Those who persuaded the British people to vote for Brexit have now given up on a glorious future for global Britain. These arguments lie in tatters, buried beneath the government’s own studies into the impacts of Brexit showing it will be disastrous for the economy under any scenario. Instead, they are resorting to the “will of the people” mantra. Take Priti Patel’s recent tweet in which she says: “This is no longer an argument about whether Brexit was a good idea but is about democracy & standing by the democratic decision made by the people.” In other words, no matter how bad the consequences for all of us, we have to go ahead with Brexit because democracy demands it.

But upholding democracy is a selective affair for Brexiteers. The leave campaign has wasted no time in engaging in some mudslinging at the Electoral Commission, the body responsible for regulating our democracy. The commission’s investigation into Vote Leave found the campaign group broke the law by coordinating with sister campaign, BeLeave. Vote Leave has been fined £61,000 and both campaigns have been referred to the police. Yet the response from Vote Leave officials is to accuse the Electoral Commission of “false accusations” and being motivated by a political agenda, “unfounded claims and conspiracy theories”. It is worth reminding ourselves at this point that a host of senior government ministers sat on the Vote Leave campaign committee. These included Liam Fox, Iain Duncan Smith, Dominic Raab, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Steve Baker and Chris Grayling, as well as the defender of democracy herself, Priti Patel.

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It is also worth noting the strong overlap between Vote Leave members and the odious European Research Group, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, that is currently holding Theresa May hostage over her Brexit plans. In spite of the shocking weakness of our constitution that Brexit has exposed, we need the prime minister to demonstrate her stalwart defence of the rule of law by sacking cabinet ministers who were on the Vote Leave committee, namely Fox, Gove, Grayling and Raab. She should also recall that we are signatories to the Venice commission which states that campaign overspending is adequate grounds for annulling an election result. The foundations of our democratic systems are being undermined and it is May’s duty to defend them.

Of course, today’s news of Vote Leave breaching electoral law is just the latest in a series of scandals to dog the leave campaigns. Leave.EU, the campaign supported by Nigel Farage and funded by Arron Banks, has also been found to have breached electoral law and fined. Its chief executive has been referred to the police. And then of course there is the whole question of micro-targeting and psychological manipulation techniques and the scandals around AIQ and Cambridge Analytica and the ways in which they were linked to the leave campaigns. The democratic mandate for Brexit has been undermined.

Even if this mandate were strong and stable there would still be reason to question whether we press ahead with Brexit when so much has changed both within our country and across the world. Not least, a US president who is so easily manipulated at the hands of authoritarian tyrants. His failure to denounce Russian meddling in the US presidential election sets him against American law enforcers, defence officials and intelligence agencies, all of whom believe that Russia did interfere in the 2016 presidential elections. There is also the fact that Brexit serves Trump’s agenda of destabilising both UK and US democracies and Putin’s agenda of undermining the EU, which is why there are substantiated claims of Russian interference in the referendum campaign.

So there are good grounds for considering the vote to leave the EU now lacks legitimacy. It is quite clear that the mandate for Brexit lies buried beneath countless occurrences of cheating, voter manipulation and electoral law-breaking.

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It is rare I would quote David Davis on anything, but on democracy he is spot on: “If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.” This helps explain the growing chorus from all shades of the political spectrum for a people’s vote. The idea is also proving increasingly popular with the public.

The Brexiteers are using arguments about democracy to try and force through something that will have profoundly negative impacts on the UK economy, society and the environment for generations to come. True democracy acknowledges that we make mistakes and provides opportunities to think again. Not only does this enhance rather than diminish our democracy, it may be necessary to save it.

• Molly Scott Cato is Green MEP for the South West of England and Green party speaker on Brexit