Tag: Adam Boulton

Government by parliament works when a party or coalition of parties can command a majority of MPs to pass laws. None of this applies today in Brexit Britain. A fortnight before the UK is due to Brexit, this country still has no agreed plan on how to do it. Politics used to be called the art of the compromise. People are much more strongly committed to their view on the EU than they are to any political party. That goes for MPs as well. A canny leader, like Wilson over the EEC in 1975, won't call a referendum unless they can be pretty sure of the likely outcome. But he gambled on membership of the EU and lost. Today the European Research Group has organised a party within a party and has repeatedly voted against the withdrawal deal painfully negotiated by its leader. In both the Labour and Conservative parties they are the ones calling the shots.

As the Labour and Conservative parties splinter, the professional political journalist part of me certainly wonders if I should have been back in Westminster for the excitement. We chose our time to be away carefully: half-term is when MPs were also due to take a week's break. So far eight Labour MPs and three Conservatives, all pro-Europeans, have quit their parties to join The Independent Group, now known as TIG for short. TIG has not yet become a new political party but this is still a massive development. Both are also becoming increasingly undemocratic in the full sense of the word. So far it is fair to say that its members were all on the likely list and still only make up 11 out of 650 MPs. It will depend on what happens with Brexit over the next five weeks. If so, will there be a majority for the second referendum which all the TIG group members want? Will Labour facilitate Brexit under Mrs May's deal, probably driving many more pro-European MPs to quit in disgust? If Mrs May presides over that happening, I can't see how either the Conservative Party or Labour will hold together.