• THE failure of Jeremy Corbyn’s motion of no confidence in the government means that a general election is not going to break the Brexit deadlock. It would, in any case, have been quite unsuited to resolving the single, complex issue of Brexit, on which both main parties are split.

A government of national unity looks a non-starter. And a straight decision by Parliament on what course to follow seems unlikely to settle things. Even if a clear frontrunner emerged, it’s unlikely the electorate would acquiesce in Parliament getting the casting vote.

In the circumstances, a People’s Vote is likely to be the only solution left on the table, and it’s a pity we can’t just get on with it. And worse still that the Prime Minister continues to use such headily divisive language about it, only a few days ago saying that another referendum would mean “a catastrophic and unforgivable breach of trust in our democracy”. It’s appalling language to use at this moment of crisis.

And it rests on dodgy data. Mrs May wrote in the Daily Express that: “You, the British people, voted to leave. And then, in the 2017 general election, 80 per cent of you voted for MPs who stood on manifestos to respect that referendum result.”

Don’t swallow this nonsense. The 2016 referendum produced 17.4 million Leave votes from an electorate of 46.5 million: that’s 37 per cent. And in the 2017 general election, 26.5 million people voted either Conservative or Labour out of a total electorate of 46.8 million. Mrs May calls that 80 per cent. I call it 57 per cent.

But, given that both the Conservative and Labour parties did their utmost to downplay Brexit as an issue at the election, neither figure can be prayed in aid as majority confirmation of the Leave vote.

Elsewhere, we’re repeatedly told that the 17.4 million Leave vote in the 2016 referendum was the “biggest British vote in history for anything”. The 1975 referendum also produced 17.4 million votes, that time to join the EEC; beneath the rounding, just 32,000 fewer than the 2016 figure.

But the population in 2016 was much bigger than in 1975 so, ignoring non-voters, the 2016 referendum produced only 52 per cent in favour of leaving compared with 67 per cent in 1975 in favour of joining.

So, enough of all this misrepresentation. The 2016 Leave vote was, in any case, almost certainly swung by other lies and statistics, like the supposed £350million a week windfall for the NHS, and the imminent accession of “Turkey (population 76 million)” to the EU.

If we are to have another referendum, let’s all resolve not to distort facts and figures this way, and let’s do without the inflammatory language. If we all play fair, we can all settle for the result.

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