I'm still not sure when and where we voted for a hard Brexit. With typical arrogance, Trimmer Cameron deigned that the referendum should be a straightforward yes or no matter, presumably because the idea of the public voting no didn't exist in his mind. Once they did, then the matter of what "No" actually meant became an issue.

I've just done some searching for the term "Hard Brexit" and, interestingly, on the first five pages of answers I got, there wasn't a single example of the term being used before the date of the Referendum, so I cannot see how anyone can claim that we voted for a hard Brexit.

For me, there are all sorts of nuances regarding what the leave vote meant with the line that was followed by alleged one time remainer May and her hard line Brexiteers being well towards one of the extreme ends of the interpretation.

Amidst all the talk of how Labour got their highest number of votes since whenever it was and how the Conservatives received more votes than Blair did in 1997, it seems to have passed unnoticed that considerably more people voted remain in the Referendum than voted Conservative on Thursday.

The sixteen million plus who voted Remain certainly didn't want what is now known as a hard Brexit and I have to believe that nearly all of the thirteen million or so of eligible voters who abstained didn't either. So, you're left with the seventeen million plus who voted to leave - are we really saying that all of them wanted the version of Brexit which has a "bloody difficult" woman going into battle with an attitude that no deal with the EU was an option she could live with?

Even in the hugely unlikely event that all the no voters wanted the version of Brexit favored by the Prime Minister and her merry band of Brexiteers, they still only represent around 37.5% of the eligible electorate and. logically, you have to think that figure would be a little lower today when you consider the people who have come onto and left the electoral register since then.

So, being very generous, what's come to be known as a hard Brexit was favoured by slightly over a third of eligible voters.

I see from the Daily Express that a hard line Tory Brexiteer has been talking what I think is a lot of sense about what should happen now;-

http://www.express.co.uk/news/politi...nan-Carmichael

In particular, MEP Daniel Hannan said;-

“I do think we should be reaching out. I’ve said ever since the vote, it was a 48 to 52 vote, that is not a mandate for severing all your links. That is a mandate for a phased gradual repatriation of power."

Mr Hannan advocated that there should be consultation with opposition parties about how we go about the Brexit negotiations. My belief is that, based on Thursday's vote, this is the position the British people would prefer - they certainly didn't vote for Theresa May's version of a "hard Brexit", just like they didn't this time last year.