I refer to the letter regarding Brexit from Kevin Bye (July 27) who challenges the notion of a People’s Vote, for which I would like to make a case. Very simply, there are many things that we now know that we didn’t know, and couldn’t know, at the time of the referendum.

There is extensive and mounting evidence supporting the benefits of the UK remaining in the EU, yet a dearth of it supporting our leaving. Pretty much every economic forecast, including HM Treasury’s own, show that we will be poorer – the harder the Brexit, the worse the forecast.

Compare this with the ‘milk and honey’ that voters were promised: The deal was to be the ’easiest thing in human history’ [Fox], the NHS would get an additional £350 million per week [Vote Leave], and we would be ‘Part of a free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey’ [Gove].

Now it turns out that: 1) it isn’t easy, it is horribly complex; 2) there will be no Brexit dividend; and 3) thanks to the Brextremists, we will leave the Single Market and the Customs Union. This last point will be a disaster for manufacturers and the financial sector (which on its own generates 11 per cent of tax revenues). Companies have started to vote with their feet and will continue to do so – this is not ‘project fear’, it is happening – real people, real jobs.

Brexit will likely impose a hard border on the island of Ireland, thus threatening a hard-won peace. The question of Scottish independence is also back on the agenda.

The Electoral Commission recently found that Vote Leave acted unlawfully. We already know that the Leave campaigns blatantly lied – but this goes well beyond lying – this is dishonestly procuring the result of the referendum by breaking the law.

Through Government incompetence it has taken two years to come to a position on which the Conservative party is yet to agree – let alone the rest of Parliament or the EU. Article 50 should not have been triggered without a coherent plan of how the UK would exit. The result is gratuitous damage to our economy and the UK’s standing in the international community.

I know it is fashionable for Leavers to dismiss these inconvenient facts – but they represent tangible evidence of the damage that is being done to our country: evidence that people simply had not seen two years ago. Surely, it is essential to review earlier decisions in the light of new facts. Indeed is this not fundamental to any democracy?

There seems to me to be a compelling case for a People’s Vote, wherever your loyalties lie: for Remainers a chance to stop Brexit, and for Leavers the opportunity to ensure that, if we Brexit, we do so because the people really want it. Recent polls show that those supporting a People’s Vote on the final deal now outnumber those opposed.

Dr Shaun Davey, Tivington, Minehead