I HAVE followed with interest the contributions to your newspaper by correspondents on the subject of the referendum, how democratic the result was and whether or not we should be allowed a second one when the terms of our exit from the EU are made public.

To my embarrassment and profound regret, I voted to leave.

I did so out of solidarity with those who had been left behind by globalisation and the advances in technology and who were unprepared for these developments.

I like to think I saw through the fear which the Remainers tried to engender in us and the fantasies (lies?) which the Brexiters fed us.

In other words, my vote was largely an emotional one.

My thoughts then focused on the French system for electing their president.

There are two rounds of voting.

There is solid evidence to show that the result of the first round is conditioned largely by the emotional response to the outgoing president and his party and to the state of the country.

By the time of the second round, the electorate has shed its feelings which are now replaced by reason.

That model would appear to me to be an excellent one to follow.

A second EU referendum, especially when we were informed of the terms of our Brexit rather than being fed fear and falsehoods, can only be good for democracy.

We would make an informed choice on the strength of solid evidence.

A Swiss friend alerted me to the situation in his country where referenda are frequently held to decide important, often constitutional, issues.

He pointed out that the margins between those for and against any particular question were often smaller even than our 52/48.

Whether or not to join the EU in 1992, the Swiss voted 50.3 per cent to 49.7 per cent not to. The recent plebiscite in Colombia on the peace deal with Farc was lost to a mere 50.2 per cent of votes.

Being presented with a binary either-or situation to which the electorate responds with such a minimal difference between the two factions is bound to result in dissent and the worst of ill feelings.

Look at the response of the United States to “either Trump or Clinton” where again the difference was almost too close to call, at least in the popular vote (which Clinton won by 0.2 per cent).

Ian James in his excellent letter on November 10 is right to say that “the issue [of our EU referendum] was far more complex than that.”

One of the arguments against proportional representation proposed by the first-past-the-post supporters is that it would invariably result in coalitions. So what? In some countries (Israel, for instance) it is claimed that the minor party in a coalition has excessive power – the tail wags the dog. But this is rare.

If each of us believed that our individual voice counted, as it did in the referendum, the number of those voting in our general elections would probably be increased enormously, resulting, hopefully, in ending the almost dictatorial domination of one party.

Dr Michael Johnson, Kevin Gardens, Brighton