Continuing from my original "essay"...
The situation on Referendums is radically different in Switzerland, for the following key reasons:
1. The Government has no say over whether a referendum on a given question is or is not held. Referendums there are held in two circumstances:
a. Proposed change to the Constitution or to international relations eg on joining the EU;
b. popular initiative with sufficient support amongst the people (50,000) or the Cantons (any 8 from 26), if this threshold is reached within 100 days from the first signature.
2. The threshold required is well-specified: both a majority of the People who vote and a majority of the Cantons must support a given measure for it to pass. I don't think there is a turnout requirement, however.
3. The questions posed in referendums are often fairly narrow, which makes it rather more clear what the immediate consequences of the vote will be. Compare with eg the Scotland Referendum, which merely asked whether Scotland should be an Independent Country, without any concrete proposals on how, or when, that was to be achieved.
4. As far as I can tell, there is also no legal restriction on time between any given question being revisited. There are clear practical and political considerations, of course, because you'd have to meet the same thresholds again, and people would presumably be less inclined to ask the same question having been soundly beaten the first time. Nevertheless, as long as you meet the threshold, then presumably you could in theory revisit an issue once a year arbitrarily often.
5. You could also take a rejection on one issue and return with a narrower question, or a different but related one, and sometimes find a different answer. As case in point, there have been 13 referendums since 1972 that relate in some way to Swiss-EU relations, and the results have swung all over the place depending on the precise question asked. Switzerland has, for example, voted *for* joining Schengen (in 2005), then re-affirmed that in effect in 2006 and 2009; but in 2014 it voted to tighten the border; and in 2020 voted not to tighten it further still. Switzerland also voted *for* signing a free trade agreement (1972), but has several times rejected full EU or EEA membership (1992, 1997,2001).
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I would not propose that we adopt the Swiss model, because it also holds referendums for such considerations as whether there should be a Capital Gains Tax, whether and how to reform the Judiciary, and other policy matters that belong in this country, and should always belong, to Parliament to decide, but the real point to make is that if the procedure behind referendums is codified, in particular to remove from Parliament the power to decide when they are called, that would give them the purpose you seek. It would then no longer be a question as to what popular issue of the day the Government seeks to kill: a Referendum would be launched, automatically, because enough people want to have the question asked and answered.