For those of you who have never had the urge (or perhaps the money) to test yourself on any of Mr Trump’s golf courses, that’s a term for the situation on the green when one player’s putting path to the cup is blocked by another player’s ball. The first player is “stymied” and entitled by the rules to relief.

So a golfer whose ball lies between a competitor’s ball and the cup will pick up his ball as a courtesy and mark the spot, leaving an unobstructed path (unless Mr Trump has recently driven his golf cart onto the green and produced ruts that drive his greens keepers crazy). Golf, is after all, a civilized and self-policed game.

That is more than can be said for politics. Theresa May is not, to my knowledge, a golfer, but she has been stymied. Her path to a clear arrangement with the European Union for Brexit has been blocked by a referendum that resoundingly expressed the electorate’s opinion that it was a path unacceptable to the majority of Brits. This, under the prevailing rules of referendums, will prevent her from putting her plan into effect, and one would think would repudiate her government, triggering a new election to install a different leader. But no. The referendum’s resounding rejection was followed by an equally resounding vote of confidence in Mrs May. What gives? What was the message?

It was obviously two messages: one, “Go back and try again, but we don’t have a better candidate for your job.” While waiting for this self-contradictory teapot tempest to settle, the entire EU — 27 sovereign countries — is apparently expected to just sit and twiddle its thumbs until Westminster and Mrs May can get their act together — a plan acceptable to both Brussels and London. It seems unlikely that Brussels will accept any solution to this stymie without exacting a price. Why should it? Britain started the whole ruckus. What will the price be? Are we all the way back at square one? What should Mrs May understand as her new mandate? As yet nobody knows.

The situation, however, brings into focus the whole purpose of political referendums, a practice that seems to have begun in Switzerland during the latter part of the eighteenth century. Before that there were a comfortable few millennia during which it was generally accepted that the Divine Right of Kings with its mercenary armies was sufficient authority for rulers to do whatever they wanted, without more than lip service (see the Magna Carta) to the wishes of ordinary citizens. In the late 1700s Democracy as a practical option, introduced by the French and American Revolutions, was a reassignment of governmental authority, giving the great unwashed an acknowledged role in their own governance for the first time. (“…of the people, by the people, and for the people”). Among the rules embodied in the new constitutions were concessions to people who were wary of being tricked, and who insisted on the right of referendum as an escape route when they discovered their plight. There was generally no clearly agreed-on requirement that the actual governing bodies in place at the time be required to heed the results, but it became customary to convert them into law as soon as possible after the results were known. It has become so customary, in fact, that in some places (California, for example) government by referendum has become almost as common as government by legislative deliberation. The state’s carefully crafted constitution, built on the theory that representatives who have actually studied the principles of governing and been entrusted with responsibility for leadership are better qualified to prescribe its actions than is the mob (always subject to posturing propagandists, prevaricators, theatrical agitators, and just plain selfish people), is gaily thrust aside whenever a populist waves the prospect of a juicy tax cut or a prohibition against paying any attention to scientists’ findings. A proposition is put on the ballot, and often self-contradictory laws are generated which can only be corrected by further referendums that only serve to make matters more confused.

The disruptive effect of this on the dedication to common purpose that is the bedrock of democracy is obvious, but the dedicated selfishness of legislators elected under present pay-to-play rules have so far stymied any serious efforts to do away with referendums and allow our elected representatives proceed with the sometimes unpopular business of finding compromises. Compromises by definition leave everyone less than satisfied but are necessary if governments are to continue to function in the face of differences of opinion. So referendums may fairly be characterized as democratic poison pills. Is there an antidote?

Yes. It is so obvious as to seem childish. Referendums can be their own antidote. A motion to outlaw referendums could be put on the ballot, and if a serious effort were made to explain its implications, would, I think, be easy to pass. After all, the reason we elect representatives to deal with our political problems instead of having to do the hard work ourselves is that we don’t want to do the hard work ourselves. We don’t want to spend the hours of research necessary to be able to evaluate each proposal for new laws or updates to the old ones. We already consider ourselves overburdened with the more personal problems of earning a living, getting the kids back and forth to school or soccer practice, remembering to get that carton of milk and attend adult education classes in advanced postgraduate math to enable us to fill out our tax forms. Very few of us have the educational background or the experience to do a decent job of legislating. We are more than happy to elect specialists called politicians do it for us. It is only when we disagree with their solutions that we suddenly fancy ourselves smarter than they are and want to overrule them. It is not a hard case to make in the abstract that this approach is flawed and dangerous to our whole idea of government ‘by the people’. By keeping it abstract, and avoiding any specific issues, I think support could be generated for passing one last referendum-type ballot initiative : to eiminate ballot initiatives. Having done that, we could move to the next step : an amendment to our constitutions that would insulate them from reversal by upping the vote requirements for referendum initiatives. What if petitions representing 75% of the registered voters were required to put a proposal on the ballot?) Then at last we would be largely free from government by whim and tweet and get back to the difficult work of governing itself — the nuts and bolts of policy. Who would take the fateful step and risk a career on such a proposal? Obviously, only a group of newly installed first-time legislators who have not yet become trapped in the old system. We have such a group this year in this country. Britain may well come up with a similar group in the next election. Not being beholden to the established caucuses of ‘old boys’ for juicy committee assignments they just might be willing to think about eliminating referendums per se.

If not, there are already legal provisions for ‘citizen referendums’, dependent on gathering a sufficient number of signatures to circumvent the stymies of the establishment. A whole political movement — a one-issue non-partisan effort — could be started, with no ties to either of the major parties. Door-to-door collection of signatures is all that would be required. A modest GoFundMe account would provide clipboards and pencils and bus fares. The rest would be up to shoe-leather and determination.

Are you out there? Would you contribute? Would you ring doorbells if the weather is nice?