Brexit: The Chaos Mounts as the Options Narrow

The government is now in a state of perpetual crisis. It is said that parliament has taken control. The truth is parliament is out of control. It can construct a majority against things but becomes a Tower of Babel when asked to explain what it wants. To say the EU and the world at large look on near speechless is to understate the case.

The lack of a constitutionally active political Head of State who can summon the party leaders, tell them to get a grip or face the dissolution of parliament, added to the curbing of executive power of the government with the Supreme Court ruling over Article 50 and the reduction of both the power of the PM to seek a dissolution or the obligation to resign when defeated (time and again!) brought about by the Fixed Term Parliament Act, have together produced a state of dysfunction in our system of governance.

At the moment the diagnosis must be that parliament has lost the capacity to pass Brexit legislation into law. All it can do is pass non binding preferences. But  a few days away is a law passed and in force. It mandates that this country will leave the EU on the 29th of March. The only thing that can stop that is to revoke Article 50 and cancel Brexit altogether.

The one other option is for parliament to finally approve the Withdrawal Agreement as it stands, or with some compromise on what follows it, in the form of a more explicit customs union favoured by Labour, which would eliminate the need for the controversial Backstop. Whether it is called Norway Minus or Canada Plus or something else is not important. But getting it through parliament, together with a request for a technical extension to set it up, is. Failure to do that and on March 29th it is over the cliff.

For certain. Because that is the law.