“The people have spoken.”  Yes.  They have.

“Their voices must be heard.”  Yes.  That’s a given.  We can’t choose whether or not we hear something.

“Their voices must be listened to.”  No.  You can’t force people to listen.

“Their voices can be listened to.”  Yes.  We can choose to listen.  We might then understand what is being said.

So what is it that the people of Britain actually said in the referendum result?  Let me just summarise how we got to the referendum in the first place.

There was a problem to do with the EU.  Some people knew this because they were in pain.  Because they were in pain they were not calm.  Because they were not calm they could not work out exactly what the problem was, although they knew it was there because of the pain.  Because they were not calm and couldn’t say exactly what the problem was, the only thing that other people could see was lots of people shouting about the EU.  They couldn’t even see that there was a problem.  However, most people wanted a solution either because they wanted the pain to stop or they wanted the shouting to stop.  Our elected representatives thought about this.  Some of them said:  “We should leave the EU.  That would stop the pain.”  Some of them said “We should remain in the EU.  We can just ignore the shouting.”  They couldn’t decide what to do.  They thought that if they asked the people then perhaps we could decide.  So they did.

Suppose that our elected representatives were trying to decide whether apples were better than pears.  They can’t decide, so they ask us “Are apples better than pears?”  Then people who like apples best are likely to just vote apples and people who like pears best are likely to just vote pears.  People who aren’t sure or who like both or who like neither might not vote.  Or they might try lots of apples and lots of pears and attempt to choose which they like best.  Lots of them will find it really difficult to choose.  The result comes out and it says “52% Apples, 48% Pears”.  People who like apples best are happy.  People who like pears best are sad.  People are now divided into two groups called Apples and Pears.  Lots of people are still arguing about whether apples are better than pears.  Some people are even fighting about it.  Some people who weren’t sure, but ended up voting Apples, are sad about what is happening and wonder if things would have been better if they had voted Pears.

So what is it that the people have said?  What does all this tell us?  If we think it tells us that “The people have decided that apples are better than pears” then I think that we haven’t listened at all.  If we think it tells us that “The people can’t decide either, so we haven’t learned anything” then I think that we haven’t listened closely enough.  However, I think that if we listen really closely we might just hear ourselves saying, clearly and in one voice:  “That is a silly question.”  It is silly because it cannot make anything better.  It can’t solve the problem, because we haven’t even worked out what that is yet.  It hasn’t stopped the pain; it has just moved it from some people to some other people.  And it certainly hasn’t stopped the shouting.

What we need to do is to go right back to the beginning and do it properly this time.  I don’t mean hold another referendum.  I’m not quite ready for another one of those just yet.  The first thing to do is to work out what the problem is.  To do that we need to be calm.  When we are calm we will be able to listen to one another.  If we do that, then we will be able to work out what the problem is together.  This will allow a real solution to emerge.  Perhaps in a surprising way.