Finding an escape from the U.K.’s Brexit disaster

The Brexit-bound United Kingdom increasingly resembles a train speeding toward a canyon where the bridge has collapsed.

There’s still time to stop the train or even put it in reverse before disaster hits. But no one in the engineer’s cab has the slightest idea which lever to pull and the passengers are screaming too loudly for the people in charge to understand what they’re saying.

So it is with the unhappy and highly disunited United Kingdom, barrelling down on the March 29, 2019, moment of truth when it will leave the European Union — with or without a deal.

And today, after what could go down as Prime Minister Theresa May’s week from hell, the prospect of no deal and the chaos it would unleash seem increasingly likely.

In the course of a few days, May first had to cancel the vote on her Brexit deal because it wouldn’t pass parliament, then narrowly escaped being dumped as PM by her own Conservative party. Finally, May suffered a humiliating rejection from European Union leaders who refused to accept her proposals to make the Brexit pill less bitter for the U.K. to swallow.

After another week of unresolved tension and turmoil within May’s party, the British Parliament and across the nation, the only thing different was that the country was seven days closer to disaster.

It needn’t end this way. There’s still time for Britain’s politicians to avert a train wreck — if they’re willing to try one of two viable alternatives.

First, they should realize that just as a deeply flawed referendum got them into this mess, a smarter, more carefully considered referendum might extricate them.

While many British politicians feel honour-bound to respect the outcome of the 2016 referendum, they should admit how deeply flawed it really was. The vote’s outcome was impossibly close with just over 51 per cent of the ballots favouring Brexit.

The threshold for making such a radical change should never have been set so low — at anything just above 50 per cent. In the lead-up to the vote, the leave-the-EU camp resorted to lies and likely violated campaign spending rules.

But this referendum is not binding. Parliament remains supreme. It can act according to how it sees the country’s best interests. And it should do this. That’s what leaders are supposed to do — lead, not follow.

Pollsters now say a majority of Britons favour remaining in the EU. Such a shift in public sentiment is wise.

Whatever a post-Brexit U.K. would gain from being freed from the supposed shackles of the European Parliament would be nothing compared with the economic hit it would take — and the possibility for renewed violence if a hard boundary again divides the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland.

So there’s a strong case for going back to the people. They could be asked if they approve May’s comparatively moderate Brexit plan.

They could be asked if they would prefer to call the whole thing off and stay in the EU. And if they somehow choose to persist with the Brexit fiasco, at least they would do so with open eyes.

There’s even one more, possibly better, alternative. As party lines meant little when Britain fought for its life in the Second World War, the people’s representatives in parliament today should realize their country faces a historic and existential crisis. They can, and arguably should, vote to cancel this absurd Brexit project once and for all and without a second referendum.

The EU is ready to embrace them with open arms. The train wreck would be averted.