Jon Pretty

After today, I won't be an EU citizen. I'm very unhappy about this. I believe that no good will come of the UK leaving the EU. But I hope a lesson can be learned from the Brexit referendum and how it has been implemented, which can avoid a similar thing happening in Scotland.

The idea of a referendum has its appeal: An opportunity to end decades of angry debate "once and for all" with a single question, and who better to make an important decision like this than all of the citizens of the UK?

I empathize with the allure it must have had to David Cameron: at the time he decided to hold the referendum, very few people thought the UK would vote to leave, and he was fresh of the back of a successful rejection of Scottish independence. It was a great opportunity.

But there was far too much riding on the outcome of a single day, a single choice, a single vote. Most legislation passes multiple times through the House of Commons and the House of Lords, amongst elected (mostly!) and well-informed (mostly!) officials

Instead, the Brexit referendum was a single vote, widely open to manipulation from inside and outside the UK, and influenced by other irrelevant factors, such as dissatisfaction with the government of the day and unpredictable news events fresh in people's minds when they voted.

To make a decision like this, with such dramatic economic and social implications (whether believed to be positive or negative) for so many people, for decades to come, was incredibly foolish.

I don't believe that direct democracy is a good way of making decisions like this, but I accept that democracy is a broad set of compromises, and referenda are a valid form of national decision-making. But a decision of this importance should not pivot on a choice so frivolous.