear ourselves apart. Don’t take my word for it. Look at what has happened.

The referendum result has sundered the four nations of the United Kingdom. It has divided us by class, by region, by economic status. It has split families and alienated friends. It has poisoned our politics. All of this has happened because of the sense of entitlement that the referendum result has generated among many Leavers, a feeling that having won they are entitled to trample on everyone else. The result has been years of mounting venom and abuse with no end in sight.

This has culminated in a situation where ministers have tried to close down a Parliament in which they cannot find support for their policies. They have argued in all seriousness that MPs have no right to form their own view about the national interest. They have declined to respect resolutions of the House of Commons, saying that only a statute can bind them, and then threatened to ignore the statute that Parliament duly passed to limit their options. They have defied every constitutional norm standing in their way. To say that this is how democracy is supposed to work is extraordinary. The old trope that referendums are instruments of division and despotism has rarely been so completely vindicated.

But that is only the beginning of the problem. The referendum did not even answer the questions which currently divide us. There were in reality two issues. The first was whether we wished to leave the EU. The second was what our relations with the EU were to be after we had left. The first was on the ballot paper. The second was not. Yet it is the second question which has proved to be crucial and divisive in the years since the referendum. What is more, the debate about the price has exposed many reasons to re-examine the question of whether to leave at all.

No doubt, there were some people who voted Leave who wanted to leave at any price, just as there were ideological Remainers who wanted to remain at any price. But for most of us it depended on the price.

Personally, I have no illusions about the EU. I think that it is a seriously defective top-down organisation which works as an economic project but not as a political one. I find the notion of national autonomy attractive, and I can understand why other people do. Nonetheless, I voted to remain and would do so again. I did so because I considered that the price of leaving after 45 years would be too high, the alleged benefits largely illusory, and the promised autonomy unattainable in an interdependent world.

The difference between me and my Leaver friends was not about the attractions of the EU but about the price. They bought the argument of the Leave campaign that leaving was a cheap option because we would get a deal that would have the trading advantages of membership without the political burden of the EU’s rules.

There must have been many people like me for whom the price was the crucial thing. Yet in 2016 we had no idea what the price would be. We still have no idea what the British people thought it would be. Even more important, we have no idea what they think the price is now. A lot has happened since 2016. We all know much more about the terms on offer and the economic and political implications of leaving. And as we learn more, the referendum becomes less and less relevant.

We will not resolve our current dilemmas until we stop pretending that the referendum has answered them, and that all that remains is to implement it. The time has come for MPs to do the job which they were elected to do. Their duty is to assess the price of leaving the EU and decide whether it is in the national interest to pay it. The visceral hostility of so many British people to the EU will no doubt be one factor in their decision, whether they share it or not. The process will be divisive, but because of the referendum the divisions are there anyway. What is clear is that we have reached the point where the referendum result has nothing more to say to us that is worth listening to.

Jonathan Sumption is a 2019 BBC Reith Lecturer and author of Trials of the State: Law and the Decline of Politics