Asking the people is the only way to end this Brexit nightmare

THERE is no doubt that, regardless of the high-minded principles which most politicians claim to hold, the actual reality of politics is often a grubby business.

Complete victories for any given position are rarely seen.

Instead, compromises are usually hammered out on a subject through a mixture of what is possible for different parties to accept, and what they are prepared to swallow through either bribery or the threat of what may be even worse to come.

For the most part, this is unobjectionable. Many of us would accept that the perfect can be the enemy of the good, and that having 90 per cent of something might be better than 100 per cent of nothing.

But there are some issues that are so politically charged that they do not lend themselves well to the usual arts of political compromise without leaving a sour taste in the mouth. It is our misfortune that Brexit is one of these, and that we are suffering its consequences.

Politicians face a difficult predicament. Unusually for a British political issue, the decision to leave the EU was made not by the government or parliament – which could have argued away any points of difference in the customary political process – but by the people themselves.

Our parliamentary democracy usually works because parliament regards itself as the supreme political authority in this country, and is therefore able to make sovereign decisions, at least as much as EU law – in areas where we have agreed to pool sovereignty until we leave – will allow.

However, in this one instance, it is neither parliament nor the EU which is considered sovereign, but the people themselves.

The politicians seem to have bought into this state of affairs through their endless repetition of “the need to respect the referendum vote” or to “deliver the outcome that the people expect” – even while they argue through the other side of their mouths that it is now the government or parliament’s job to finish the process and divine what the people actually wanted in 2016.

This appeal to the sovereignty of the people while simultaneously trying to preserve the idea of parliamentary authority would have been a herculean task at the best of times. But it has been made much worse because there was no defined plan for what leaving would actually look like.

There was a consensus in favour of the broad idea of leaving the EU, but not on the practical form that this would take.

As a consequence, different groups of politicians have been able to cling to their own ideas about what Brexit means. Crucially, they have justified their failure to compromise on the grounds that they are remaining true to the sovereignty of the people.

And so we now have a political class which can cohere around the idea of what it will not accept – as the defeats of the meaningful votes on the government’s plan and on all the eight of the indicative options on Wednesday evening show – but finds it impossible to unite around what it might actually want.

By any standards, this should be a head-in-hands moment for the UK’s political leadership. The government’s strategy to deliver Brexit has thus far failed, and parliament’s attempts to seize control have similarly foundered.

With the decision of the Democratic Unionist Party to stick to its principles on the sanctity of the United Kingdom – which could have been predicted by anyone with a passing acquaintance with the history of the Unionist cause in Northern Ireland – a third meaningful vote will go down to defeat over existing concerns about the backstop, even with the miraculous switch of support of some Conservative Brexiteers who are still itching for no-deal.

Nor will Labour MPs ride to the rescue, given that the Prime Minister’s decision to announce her premature retirement – which she conceded in a last-gasp gamble to win over her most ambitious internal critics – might mean that one of those critics most loathed on the opposition benches could soon replace her.

With indicative votes having failed to secure a parliamentary majority of any kind, it should be clear by now that the only way to resolve the Brexit impasse is to give meaningful form once more to the source of authority that the politicians themselves acknowledge started this whole process: the people.

A two-stage vote – to be held on the same day, with the first part being a straight yes or no choice on supporting the Prime Minister’s deal, and if that fails, a second no-deal or remain question – will deliver the unequivocal outcome that parliament has been unable to secure.

Such a referendum makes moral, practical and even political sense at a time when party unity and collective responsibility have broken down.

Our political system has been brought close to breaking point by the impossibility of resolving Brexit through parliament. It is high time to salvage it by politicians compromising on their own political sovereignty once more for the greater good of the nation.