Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
Some of the best contacts are surely your opponents. Old politics would involve trading of deals here and there, you support this amendment, we will do this... you abstain from this vote, we might be able to find something here. Not in a corrupt sense, but the sense of trying to give everyone something that we all just get along.
Brexit politics isn't like that. It's do or die for both sides. No deal vs remain. Normal rules of politics are gone.
|
I suspect most people don’t realise the extent to which this is how normal parliamentary business has been done over many years. Much of what we see on TV, PMQs and other set-piece debates, is political theatre. But Jacob Rees-Mogg is once said to have warmly welcomed a new SNP MP to Westminster with the advice that the true division in the Commons isn’t between the two opposing benches, but between those who are in the executive and those who aren’t. When the Commons is working well, it produces well-crafted law and holds the government to account, while ultimately recognising the right of the government to govern.
At the moment, as you’ve pointed out, both sides of the Brexit debate have become so entrenched that parliament is unwilling to allow the government to exercise its powers and the government is unwilling to allow parliament to conduct oversight.
Where I suspect we differ is that I think Brexit is a boil that absolutely must be lanced, and quickly, for better or worse. We absolutely have to get it done, and then have the confidence to pick ourselves up and make the best of wherever we find ourselves. Those who are trying to stop it (and in that category I place many of those who claim only to be trying to delay it in order to ensure we get a better deal) are pursuing a course of action that will only ensure the running battle between legislature and executive continues and grows deeper. That’s not a great state of affairs.