The calling of a General Election, far from being a courageous decision, marks just another failure of our political system to govern the country effectively. No matter how strenuously it is denied, this election will become a de facto referendum on Brexit – but far from resolving the issue, it virtually guarantees to lock the resentments of the issue permanently into the national psyche.

Rightly or wrongly, the original referendum in 2016 asked people to express their individual preferences for remaining in or leaving the EU; the resolution of the resultant deadlock in 2019 (for, short of another hung parliament, that it will be) will not allow people to do that, because it will utterly obscure the will of those individuals behind the many imperfections of our electoral system.

The most obvious criticism is that a single issue is being addressed using a mechanism more suited to the multi-issue matter of who governs the country for the next five years. While Brexit will clearly be a major factor in that, there is simply no neat correlation between people’s views on it and their other priorities and opinions.

More important, however, is that the votes of millions of people will count for nothing. I live in a very safe Conservative seat, and the chances of a change of MP are minimal. With a Conservative majority of 18,646, the likelihood of this constituency representing my wish to remain is nil. The same is, of course, true for Leavers who live in safe Remain-represented seats.

Therefore my views on Brexit (which are as far from my M.P.’s as they can possibly be, given that she is the Home Secretary) will have absolutely no effect on the outcome of the issue, simply because I am unfortunate enough to live in an area where the majority of people think differently. My M.P. has not even seen fit to reply to my correspondence on the matter. While I have little choice but to accept this in more normal politics, in this situation, it is intolerable.

Frankly, it will not even be worth my turning out to vote in the issue that is perhaps the most critical political event of my lifetime. The resentment that this will cause – particularly if the UK does then depart the EU – will, I’m afraid, remain in my memory forever. The same will be true wherever people don’t see their personal wishes honoured on an issue that was opened on the basis that every single vote counted and carried equal weight.

The U.K.’s First-past-the-post electoral system often returns governments that are only supported by the largest minority, not the majority. This will probably happen again, and is also in itself inconsistent with the ‘simple majority’ requirement of the original referendum. Instead of addressing the issue, all this does is to lower the bar. And if there is a hung parliament, it will solve nothing.

Parliament has been criticised for failing to represent the British people over Brexit. I don’t agree: if one considers the electorate as a whole, the stalemate of the past three years has accurately reflected the state of the nation. But it has utterly failed to find the collective courage to resolve the problem in the only way that has even a slim chance of setting the issue properly to rest. What’s more, this decision has once again been made not on the grounds of the national interest, so much as what has proved politically expeditious for a government of dubious real legitimacy.

While I am a firm Remainer, my objections are not about losing in 2016 per se. They are about the failure of that event to produce a trustworthy answer, with clearly-explained choices, a sensible winning margin and an honest campaign run by both sides. (When one considers that in theory the national destiny could have been tipped by even one vote, it becomes clear how unsafe the simple majority position was).

All I want is to see a ‘fair fight’ between the two sides, which would yield a result that I could accept as being properly democratic, and compliant with international norms for such referenda. In such circumstances I would, no matter how reluctantly, accept the result if it were to Leave. I would like to believe that Leavers would say the same in reverse, though their behaviour in the past period hardly gives much confidence. That, however, should not be a consideration in the fair resolution of the matter.

The Brexit referendum was an act of direct, individual democracy; the only appropriate resolution for the matter is another. Unfortunately, the decrepit system that got us into this mess seems to have learned nothing.