Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Parliament’s plot to thwart Brexit is complete

It is time for plain speaking. The stakes are too high for euphemism or obfuscation. Bluntness is required now. And the blunt fact is this: Britain’s parliamentarians are in revolt against the electorate. They are defying the demos. They are pursuing a coup, albeit a bloodless one, against the public. This is what last night’s votes against a no-deal Brexit reveal: that our representatives now refuse to represent us.

What else are we to make of the events of the past few days? They voted against Theresa May’s deal, which was a super soft Brexit, unloved by Brexiteers like me. So they don’t want a soft Brexit, clearly. Then they voted against a no-deal Brexit, twice (why give the electorate just one slap in the face when you can give it two?). So they don’t want a hard Brexit, either. 

Today they might vote to extend the Article 50 process, so terrified are they by the prospect of any kind of Brexit taking place on 29 March. And of course many of them want a second referendum, possibly involving the removal of the Brexit option entirely. In the slippery lingo of Keir Starmer and Co., a second vote would be a choice between a ‘credible’ Leave option — by which they mean something like May’s mongrel Remain-Brexit mash-up — and the option of remaining. So Brexit — actual Brexit, as in Britain exiting the EU — would be snatched away, memory-holed, put beyond our grubby reach like bleach is with children.

They don’t want Brexit. That’s the long and short of it. Of course a few of them do — the ERG, some DUP people, principled Labour folk like Kate Hoey and Dennis Skinner — but not many. My favourite statistic of the 21st century so far is that 95 per cent of Labour MPs voted to remain.

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