Alex Massie Alex Massie

There are few innocent parties when it comes to this Brexit mess

A New Year and the same old mess, only with knobs on this time. If the government cannot be said to be distinguishing itself right now, its directionless meanderings are matched by those of the House of Commons as a whole. Brexit, we were often told, was a means by which ‘sovereignty’ could be restored to parliament in particular and, more generally, to the great British public itself. On the current evidence, you wouldn’t entrust a tombola to the House of Commons.

Last night the Commons demanded that the government avoid a no-deal Brexit. This was, if we are looking for something positive, mordantly amusing. But then gallows humour is about all that’s left to us in these hapless times. It remains staggering that so many MPs still refuse to accept that a no-deal Brexit is the default Brexit. It is the Brexit that happens in the absence of any other, agreed, Brexit. You can only avoid a no-deal Brexit by voting for something else. This is elementary.

And yet it is still too complicated a thought for the House of Commons. So we end up where we were all along. Without a third option – of a sort that as matters stand seems increasingly improbable – the choice remains between the agreement the government has reached with the EU and no deal at all. It is perfectly reasonable to dislike each of those options but it’s irresponsible, to put it kindly, to suggest there is some magical alternative to them. At present, there is not.

So Yvette Cooper’s amendment has all the power of homeopathic medicine. That is, it might be worse than useless, not least since it can only encourage foolish optimism in the face of all medical – or, in this instance, political – evidence.

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