Ok- this isn’t about why peopleVotes the way they did or anything like that..

[BertrandRussell]

and I understand that Leave voters must be incredibly pissed off with the way the process has gone.

What I would love to know is how you think it should have gone. It seems that once the result was announced, the political class and the decision makers had no idea what to do next - (apart from the disaster capitalists who immediately cashed in and who are continuing to do so). There does not seem to have been any advance planning at all-which as an ex Civil Servant astonishes me. So what should have happened which would have brought us to an orderly Brexit yesterday?

I agree, my understanding is that TM was under no obligation to Trigger article 50 and shouldn’t have done so until extensive work was undertaken on what Brexit would look like ( or that it was bloody impossible and we should Remain).

I dislike the suggestion - mainly from the less critical Leavers - that leaving was "impossible". Which often gets thrown up to try and shut down debate. (I think the idea being that by accusing Remainers of saying it was "impossible" then there's some sort of moral high ground for Leavers ).

It was always entirely possible to leave the EU. If you had a plan. The problem was the vote Leave campaign damn well knew that any scrutiny of the implications of Leaving would have highlighted some of the issues we've since encountered. ("Project Fear" they called it).

In the Conservatives Election manifesto, they laid out their vision for Brexit and as they went on to win, I'd have expect MPs to respect that fact and we'd end up with a Brexit very close to that (whether we voted remain or leave). If people had second doubts about what was contained in that, they could have made their opinion clear at the time and voted for another party.

In the Conservatives Election manifesto, they laid out their vision for Brexit and as they went on to win

Did they ?

If people had second doubts about what was contained in that, they could have made their opinion clear at the time and voted for another party.

Well, lets see the numbers by vote share from 2017:
Conservative 42.4% of votes
Labour 40.0%
Liberal Democrat 7.4%
SNP 3.0%
UKIP 1.8%
Green Party 1.6%
Presumably some other parties got a vote share, but only 42.4% voted conservative.

If people had second doubts about what was contained in that, they could have made their opinion clear at the time and voted for another party.

Part of the problem is that politicians have decided that in actual fact "80%" of the electorate "voted for Brexit". Which is to cynically play upon the broken nature of the UK constitution and ironically perpetuate the resentment that led to the vote in the first place.

GFA should have been top priority. People like me were shouting about it beforehand and twats like Farage were shouting down discussion of it with "we don't give into terrorism " . Which was code for "this is our weakest point so we will trot out meaningless Thatcher slogans to hide it". And places like Question Time let him get away with it.

The referendum needed to have a 2/3 majority for change to leave. With the tiny majority leave had, no government could effectively negotiate aggressively without being contradicted in parliament and the media.

In the hypothetical situation of a 70/30 leave majority, we should have put everything on the table as up for negotiation: military co-operation, intelligence sharing, access to the city for national financing, EU contributions, possible exclusive deal with US and/or China on their terms etc etc. And not triggered article 50 until we had prepared a solid no deal strategy..

Of course our aim would be to do none of the above and achieve a well negotiated deal with the EU to leave. However you will never get a deal without the other side at least believing you have a credible alternative.

With a tiny majority and most parliamentarians not wanting to leave, we should have given up (and still should) when it was realised we could not effectively negotiate.

Cameron really did mess up big time by allowing a simple majority.

Simple - they should have all worked on the basis we are leaving and agree a plan rather than half of parliament fighting it to get it overturned for two years.

OP: should not have triggered A50. Triggering A50 gave away all leverage in negotiations as having triggered it, EU only had to wait until close to the deadline to ensure all its demands were met. Should have stayed in the EU and demanded to negotiate from within. Negotiating objective should have been to create an official tier-2 EU with UK as first member.
Objectives of Tier-2 EU (probably can't be called that to meet letter of 2016 referendum) should have sought to deliver some of the aspirations of Leave campaign including:

• no requirement of ever closer union;
• adoption of Euro;
• more control over immigration;
• reduced scope of ECJ;
• reduced/no involvement in CAP;

etc ... but keep the good bits, for example:

• single market for goods;
• single market for services;
• customs union (suspect most leavers wouldn't have wanted it though);

etc .. Would have been very difficult for EU to ignore as UK can rightly claim democratic justification for its positions and use veto to block EU progress. Approach still possible if we revoke.

... obviously its a continuation of the UK demanding special treatment but I think that's inline with the leave campaign aims. Whether it morally justifiable is a different matter ... but it would have been more likely to deliver some of the leaver aims and may not have resulted in the dissolution of the UK.

May should have kept out of it & let a 'true Brexiter' become PM.

Gove, Johnson, Davis, Raab... one of those total losers. Who would have ballsed things up so badly right away that everyone would be clamouring to Bremain.

indistinct, EU made it clear that no negotiations until A50 was triggered though.

DailyMail- They should have MADE one of them do it. They pimped Leave, they should have been made to deal with the aftermath.

NotAChanceOfQuiet - indeed they did but when you set yourself in up in opposition to a person or group, do you follow the advice of your opponent? UK triggering A50 was precisely what EU wanted as they could control negotiations. A50 meant UK effectively agreed to no-deal with a 2 year time delay. Contrary to some leaver's opinions, no-deal has a much bigger negative impact on UK than EU. This is why Ivan Rogers resigned over TM's insistence that A50 must be triggered - basically meant UK had already thrown away it's EU membership for nothing in return.
If UK had stayed in EU it could be obstructionist in its dealings with EU, refused to trigger A50 on grounds that A50 massively favoured EU, and argued for various advantages for a new 2nd-tier EU (obviously not named EU to keep with letter of 2016 referendum). JRM now appears to be proposing this approach. However, UK would need to revoke A50 first as being disruptive during an extension period will have little/no effect as EU just has to wait for extension to expire.