Thread by @nickreeves9876

1/ My bet is that on June 23rd 2016 not a single person in the UK had an in-depth understanding of the full ramifications of voting for Brexit. Only a few hundred at the most properly understood the trade issues.

2/ Highly complex issues such as Brexit must always be handled via representative democracy, and to be done properly that would have meant MPs engaging in months of reading, lectures, seminars and debates to ensure they were able to make an informed decision.

3/ We have a representative democracy so that MPs can use their knowledge and judgement on our behalf. But if they are ignorant on major issues then the system is broken. We need to find some way of bringing Parliament up to proper professional standards.

4/ In some ways the political battle of our time is a battle between a political amateurism suited to simpler times, and the professional standards many people have to follow in their working lives. I think it's time professionally minded folk started asserting themselves.

5/ A lot of people had a kind of fairly good overview of the Brexit issues, but when it comes to detail how many know the details of EU trade arrangements with African countries? In five years I've only encountered one person who really knows about this, and it certainly isn't me

6/ I doubt if more than 5% of the population have heard of rules of origin, and I doubt if more than a few hundred can give a reasonably accurate summary of how they work with respect to imports into the EU. I would guess that only a few thousand know what a WTO quota is.

7/ And if you think I'm posing as some kind of clever cloggs, I've only got the sketchiest knowledge of the things I've mentioned in the last two tweets, and I spent 4 years reading up on Brexit issues.

8/ The real problem with ignorance, is not a lack of knowledge - all of us are profoundly ignorant about most matters. It is the failure to understand the limits of one's knowledge, and to grasp, to some degree, the extent of what one does not know.