It is Parliament itself that is on a cliff edge over Brexit

On 23 June 2016, with the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, vox populi prevailed over Received Opinion as handed down by the elites. For the latter it was a seismic shock so severe they could scarcely believe it had happened. Time, though, is a great healer, so by now they have convinced themselves it did not happen; therein lies their paramount danger.

The Venetian Oligarchy, in Disraelian terms, has recovered its confidence – more accurately, its arrogance – and has resumed its somnambulist march. It has become an axiom among the rump of Remainers and their media allies that they somehow constitute an intellectual elite, endowed with the gnosis of the liberal establishment of the Western world, but momentarily sidelined by the brute vote of the Great Unwashed, unwisely permitted access to the ballot box. This sense of superiority was presumably reinforced by watching such notorious thickos as Sir Roger Scruton recording a vote for Leave.

The faction whose stupidity is evident and self-destructive is, in reality, the last-ditch Remainers who insist it is still possible to block Britain’s departure from the European Union. While impotent to achieve this aim, they have succeeded in subverting the interests of their country, giving aid and comfort to our French and German enemies (Philip Hammond got that bit right – to describe the mad-dog antics of Guy Verhofstadt as the conduct of an “opponent” would be extravagantly euphemistic) and undermining Britain’s negotiating position.

Waiting in the wings are the supreme arbiters of Brexit: not Merkel, Macron, Bernier or Juncker, but the same people who voiced their decision on 23 June 2016 – the British public. That public is patient to a degree; it is fair-minded and suspends its judgement for as long as is reasonable. For the moment, though that judgement is by now more or less formed, it is resolved to celebrate Christmas before addressing the distasteful but necessary task that must claim its attention in the New Year.

The public takes a broad-brush, in-the-round view of Brexit. At the referendum it gave its legislators not a mandate, in the customary sense of the term, but an instruction to take Britain out of the EU. Not out, but still in the Single Market; not out, but still in the EEA; not out, but under the jurisdiction of the European courts indefinitely; and most certainly not out, but engaged in the creation of a European Army to subvert Nato and the Special Relationship with America.

What the pro-Brexit majority cannot comprehend is what part of the monosyllable “out” the self-proclaimed intellectuals of the political class do not understand. It is now almost a year and a half since Britain voted to leave the EU and absolutely no progress has been made. That does not mean nothing has happened.

On the contrary, the British electorate and the rest of the world have watched in shame and bemusement while Britain – a nuclear power, with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, a major global economy and by any reckoning one of the great nations in world history – has been pounded around the ring like a punch-drunk boxer and put on the ropes by politicians from pygmy countries such as Belgium and Luxembourg.

This shameful spectacle is doing our credit and prestige immeasurable harm globally. Who is going to invest or retain an existing presence in a country with no vision of its future and no will to chart its own course? David Davis, supposedly a “hard” Brexiteer, now says any settlement will favour the EU. Why? Only because we – or, more accurately, our eunuch politicians – concede it, is the logical answer.

All the majority of the British public wants is a fair settlement, giving neither side an advantage, but there is no prospect of Brussels conceding an equitable agreement. The dogs in the street knew that on the day negotiations started. So, why are we wasting our time and squandering our reputation? The fatal mistake was embarking on the long Calvary of Article 50, a minefield sown by Lord Kerr of Kinlochard to deter deserters from the European project. We should have left unilaterally, but civilly. As it is, we seem doomed to leave uncivilly, with no deal and a sulphurous smell in the air, having wasted two years and damaged our standing in the world.

Even then, the Brussels Fifth Column will be poised to inflict further damage. Professor David Campbell has a pessimistic but credible article over at BrexitCentral on “Henry VIII clauses and the new legal challenge to Brexit”, foreseeing a Supreme Court challenge by Gina Miller, or a clone of Gina Miller, to the eventual European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act.

Part of the poisoned legacy of Tony Blair, the worst vandalizer of the British constitution since 1689, is the fabrication of the Supreme Court as an American-style usurper of the sovereignty of Parliament. Nor is parliamentary sovereignty, itself the product of historical usurpation, something to be fetishized; neither is the institution of Parliament. The moments of greatness – Pitt rallying the nation, Churchill’s oratory, all the finer hours – represent untypical interludes in more than a millennium of greed and self-interest.

Parliament spent more time robbing the commons through Enclosure Acts than defying foreign invaders. Parliament inflicted on Britain its sole civil war and, through its corruption and incompetence, its only military dictator; it judicially murdered one king and arbitrarily dethroned another, thereby abolishing a constitutional heritage derived from Alfred the Great. Any equitable audit would demonstrate that Parliament has done more harm than good in the course of its long and frequently squalid history.

Now it is living on borrowed time. If MPs imagine the chief threat to their authority is the Supreme Court they are sadly deluded. On 23 June 2016 the British Parliament was given the clearest direction, on a single policy, by the largest constituency in history, back to its earliest inception as the Witenagemot. If it defies, evades or dilutes that instruction from the people it pretends to serve, its survival will be in question.

The notion that the prejudices of a couple of hundred Levellers, Diggers and Fifth Monarchy Men on the Labour benches, or 15 Tory narcissists, outweigh the suffrages of 17.4 million Britons is a constitutional doctrine that cannot survive collision with the popular will. If Parliament abolishes Brexit, Britain may abolish Parliament in its current incarnation. As another declining powerhouse in Brussels is discovering, nothing is forever.