Westminster’s message to Britain – democracy doesn’t live here anymore

After innumerable false deadlines and anticlimaxes, we are finally close to the tipping point. Sometime within the next month it seems likely the historic compact between governors and governed that has rendered the British constitution a template for parliamentary democracy will be shattered. That fracturing of our imperfect but workable system of governance by consent will truly be a watershed in history – and a deeply ominous one.

How have we arrived at this crisis point? The EU referendum represented the culmination of generations of expanding suffrage and wider public engagement in political decision making. It was the largest exercise in consultative democracy ever carried out in the United Kingdom. It dwarfed the 1975 EEC referendum which, with 40 million people registered to vote, produced a turnout of 64.62 per cent. The 2016 EU referendum, based on a register of 46.5 million voters, attracted a turnout of 72.21 per cent.

In this way, a vexed question that had increasingly been destabilizing political life was settled fully and fairly, by a direct appeal to the electorate. This was the People’s Vote, a culminating exercise in direct democracy on a single issue, where everyone had a say. It was the epitome of the British tradition of fair play whereby losers give in with a good grace. That tradition was duly honoured by the majority of defeated Remain voters. Even today, they are saying “The referendum result must be honoured – please get on with it.”

The spoiled brats of the political class, however, take a different view. After paying lip service to honouring the result in its immediate aftermath, the Entitled Ones soon set about subverting the formally expressed will of the British people. A Remainer was installed as Prime Minister, supported by a Remainer chancellor and a majority of Remainers in the Cabinet. What possessed the Conservatives to imagine that Theresa May and her government would have the slightest desire to deliver Brexit?

Over two years Theresa May, Olly Robbins and their team produced a ludicrous travesty of a Brexit agreement that looked as if it had been constructed by a drunk in a darkened room with a LEGO set. It was rejected by the House of Commons by an unprecedented majority. Its purpose, as with any other so-called withdrawal agreement that might command a majority in the Commons, was to embed so much EU control in post-Brexit Britain that it could not function as a sovereign state, trading with the world.

Remainers, in their deluded vision, would then cry: “We told you so – Brexit can’t work. Best apply to Brussels for readmission.” The now open and shameless agenda behind all the ducking and weaving in Parliament is to “stop Brexit”. The fanatics are open about it. The consideration that, if they were to succeed in delaying or reversing Brexit, they would be negating the largest democratic exercise ever conducted on this island does not even give them pause. That is how far our political class has lost touch not only with the people of Britain but with the fundamental principle of governance by consent that has long sustained our polity.

That is the real cliff edge, far more serious than the supposed perils of Brexit on WTO terms, that we are facing: the prospect of crashing out of the democratic system of government. As things stand, if this moment were frozen in time, with May’s deal rejected and legislation in place, we are theoretically headed towards a clean Brexit on 29 March. That, however, is the emancipation of Britain against which the elites have set their faces. The mischief-makers will be occupied over the next month in attempting to shred Brexit.

If they delay Brexit beyond 29 March, when the whole country, former Remain voters as well as Leavers, is united in longing for an end to the torment, they will provoke incalculable consequences. Even more provocative is the threat of a second referendum, an insult to the electorate that would not go unpunished. Labour is set to lose the Midlands and the North at the next election by supporting a referendum re-run. The Labour seats there – and even their target seats – are massively pro-Leave. Whom the gods wish to destroy…

Keir Starmer thinks a good second referendum question would be a choice between Theresa May’s Brexit-In-Name-Only “deal” and Remain. Missing from the ballot paper would be the clean Brexit for which 17.4 million people voted in 2016. And, if Leavers boycotted the whole farce, how could a referendum with a poor turnout supplant a verdict based on a vote by 72 per cent of the electorate?

The public knows the fears being stoked over a “no-deal” Brexit are exaggerated; it is now the most popular single option. Things would fall into place and, in a few instances, are already doing so, e.g. the EU regulators’ concession on financial clearing. European business, with whom we have a £95bn deficit in goods traded, will insist on trading and arrangements will be made over the heads of revanchist politicians in Brussels who will be evicted at the EU elections next May in any case.

Domestically, we are facing a very grave constitutional crisis. Both the Government and Parliament have conspired to negate the will of the British electorate. A remark often heard recently is: “Why would anybody ever vote in any election ever again?” In fact there is a very good reason to do so. If Parliament delays or cripples Brexit, any movement to which Nigel Farage may choose to adhere will sweep the country. The long overdue consigning of the legacy parties to the dustbin of history is finally becoming a viable prospect.

How did we know Theresa May was going to postpone Brexit beyond 29 March? Because she kept pledging she would not do so. How did we know Jeremy Corbyn would back a second referendum? Because he said he would not. Both party leaders have directly contradicted their election manifestos. Truth is foreign to the political class; so are honour, patriotism and trust.

The British public has lost all confidence not only in its politicians but also in the institutions of government. Parliament, as presently constituted, is no longer tenable. We need a completely new model of representation and a degree of accountability to the public that will ensure this abuse of power can never happen again.

This escalating constitutional crisis is no longer chiefly about the European Union: it is about whose will is sovereign in Britain – the people or the self-entitled political elites? If those elites are deluded enough to attempt to suppress Brexit, both Government and Parliament will have lost their legitimacy, with potentially disruptive consequences. The message from Westminster to Britain is: Democracy doesn’t live here anymore.