Holding another referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union is an uncomfortable idea. That, of course, is not a compelling argument against holding it. Nor does it mean that a referendum may not eventually be regarded as the best available option. But let’s consider the immense challenges.

First, there are all sorts of practical issues. A majority of MPs would have to support such an undertaking, they’d have to agree on the question and there’d have to be a government—and, crucially, a prime minister—willing to bring the legislation forward to make a referendum happen.

There’s also the question of time. It would take around 22 weeks to organise a vote (not the full year that the government, ridiculously, has claimed). Assuming that we don’t think it’s a great idea to hold one in the middle of summer, that means we might do it in the autumn. It’s an open question as to whether EU leaders would unanimously grant us an extension to Article 50 to hold another referendum just as they are appointing a new European Commission president in the autumn. However, such practicalities are not the biggest concern. There are even trickier issues to consider. Many of those calling for a new vote base their arguments on concerns about the fairness and/or legality of the first one. Certainly, there appear to have been shady online tactics. The Information Commissioner’s Office found a number of breaches of data-protection law by Leave.eu, which now faces fines. A number of Remain campaigners have also been fined, by the Electoral Commission, for failing to account for expenses. It’s undoubtedly true that we need to clarify and firm up our rules on malpractice to take account of digital campaigning. As a recent report by the Culture Select Committee said, “our existing legal framework is no longer fit for purpose”. However, I see no prospect of this happening in time for another referendum. In which case, we run the risk of malpractices simply happening again.

What will certainly happen again is that we would witness a campaign based on competing claims about an uncertain future. To those who say “we know much more now”, my response is yes, we do. We know that Theresa May’s government has made a hash of the process, that parliament has no majority for any conceivable outcome, that the EU won’t simply roll over and give us what we want (to be fair, some of us knew that last one in 2016).

What we don’t know, as we didn’t know in 2016, is what the future holds. We don’t know what kind of trade deal we will get, and therefore what kind of Brexit we will have. So another referendum would be a rerun of the old one, lacking the most important facts, as there are no facts about the future.

It would also be a rerun of a campaign full of promises that can’t be kept. Proponents of a rerun have stressed that “of course we have to address the grievances of those Leave voters who were protesting about the state of our politics and our economy.” How comforting. How familiar. A campaign that promises things it will be in no position to deliver.

Not only that, but it will be a debate carried out by one side purely as an anti-establishment exercise. Little surprise that Leave campaigners have already come up with the slogan “tell them again”. A three-month-long publicly funded campaign in which one side foments anti-establishment and anti-politics sentiment is surely not the wisest idea at this febrile moment in our political history.

To be clear, this is not about submitting to threats of violence from the far right. It is about whether we really want to encourage a collapse in faith in our political establishment on the part of Leave voters who have not changed their minds, and feel that expressing their opinions once should be enough.

And—despite what People’s Vote campaigners might say—there has been no decisive shift in public opinion since the first vote. The poll of polls stands at just 54-46 in favour of Remain, which hardly speaks of a public clamouring to overturn the previous result. It also speaks to the dangers of an extremely close vote.

Imagine an outcome of 52-48 in favour of Remain in a second vote, and on a lower turnout than in 2016. (Bear in mind, if we have a binary question, a significant number of voters will feel disenfranchised from the start.) This would, at a minimum, pave the way for some kind of English nationalist party (UKIP 2.0?), and create the conditions in which such a party might prosper. Is that a future to aspire to?

The notion that a country split down the middle—with the Tory civil war on Europe re-inflamed, and much of the public furious about supposed betrayal—is one that can return to normal and carry on as before, is unrealistic. We would be a country waiting for “the decider,” for “the best out of three votes,” to settle the issue. A country perhaps, like now, with diminishing attractiveness to potential investors.

It speaks volumes about the state of our country that a second referendum that would be little better than the first in terms of quality, and might resolve little if anything in terms of substance, might still be seen as the least bad of all the options confronting us. It is up to politicians to decide whether or not we are desperate enough to resort to it. But let’s be honest about the problems it entails.

____________

Anand Menon (@AnandMenon1), is the director of The UK in a Changing Europe and a professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London.