Now admit your error and move on, Mrs May

CENTURIES of social peace and freedom tend to make us forget how lucky we are. In most of human history, most struggles for power in most places have been resolved through violence, bribery and menace, with little or no hope of justice. Turn on your TV and you can see it happening.

Not here. In this country we have the luxury of leaders we can dismiss, and an astonishingly clean system of government, overseen by courts whose honesty and fairness are genuinely the envy of the world.

All of these parts of our state can and do get things wrong. All should be subject to robust criticism, especially by the free and independent press which is also one of the key pillars of our liberty.

When passions are high, the temptation to go beyond robust criticism is understandably strong.

But in the case of the High Court’s ruling on whether Parliament should vote on taking us out of the EU, critics should be careful.

First, their behaviour is inconsistent. They have fought hard and long for the restoration of sovereignty to Westminster from Brussels. How then can they attack a judgment which confirms Parliament’s supremacy in our constitution?

But even more importantly, the fervent and personal denunciation of courts and of judges themselves endangers the delicate balance of our constitution.

However much we disagree with our opponents, in our civilised system they remain opponents. They are, after all, our fellow countrymen.

Our judiciary has become more liberal in recent years and some of its decisions have been more political than they should have been. But Thursday’s High Court verdict is not eccentric or wild.

It asserts a very old rule, that the Crown – nowadays Downing Street – cannot just issue decrees reversing Parliament’s decisions. This is surely a good principle as well as an ancient one.

The vast majority of MPs and Lords understand that the referendum result, though technically not binding in law, is absolutely morally binding. MPs who vote to override it would risk their seats, and rightly so. It was voters who made them MPs in the first place. They of all people cannot despise democracy or majorities.

Members of the Lords who did so would take an even deeper risk. They might bring about the abolition of their unelected and cumbersome chamber, so great would be public resentment at such defiance of clearly expressed popular will.

All that has really changed, thanks to the court’s ruling, is that the Ministers charged with leaving the EU must now explain their actions to Parliament, and draft a simple Bill triggering our departure. The really touchy question of exactly what sort of post-EU status Britain will have remains as murky as ever.

So it might have been wiser for the Prime Minister to concede such a vote from the start, especially given the strong possibility that the Supreme Court will confirm the High Court ruling.

For one result of this episode is that Mrs May has got herself into unnecessary trouble, and made her Government look remarkably wobbly despite what ought to be a commanding position.

Now is the time to put this right. The Lord Chancellor, Liz Truss, yesterday belatedly defended the independence of the courts, which she should have done from the start. From now on the Government should take back control of the process, rather than reacting to it.