Theresa May has helped Brexit seem doable

People attack the whole business of having an EU referendum, but one of its pluses was that it invited millions of people who had never before been asked to form an opinion on the European question to do so. They responded thoughtfully — perhaps more thoughtfully than people do in general elections when a sizeable minority vote pretty much automatically for one party or another. We quickly developed a much more educated electorate. The idea, strongly touted immediately after the result, that the voters’ majority view could be set aside by Parliament because they didn’t know what they were talking about has almost completely vanished from political debate, with the noisy exception of interventions by Kenneth Clarke. Theresa May’s strong recognition of this in her speech here at the Conservative party conference last Sunday makes this one of the most extraordinary party conferences I have ever attended. This is not because of any high drama in the conference hall, where the debates have, if that is possible, been even duller than ever.