Brexit was a vote about who we want to be

The Brexit referendum stirred deep passions. It wasn't a vote about the EU, it was a vote about the UK. It was a vote about who we are and who we want to be. It was about how we as a people want to face the world. Do we hide behind a fortified Trumpian wall, locked in looking out, or do we live as citizens of nowhere, all our doors left open and unguarded, with strangers wandering through at will? Or can we find a middle way?

The best predictors of how someone voted was their view on the death penalty and whether the voter had a degree. It was not about intellect or education, however, it was about where the voter stood on the scale between liberalism and authoritarianism.

Of course Brexit voters want to take back control, but it isn't about bendy bananas and EU regulations, it is about being able to punish criminals properly, including deporting them or imposing the death penalty. Brexit is about immigration, but it isn't about freedom of movement. Brexit voters don't care about freedom of movement, they simply want fewer immigrants, wherever they might come from.

They want sovereignty, blue passports and stronger borders, but they don't really care about the colour of their passports or better security, they simply want a clear and meaningful symbol of British separation from the rest of the world and evidence of the separation being enforced.

Brexit supporters may have marginally won the vote, but they won't get what they actually want - it was never on offer, and in our current society cannot be delivered. Only 17 million people voted for Brexit out of a population of 67 million. This is too small a minority to take back control of what Britain stands for. We are multi-cultural and have been for decades, we lead in many international organisations and have done so for over a century.

Mrs May made the control of immigration her main goal as Home Secretary - and failed. Her 'hostile environment' policy has been reversed due to public pressure. The government itself admits that immigration may even go up after Brexit because that is how Britain has remained near the top of the economic tree. Freedom of movement allowed people to cross borders without a passport, but we always checked passports, we always had the option to send people back. Brexit's implication for immigration is simply that we won't be able to return refugees to the EU, we will have to send them directly to their origin country - if we can.

We will still be subject to the European Court of Human Rights even after a hard Brexit. The ECHR is not part of the EU, it was created before the EU existed. so leaving the EU does not mean we leave the ECHR.

Brexit, of whatever flavour, may only achieve one lasting thing - isolating the UK from our current community of European nations.

It makes sense then to pick a Brexit that will harm us the least. The stock market has already fallen to its lowest point since the financial crisis. Jaguar workers are on a three-day week. Mr Trump's trade war with China has hit £2 billion worth of UK exports, with a further £2 billion at risk. Brexit hasn't even happened yet.

Many of the Brextremist politicians are now shying away from a hard Brexit and are backing Mrs May's deal. It may be a poor one, but it is the best we can do. That or rescind Article 50 and plan our future properly.