“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard,” said the American journalist HL Mencken, who died 60 years before the EU referendum but nonetheless seems to have known how things might play out.

The British people have spoken and said … what, exactly? Last week’s BritainThinks survey of today’s attitudes found rampant pessimism, anxiety and gloom. “I cannot recall a time when the national mood was more despairing,” said the research firm’s boss Deborah Mattinson. Now we learn that the government is going to give this participatory democracy idea another go, launching a citizens’ assembly on the climate emergency later in the year.

This Brexit outsourcing calamity has turned us into semi-informed pundits, required to have views on unknowable issues

The catch is that, while a group of informed and motivated people will meet several times this autumn, its recommendations will be merely advisory and not binding. A spokeswoman for Greenpeace worried that the assembly might simply be a “glorified public consultation”.

We have lived through a succession of outsourcing scandals and disasters in recent times. Carillion, Interserve, G4S, Capita, Kier Group and Serco have all made headlines for the wrong reasons. But what we are experiencing today may the biggest scandal of the lot – the outsourcing of the destiny of the nation to a confused, disgruntled and disillusioned population. Asking citizens to settle the complicated matter of our continued membership of the EU with a simple yes/no question was not one of David Cameron’s better ideas. It bought him an extra year in office after the 2015 election, but has left his political reputation in tatters. He outsourced the government’s responsibility for governing to the rest of us.

Most sensible people probably aren’t all that interested in politics much of the time. In the past Jim Messina, the US elections strategist, has argued that the average person may spend only four minutes a week really engaging with political issues. That was then. Since the referendum it has been impossible to hide from endless, noisy talk about hard and soft Brexits, the customs union, the single market, Norway plus, super-Canada, and all the rest of the joyous vocabulary of despair. And normal people’s reaction to all this? I refer you to the findings of the BritainThinks survey. We’ve had enough of it. We’ve been forced to try to engage with obscure technocratic chat and the result is the gloom, anxiety and confusion which has shocked seasoned researchers.

I was out buying a copy of Private Eye recently – the one with a blank cover underneath the headline “Theresa May memorial issue: the prime minister’s legacy in full”. The shop assistant saw it, laughed, and then corrected herself. “Well, they [Private Eye] have a go at everyone, don’t they?” she said rather hastily. This was how we used to discuss politics (if we did at all): tentatively, and with some care. Not knowing my personal views the shop assistant had rowed back a bit from her initial response. For all she knew I could have been a Theresa May supporter. It wouldn’t do to get into a row about it.

This great Brexit outsourcing calamity has turned us all into semi-informed pundits, required to have a clear view on issues that are complicated, mysterious and unknowable. It’s like being trapped at a three-year-long dinner party with guests you don’t know or particularly like. We’re all thoroughly fed up with it and want to go home. Except that our former home seems impossibly out of reach.

When I read in this paper that “governments are going to have to embrace such innovations as citizens’ assemblies and participatory budgeting”, a voice inside my head asks: really? A citizens’ jury sounds like a fine thing. But when called for actual jury service how do a lot of people react? They look for any reason to postpone it or get out of it altogether.

There is, sadly, a lot more unpleasantness to get through before the Brexit disaster will be in any sense behind us. Paradoxically, we may need one more democratic moment – an election or a further referendum – to move on. But then perhaps, one day, we could go back to having politicians who do not shirk the duty of leadership, and a political system that has the confidence to operate more normally, without outsourcing its work to the rest of us.

Of course, we still want “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. We just need to find some better people to do it. Don’t hold your breath.

• Stefan Stern is co-author of Myths of Management