As Brexit draws ever nearer, and Theresa May desperately tries to convince parliament to vote for her EU deal, the rhetoric grows ever sharper. On 14 January, in a speech given in Stoke on Trent, May said that if the MPs failed to implement the plan, then people’s faith in the democratic process and their politicians would suffer “catastrophic” harm. She further stated that the alternative scenario of no Brexit would be a “subversion of the democratic process.”

In other words, May believes that it would be undemocratic to hold a second referendum to gauge if people still feel the same way about leaving the EU, now that they’ve seen what the consequences could be. So one referendum is good, but a second referendum is undemocratic and unworthy of the United Kingdom’s proud democratic traditions, according to May.

However, by stating that a second referendum is undemocratic, May also implies that countries like Ireland and Denmark are undemocratic. In 1993, Denmark held a second referendum on the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. Ireland has done it twice, with the Nice and Lisbon Treaties.

I’ll leave you to contemplate the fact that May are happy to accuse Ireland of being less democratic than the UK for a minute.. I’ll just add that both Denmark and Ireland ranks higher than the UK in the EIU Democracy Index. Denmark is ranked 5^th most democratic country in the world and Ireland a joint 6^th. For comparison, the UK is ranked outside the Top 10 as no. 14.

So with regards to the claim that a failure to implement her Brexit deal would cause “catastrophic” harm to people’s faith in their politicians, I would argue that the damage has already been done.