Disgraceful parliament has lost its legitimacy

Finally, the fog of battle has lifted and the enemy is now in plain sight. It is not the rag-tag integrationist Brussels militia of Juncker, Barnier and Mad Dog Verhofstadt. It is the real enemy of Britain and its people: the Westminster Parliament. After almost three years of hypocrisy and lies, MPs have this week cast off all disguise and indulged in a feeding frenzy of anti-Brexit wrecking.

They pledged support for Brexit to their constituents. They swore to deliver Brexit. Most stood on party manifestos that committed them to that course, to the exclusion of the Single Market, Customs Union or any jurisdiction for the European Court. A total of 498 of them voted to trigger Article 50, which specifically included the option of a no deal Brexit. And all the time they lied: shamelessly, cynically, to secure election to a position from which they could thwart the policies they had promised to promote.

The whole pantomime is presided over by the biggest charlatan of all: remind us, who coined the cliché “No deal is better than a bad deal”? This week she rounded off a career of duplicity and farce by voting against her own parliamentary motion on no deal, after it had been amended to make the veto on no deal permanent.

This had been proposed by Caroline Spelman, previously best known to the public for “Nannygate”. Then Spelman decided to withdraw it, but President for Life Bercow, commandante of the Provisional Government, refused to allow that. Then Yvette Cooper hijacked it, embarking on one of her pompous speeches, wearing her fatuous expression of faux gravitas, until President Bercow shut her up, presumably on the principle that two self-important narcissists cannot hold the floor simultaneously.

By now the Government was whipping against its own amended motion, a futile gesture since ministers, including Cabinet ministers, ignored the whip and did as they pleased. One minister added to the jollity by resigning while actually in the No lobby. Welcome to Conservatism – the natural party of government.

For a generation now there has been nothing remotely conservative about most of the Conservative Party. It has been colonized by principle-free opportunists, “modernisers” and “social liberals”. Above all, it has been occupied by people in thrall to the European Union. It is wholly unrepresentative of both its membership and voters. It has seemed to have a death wish and it found the ideal agent of self-slaughter in Theresa May. As early as 2002, when she gifted the toxic term “Nasty Party” to the Tories’ enemies, it was obvious that a politician so intellectually limited and self-assured would rise very high in the Westminster firmament.

May’s total lack of self-awareness imbues her with a brazen confidence that her opponents find unnerving. With no sense of irony, after her latest defeat, she warned MPs against “damaging the fragile trust that exists between the British public and the members of this House”. That trust evaporated a long time ago and any vestigial remnant was destroyed yesterday.

Consider the sorry chronicle of Brexit. The House of Commons, by statute, delegated the decision on remaining in or leaving the European Union to the British electorate. That electorate delivered a definitive answer, with no reservations or qualifications: leave the EU. That was the British public’s instruction to its supposed representatives.

The Conservative Party’s response was to entrust that task to a Remainer prime minister and chancellor, at the head of a predominantly Remainer Cabinet. There should not have been a single Remainer in Cabinet, least of all in 10 Downing Street.

There was no need to destroy pro-EU politicians’ careers: they could have resumed as soon as Brexit was accomplished – a moratorium that might have done much to accelerate the Brexit process. But the cardinal principle of collective Cabinet responsibility demanded that all ministers be committed to the clean Brexit for which the electorate voted. This week the ancient doctrine of collective responsibility splintered publicly and humiliatingly on the floor of the House of Commons.

Theresa May spent two and a half years meticulously constructing a pseudo-Brexit deal that would have crippled Britain and left it permanently attached, in a subordinate position, to the EU. It was not incompetent, it was deliberate. Her objective, like the overwhelming majority of members of the House of Commons, is to keep Britain chained to Brussels, regardless of the outcome of the largest democratic exercise in our history.

Parliament is a global laughing stock. It is populated by people you would repel if they appeared on your doorstep offering to sharpen your lawnmower. Yet its pompous sense of entitlement remains complacently unimpaired. Last night another exemplar of self-importance, Hilary Benn, on the subject of the no-deal vote, asked President Bercow to press “for the Government to respect the democratic instruction of the House of Commons”.

That instruction by 312 MPs sought to defy the democratic instruction by 17.4 million voters; but that simply illustrates the relative importance of MPs and plebs. The message is clear: parliamentary democracy is now an oxymoron – you can have Parliament or democracy, but not both. The shameless cheer with which the phrase “no Brexit at all” from Theresa May was greeted by MPs demonstrated how intoxicated they have become with their power, which may prove more transient than they imagine.

Now some Tory Brexiteers are allegedly mulling over possibly supporting Theresa May’s deal when it is presented again next week, like the porridge served up at every meal to naughty children who have refused to eat it. They cannot have been paying attention. President Bercow gave a clear intimation that he is likely to refuse to allow its return to the chamber, under the rule that a question substantially identical to one already put cannot be reconsidered in the same parliamentary session. That rule has already been broken once. Bercow, on this occasion, has Erskine May on his side.

The moment when the penny will drop with the public is when Article 50 is extended and the long ordeal is prolonged. Parliament is the problem: the solution is not only to excise all anti-Brexit MPs, by deselection and voting at the next election, but to curb very radically the powers of the legislature. This can only be done by demolishing the legacy parties. After this debacle the Tories are doomed: they are drawing fatuous comfort from a poll lead over Labour (as they did in 2017 when the polls gave them a 22-point lead), but those same polls show 37 per cent of their voters would consider supporting the Brexit party, if Farage & Co get it properly up and running.

We need a new party as a vehicle to sweep away the canaille that displayed its contempt for democracy on Wednesday evening. MPs in future should be delegates, not representatives, with massively reduced powers and correspondingly increased accountability. We also need more frequent use of referenda – though not so promiscuously as to devalue that instrument – and easier recall of MPs.

Brexit will happen, one way or the other, because the nation knows it could not possibly exist within a European Union that has humiliated us so badly – through the servility of our leaders. Parliament, as presently constituted, is living on borrowed time.