Theresa May’s parliamentary farce has gone on for too long – it’s time to take the decision back to the people

The prime minister manages to combine poor political judgement and preternatural obstinacy in one lethal package. She cannot go on like this

With a fortnight to go until the putative Brexit day, it is fair to say that it is a bit late for the prime minister to start paying a little more attention to the House of Commons. It is woefully late to discover that parliament and government cannot agree on what they want. The closeness of some of the votes in the Commons yesterday are a warning to the prime minister that she cannot any longer take parliament for granted.

So much for reclaiming power and taking control. It is ludicrous – and our legislators must stop going around in ever decreasing circles. A Final Say referendum, for which many will be marching on 23 March, is the best way to break the deadlock and win legitimacy for any decision on Brexit. The vote on this was defeated by a substantial majority, however Labour abstained. The fact that a number of Labour MPs, including some frontbenchers, decided to break their whip and vote with the government was disappointing. It will be a test of Jeremy Corbyn’s sincerity to see how he deals with his internal dissidents, given his party’s official support for a Final Say referendum.

Many claims have been made about what people voted for in the Brexit referendum, with varying degrees of plausibility; few would suggest that the current deadlock was the stuff of people’s dreams in June 2016.

Brexit has been botched. So what is to be done?

It is important to be methodical about the matter, and set down a logical, practical path to a popular decision on Brexit. Parliament needs to form a view on the whole of the future relationship between the UK and the EU – not just the withdrawal agreement – and set the government on negotiating that with the EU, then winning the assent of the electorate in a popular vote for whatever emerges from discussions. It will take time, far longer than the minimal delay to Article 50 the government has now, after tonight’s vote, grumpily conceded.

As a starting point, the prime minister could do worse than to listen to the Commons. At no point since 2016 (despite the protests of backbenchers and opposition parties, and despite losing its majority in 2017) has the May government sought to determine what our supposedly sovereign parliament actually desires. Only the European Research Group (ERG) and the Democratic Unionists (DUP) are heeded. The government has still not unequivocally conceded a series of indicative votes on the various options. Only this week has the chancellor, Philip Hammond, suggested building a cross-party consensus.

All of this should have been done two years ago.

MPs have been excluded through the entire process, at least until a few weeks ago after Theresa May’s deal went down to the worst parliamentary defeat ever and she was dispatched to Brussels to deliver the Brady amendment – which she failed to do.

When her “tweaked” deal was put to the Commons again, it was duly voted down, and heavily. Whistling in the wind about another vote next week, and maybe one or two after that as the clock runs down, is an insult to the Commons, and an arrogant defiance of long parliamentary precedent dating back to 1604. It is a pantomime that the speaker, John Bercow, needs to pull the curtain down on. The will of the Commons has been well tested on the existing deal. It is dead.

So Theresa May needs to think again: she can either now move to take her case for her deal to the country or she can press the reset button. There is no alternative. The crash-out no-deal Brexit she likes to threaten us with has now been ruled out by the Commons and by much of her cabinet.

The prime minister needs to build that consensus in parliament that she has not even attempted to create in the 23-plus of the 24 months of the Article 50 process. If she cannot do so then the option of putting the question – and specifically the terms of her existing Brexit “deal” – to the people remains. It may have been rejected for now by the Commons, but its time will come because it is both a democratic imperative and, ultimately, the only way out of the current mess.

The British people and their parliament deserve to have the whole deal set before them, and not merely the less significant part of it. Today there is only a withdrawal agreement, the “divorce settlement”, far from “nothing is agreed until everything is greed”. We need to remind ourselves that the future trade and security relationship with the EU simply does not exist in a legally sound form. All we have is a sometimes woolly “political declaration” which cannot be enforced by either side. The British people and its MPs are being asked to approve a “pig in a poke”, and invited to take part in what President Macron has called a “blind Brexit”.

Whatever time it takes to determine the second treaty on trade and security, it must be concluded. The UK will repent at leisure if it finds that Brexit means a deeply unequal and disadvantageous trading arrangement with the EU. Assiduous as she is by nature, Ms May has not finished her homework.

The elections to the European parliament are a complicating factor, but the European Council – the 27 governments – can make whatever arrangements it wishes to facilitate the proper resolution of Brexit. They have done so before, for example with new member states. The EU Commission and Council have a say in this, and they are entitled to advise the UK that it needs to take its time to get Brexit right, if that’s what eventually emerges. It is in the long-term interest of the UK and the EU.

Theresa May manages to combine poor political judgement and preternatural obstinacy in one lethal package – it explains much of her political misfortunes. She cannot go on like this.