Election not the way to answer Brexit

There is no definitive record of the number of times Boris Johnson promised that he would take the United Kingdom out of the European Union by Halloween, but it is indisputably a substantial volume. Mr Johnson has failed. He can blame parliament, the courts, the BBC, or Uncle Tom Cobley, but a failure on his own terms it remains. Britain will not leave the EU this Thursday.

Yet, as so often in his sometimes charmed past, he seems to be being rewarded for his failure by weaponising it to secure a December general election. Mr Johnson spies his 12-point lead over Labour in the opinion polls and wants to take advantage of it. If polling day comes before the Withdrawal Agreement Bill is passed by

Parliament, then he can mobilise his strategy of launching a “people vs parliament” election – a vote to implement the 2016 referendum result against the opposition of a “zombie parliament” and the perfidious “Establishment”.

More than anything, a general election, by its nature, cannot answer the Brexit question. It is the wrong answer to a choice between Leave and Remain. It will settle nothing in the sense of ending the national trauma and moving towards closure and healing. If it returns another hung parliament, as in 2010 and 2017, then it will be another “zombie” affair. In any case, in principle an election is an inferior and less legitimate method of determining Brexit, as compared with a Final Say referendum. Brexit is not over.