Kenneth Rogoff’s op-ed “Britain’s democratic failure’’ (Opinion, June 27) is a sterling example of progressive revisionism. Rogoff’s plea for a higher bar to authorizing so momentous a decision as Brexit effectively argues no European Union membership from the beginning: To wit, by what high test of constitutional law and consent of the people did Prime Minister Edward Heath’s government enter the European Union in 1973? None.

By a single, simple majority vote in the House of Commons, with no referendum involving the voice of the people (polls at the time actually showed two-thirds disapproval), the British were shoved into a brave new world only progressive leaders could envision and only supranational bureaucrats could enjoy.

Britain’s real democratic failure was from the beginning — a progressive fraud perpetrated at the expense of the local people, who, in this first referendum on the matter, have chosen to take their nation back.

Robin Flocken

Cazenovia, N.Y.