Parliament is now failing the people. The government has ceased to govern. That more than Brexit itself is the crisis now. And this crisis is real, deep and damaging. A listen in to yesterday’s performance by a straw clutching May, revealed so many conflicting views among the Tories that it is impossible to see how they can govern.
Yet there is no majority to bring the government down, to accept any permutation of any deal, to avoid a crash Brexit, nor to hold a second referendum. In my view our unwritten constitution requires the monarch, as head of state, to intervene by calling the parties together as George V did in 1930. If they fail to agree a way forward in the national interest, Article 50 should be delayed, Parliament should be dissolved and an election held.
The first duty of the new parliament would be to restore the proper balance between executive and legislature, distorted by a combination of the fixed Term Parliament Act and the Supreme Court ruling. Next must follow reforming the House of Lords and formalising the difference between parliament sitting as the Union and sitting as England. Reform of the civil service will be needed too and only when our governing institutions are seen to be fit for purpose should we even think of proceeding with Brexit.
It will not happen so we will blunder on. But this failure of governance proves the most powerful reason of all to stop Brexit. Brexit was promoted as a means of returning full sovereignty to the U.K. parliament. It is now clear that after 45 years of sharing, parliament has lost the capability to exercise coherent sovereign government. That is a most unwelcome revelation, with consequences far greater than Brexit itself.