Tempers are starting to fray in the great Brexit debate. The two sides are at daggers-drawn. It’s like Scotland after the 2014 referendum, except that north of the Border voters may find themselves gifted a second opportunity to reach the “right” decision.

Nicola Sturgeon, who, it must be said, gave a virtuouso performance on the Today Programme in advance of the SNP annual conference, is examining ways of bringing the two post-referendum debates together, with herself as the principal agent of change.

She says she wants Scotland to remain in the EU single market even if England and Wales leave. In an aside, she suggested that Northern Ireland could usefully follow her lead, with the aim of preventing the erection of a “hard” border with the Republic. The fact that a tartan frontier would instead emerge between England and Scotland would be “unfortunate,” she says, but attributable to the Tories, not the SNP.

Sturgeon is, of course, using Brexit as a stalking horse for her primary aim: independence.  She is not wrong, however, in making the case that a clear majority of Scots genuinely wish to remain citizens of the European Union. Theresa May and her colleagues may not like that fact. They may seek to sweep the wishes of Holyrood under the Westminister carpet. But they cannot deny that nearly two-thirds of voters North of the Border – significantly more than chose to remain in the Union – are set to be dragged out of the EU against their wishes.

In London, meanwhile, The Three Brexiteers, with Theresa May as a hard-pressed Captain Treville, are fighting, increasingly, with their backs to the wall. They accuse Remainers on a daily basis of being whingers, who won’t accept the “overwhelming vote” of the British people to quit the EU – preferably by next Friday, if not before. The argument that it is Parliament that is sovereign, not Theresa May, cuts no ice with them. Even as MPs, wielding pitchforks and torches, close in on their position, they trust to their flashing blades, if not their rapier-like wit, to keep the rabble at bay. 

It may work and it may not. The constitutional challenge now before the high court is, in my unlearned opinion, a bit of a longshot. But who knows? I was wrong about Brexit and I could yet, gawd help me, be wrong about Big Loser Donald Trump. What is beyond question is that a ruling backing Parliament against the Executive would put the cat among the pigeons. But even if, as seems likely, the judges’ decision goes against the plaintiffs, it remains open to Parliament itself to assert its power and slap down ministers, including Mrs May. 

Last Monday, I was one of many who excoriated MPs for not standing up for Parliament against a level of executive arrogance that, if unchecked, could result in government by decree. I did not use the word “tyranny,” preferring to hold that charge in reserve, but I confess it hovered in the margins of my thinking. 

Subsequently, and to my surprise, the Opposition motion came up with a motion calling for a full and transparent setting out of the Government’s objectives before Article 50 is triggered and for parliamentary scrutiny of the negotiations, culminating in a vote for or against the terms agreed. The debate, which came out of the blue following discussions between Tory Remainers (actually a majority in the parliamentary party, though you’d never know it) and Labour members led by Ed Miliband, produced a compelling debate, in which backbenchers excelled. 

The star turn was the new shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer, the former Director of Public Prosecutions (who prefers not to use his recently granted knighthood but did not turn it down). The rebuttal fell to David Davis, a man so steeped in opposition to the EU that is hard to see how he can possibly sit down with the 27 without simply demanding the keys to the exit door and an apology from the rest of Europe for 43 wasted years. 

But – and here’s the rub – the upshot was that while the Commons will now be able to debate the broad terms of the upcoming Brexit negotiations, it will not, in accordance with a government amendment, be given the right to approve or reject what is on offer. That would have required MPs to take their concerns to the next level, which they were not prepared to do. Thus, whatever deal Mrs May and her Brexiteers are able to extract from two years or more of hard talking will be endorsed not in the House, but in-house – in Number 10, that is. Those unlikely bedfellows Charles I and Cromwell would approve.

No doubt the arguments will continue, though mainly, I fear, as noises off. Only if Parliament, beyond concerns of party, insists that it, and it alone, must have the final say on how Brexit should be carried forward, will true sovereignty have been regained. One is left to wonder why Commons approval was considered necessary to to send three ageing warplanes into Syria, but irrelevant in deciding the future form of Britain’s governance. 

Which brings us back to Nicola Sturgeon. The First Minister of Scotland is not a big fan of her British identity. Like Alex Salmond before her, she gets up each morning desperate to repudiate the overlordship of England. But, like a majority of Scots, Sturgeon is also a committed European. The loss of the 2014 referendum is for nationalists a festering wound that will only be healed when history and circumstance give them a second opportunity to go for broke. And, Help ma Boab, but here it comes, uniting the Saltire and the tattered flag of the European Union. Never mind the firmness or otherwise of Brexit as it applies to the country as a whole. If Sturgeon and her cohorts continue to be denied the expression of two fundamental aspects of their cherished national identity, don’t be surprised if, a year or three from now, they finally detonate the bomb that blows the United Kingdom to Kingdom Come.