I READ with interest Keith Burge’s letter urging acceptance of the results of the referendum on the EU (Gazette, 17/11). Failure to do so, he states, “is not democracy as we have always known it”. 
I have to take issue with this. Direct participation by the people in making decisions has never been part of our political system. 
Our democracy is not participative but representative. 
It has been that way since King Edward I, in 1295, sought two knights from each shire and two burgesses from each borough to sit as ‘members’ of his Parliament. Our parliamentary system evolved from this compact with the monarch.
Referenda and representative democracy do not fit easily together. 
We vote for candidates to represent us as our Member of Parliament. 
The MPs we elect, in that capacity, make the decisions and laws that they believe are in our best interests. 
We entrust that decision-making process to them as they are our ‘representatives’ in Parliament. 
There is no precedent, nor legal requirement, for Parliament to actually act on any ‘referendum’, plebiscite, or petition brought before them. 
Parliament may well debate a specific issue, but it can only become law when MPs pass it. 
However, once sought, as the EU referendum was, by a Prime Minister (David Cameron), Parliament must seriously consider the views of those who participated. 
It is akin to a captain of a ship soliciting the views of all the officers, weighing them up, and then making a decision. 
If Theresa May, as Prime Minister, did that and then decided to ignore the views of those wishing to leave the EU, there would be nothing unconstitutional about that. She has a moral obligation to respect the Brexit vote but actually nothing more than that.
NICK BAXTER
Northway
Calne