> A vote was held, and the decision was to leave. That’s fine - we should not have run that referendum in the form it was, but we can’t deny the result.
> The problem is, Brexit was an entirely empty vessel into which voters’ fantasies were poured. The outcome in no way resembles any of the ideas that were articulated before the referendum. There is now a concrete plan that basically everybody hates, because it’s the worst of both worlds.
I don't see any material change in circumstances that would justify redoing the referendum. The deal on the table looks to be very much the kind of deal anyone who thought about it for a few minutes at referendum time would have expected. It may well be the case that some of those who voted leave were hoping for no deal and some were hoping for a deal like this, and neither alone would have got a majority - but the proper time to address that was when drafting the referendum question. I agree we shouldn't have run the referendum in the form it was, but as you say, we can't deny the result.
> There’s no real democratic legitimacy for any of them. Under these circumstances, having a second referendum that says “this is what we were able to negotiate, now do you want to go through with it or forget the whole thing” is possibly the least shit option.
There's no democratic legitimacy for a referendum that includes remain - we already had that vote. If we really wanted democratic legitimacy we could have a referendum between the proposed deal and no deal, but you'll notice that no-one's arguing for that, because none of the people pushing for a referendum actually care about democracy.