I do think we could learn a lot from the Irish system. Before a referendum - to late now for Brexit - they hold a citizen's assembly, such as before the referendum on abortion:
"made up of 99 randomly chosen (but demographically representative) voters. These so-called ordinary people – truck drivers, homemakers, students, farmers – gave up their weekends to listen to 40 experts in medicine, law and ethics, to women affected by Ireland’s extremely restrictive laws and to 17 different lobby groups. They came up with recommendations that confounded most political and media insiders, by being much more open than expected – and much more open than the political system would have produced on its own.
"It was these citizens who suggested entirely unrestricted access to abortion up to 12 weeks."
A trial was carried out in this country to see how this would work. It could be criticised in many ways but was an interesting experiment.
"Would an assembly help to resolve Brexit? A trial run took place in October 2017, at a hotel in Manchester. Organised by the charity Involve, the assembly brought together 25 leave voters, 22 remain voters and three people who did not vote. After two weekends, they chose to leave with a trade deal and preferential access for EU citizens, but not free movement. If they couldn’t get such a deal, they wanted to remain in the single market, with free movement under tight controls. Recommending what he called “a new kind of royal commission”, Gordon Brown spoke in November of “a dialogue about the difficult issues from migration to sovereignty and our long-term economic future, empowering all voices to be heard”.
The one thing I notice, personally, is that they learned they might not get what they wanted and had a backup idea. They learned what we were not told by the partisans on either side - that you cannot have a simple answer to a complex problem. What the outcome would have been if this was done in a stricter way before the vote we cannot know but if our form of democracy is to grow I think this is one area worth looking at.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/29/brexit-ireland-referendum-experiment-trusting-people
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/17/power-to-the-people-could-a-citizens-assembly-solve-the-brexit-crisis
Lack of public toilets in towns.
Passports not in the drawer I always keep them in. Turning the place upside down.