Britain's people power moment, beginning of Brexit's end?

Saturday's breathtaking demonstration for a People's Vote may yet prove a turning point, the beginning of the end of Brexit. It was, in any case, a great democratic moment.

In such moments, the people speak in the most direct, unmediated fashion imaginable, through spontaneous chants and home-made placards: 'My grandfather died for EU', 'Fromage not Farage', 'Theresa May Not'. I liked the very British 'The EU Is Rather Good' (let's not go over the top here). 'I Can Get a Better Deal at Waitrose' might betray a distinctly English middle class frame of reference, but then I spied a huge banner asking 'Would an Honourable Country Renege on a Peace Treaty? No Hard Border in Ireland'.

I was most moved by a small handwritten cardboard placard, little larger than a cereal packet, proclaiming 'Freedom, I will not give EU up'. To people in Poland, Spain or Ukraine, the idea of equating Europe with freedom is entirely familiar, but here, in the heart of England, it was almost a shock.

I have walked with many vast crowds demonstrating for freedom and Europe in Warsaw, Belgrade, Prague or Berlin, but this is the first time I have participated in something comparable in my own country. I remember a student saying to me during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine that all she had to contribute on this day was the physical presence of her body on the maidan, Kiev's central square. One of the original, revolutionary ideas of democracy is the equality of all citizens, and here we were all equal.

The brain surgeon, the student, the plumber and the pensioner, each spoke through the elementary fact of the physical presence of another body on the square; each of us counted for one equal unit, nothing more, nothing less. It really doesn't matter...