PARLIAMENT vsTHE PEOPLE

The country is sick to death of this exhausted, venal and plot-ridden House of Commons. Refusing to let us vote them out is the final insult

IS THIS still Britain? Angry mobs cluster around Westminster and Whitehall, chanting intransigent slogans and yelling personal abuse at Government officials. The stately, reassuring grandeur of the Houses of Parliament is concealed by dark and ugly scaffolding. It is as if the old kindly spirit of British democracy has gone into exile, driven away by bitterness and intolerance. Recrimination and spite are everywhere. Longstanding allegiances melt and re-form. Men and women who have been loyal to their parties for decades walk out of them – or are thrown out of them.

A gloating, partial BBC makes no effort to conceal its pleasure at the upsets which have overtaken the Prime Minister as he has tried to fulfil the promises he rightly gave, to carry out the mandate of the 2016 referendum. Boris Johnson’s opponents clump together in unprincipled alliances, co-operating with people and factions they would normally cross the street to avoid.

An increasingly disgusted populace look on and see every reason why this burned-out zombie Parliament should be dissolved and replaced in a General Election. Exhausted, confused, rotten, grotesque, venal, bereft of new ideas, seething with malicious gossip and plots, it would be a kindness to put this wretched Parliament out of its misery.

It would also be wise. When MPs have forgotten who put them in their seats, and why they put them there, and when much of the national leadership are no longer in touch with the people – as the polls clearly show is the case – it is positively unhealthy for democracy to continue without a new mandate.

There is also an urgent practical reason for a definite end to this dawdling. As The Mail on Sunday reports today, the uncertainty caused by our unresolved relations with the EU is absorbing huge amounts of the valuable time of businessmen and managers, who would be far better occupied building their enterprises and seeking customers. The whole country is semi-paralysed by political stalemate, with everyone distracted, or unable to make longterm plans, because the future is unresolved.

But the voters are told they cannot have the cleansing democratic experience of an Election – by people who until a few days ago were clamouring for such a poll. The politics of this country have gone sour and it is going to take quite some effort and a lot of luck to make sure they do not go rotten.

Look at where we are now, superglued by a cynical Parliamentary vote to a timetable which robs the British Government of its main bargaining counter – the real threat of a No Deal exit from the EU. All we are promised is yet another delay, during which this addled House of Commons can yet again fail to agree on the terms for a negotiated departure.

What is the point of this, if not to frustrate the popular will? Those who have combined to block Mr Johnson’s frontal assault on Brussels say publicly that they respect the 2016 vote. But how many of them, in their secret hearts, still hope to find a way of reversing it?

Before the Cynical Alliance of anti-Boris Tories and Remainer Leftists formed and acted, Brexit was in sight. Now it is once again far beyond the horizon, a theoretical event which they hope can be negotiated out of existence or even cancelled by a second referendum.

Now the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is obliged – by what must the strangest law ever passed by Parliament – to seek an extension of our negotiations with Brussels. Has there ever been another Act of Parliament which tells one individual how he must behave, rather than, as they usually do, telling us all what we are not allowed to do, or placing limits on power?

Mr Johnson personally cannot obey it without the most tremendous public humiliation. He has made plain by deliberate unambiguous declarations that he has no intention of following this course. So it is reasonable to assume that he will not do it.

And so next week British politics begins a journey without maps, in constitutional and legal territory where nobody has ever ventured before. Mr Johnson and his aides and allies need to navigate it very carefully if they are to succeed. It is unlikely they will get much help from Brussels, where senior figures must be struggling not to show their delight at the behaviour of their allies in Westminster.

Downing Street’s tactics up to this point have at least partly let them down. There is no point in pretending that Mr Johnson’s initial offensive was an unmitigated success. There has been over-confidence and arrogance.

The seeming superciliousness of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s provocative recumbent position on the front bench may, for example, have turned some neutrals into enemies. The summary expulsion of long-standing loyal Tory MPs, many of them prominent and popular, was a step too far which has alienated otherwise sympathetic Conservatives, and will, in some cases at least, need to be undone.

Perhaps some of these mistakes were made because those involved lacked experience of Parliament itself. The Premier’s aide, Dominic Cummings, may indeed be a brilliant mind. But he has no direct knowledge of Westminster and the Tory Party, and it shows. His habit of meeting dissent by brusquely showing his critics the door needs to be curbed, or he may be the one who needs to depart. Sometimes critics are right, and truly wise leaders know this.

The Prime Minister was no doubt personally distressed by the resignation of his brother Jo. But he is certainly capable of learning quickly from such bitter experience. And so he must, as mistakes at this stage could actually lead to that worst of all consequences, the entry of Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street as Prime Minister. The mind still boggles at the thought of this doddering, ill-educated Marxist, a sympathiser with all manner of disastrous regimes and disreputable factions, in charge of Britain’s nuclear deterrent, even if it is for only a few weeks in an Election campaign.

The Mail on Sunday’s view is simple and straightforward. This Parliament has sat too long and dithered too long to do any further good. The best resolution of the current crisis is a dissolution and an immediate Election. We still hope Mr Johnson can find a way to achieve this decent aim.

The mind still boggles at the thought of a doddering, ill-educated Marxist in charge of Britain’s vital nuclear deterrent