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Mr Maloney - It seems to me that my arguments remain as they were. The MPs you refer to may represent only a minority in Parliament, in which case the majority will fulfill the wishes of those who voted in favour of leaving the EU. Or, as you seem to fear, they may be the vanguard of a wider movement within Parliament that turns out to be intent upon putting the brakes on the exit process. My point has always been that, Parliament has unfettered sovereignty in our parliamentary democracy. The result of the referendum has great political weight but was only advisory as a matter of law. It therefore remains possible for Parliament to do something other than immediately proceed with the article 50 process if it so chooses.

Since the referendum vote I have tried to imagine what approach I would be taking now if I were an MP who was in favour of remaining in the EU. If, in my judgment, I thought it was in the best interests of the UK for it to remain in the EU, then the referendum vote would not have changed my judgment, but it would have told me that the majority of voters in the referendum were of a different opinion. That would place me in a difficult position, to be resolved perhaps by taking one of the following courses (there may be others): (a) back my judgment and vote against giving notice under article 50, (b) like the PM (and others) accept that, despite my misgivings, effect should be given to the referendum vote by voting in favour of giving notice under article 50, (c) abstain in any vote on article 50 (though this seems a bit of a cop out), or (d) resign my seat.

Since I am not an MP, my point here is that, in a parliamentary democracy, the outcome would (and should) be an aggregation of all the decisions made by individual parliamentarians along these lines plus, of course, the votes in favour by all the MPs who favoured exiting the EU from the beginning.

That said, the political reality is that the PM has made it crystal clear that she is determined to get the article 50 process going by whatever means. If the Supreme Court upholds the recent High Court decision and Parliament threatens not to invoke the article 50 procedure, then the PM has talked about having a general election to clear the air. The only fly in the ointment here is that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 now prevents a election without either an unreversed Commons vote of no confidence in Her Majesty's Government or a two-thirds majority in the Commons in favour of an early election. However, the second of these options seems not unlikely, as prudent MPs will hardly want to risk the wrath of their electorate by being seen to cling onto power whilst declining to honour the referendum vote.