This Brexit farce proves that the clock is ticking on the UK

Just when you think that Westminster can’t get any more inept, venal and useless, you find that they don’t merely scrape the bottom of the competence barrel, they’ve dug right through it and are currently tunnelling their way past David Davis en route to the nether regions of Hell. The former Brexit secretary will doubtless tell us that the UK can strike trade deals with the legions of demons. Which was pretty much what passed for a plan anyway.

Despite spending the weekend assuring one and all that there would most definitely, absolutely, positively be a meaningful vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal in Westminster on Tuesday, by Monday afternoon it transpired that there wasn’t going to be a vote, meaningful or otherwise. This, Theresa May assured us, was because she’d been listening to MPs and people outside the Commons who had reservations about her deal. Theresa isn’t noted for her sense of humour, but that was the funniest line of the day.

Of course she was listening. She was listening to the voice in her head that was telling her to keep her job at all costs. She wasn’t listening to anyone else, certainly not with the intent to understand, but possibly with the intent to give a reply that would allow her to keep her job. Since she doesn’t currently have such a reply, she’s decided to stop parliament telling her things that she doesn’t want to listen to. It helps to placate the voice in her head.

This is a Prime Minister who doesn’t grasp the distinction between being resolute and being delusional. The problem isn’t merely that Theresa doesn’t have a reply, she has no reasonable means of finding one. The EU has made it abundantly clear that they’re not disposed to renegotiate the deal just in order to get Theresa May out of a mess of her own creation. There’s nothing that she can bring back from Europe which offers any prospect of placating the warring wings of her divided party. Delaying the vote changes nothing. It just buys Theresa some more time in which she can fail to listen with the intent of understanding. It might not even be that much time.

Theresa has given no information about when the vote will be delayed to. Parliament rises for its Christmas break next week, so the chances are that the whole country will be left in limbo until the new year. The pound has plunged and businesses and jobs are left in a state of uncertainty, but none of that is as important as the Conservative Party’s need to deal with its internal politics.

This Government is utterly shameless. The famously unwritten British constitution only worked because it relied upon a sense of honour and fair play. This Government is bereft of those qualities. Despite everything, despite failing, despite running roughshod over parliamentary procedures and precedents, it’s not merely that no-one in this sorry excuse for a Government has thought to resign as a matter of principle, it’s that no-one has ever expected that any of them would. David Mundell, we’re looking at you. The only thing that’s keeping this shambles on the road is the twin Tory fears of a Corbyn Government and a Scottish independence referendum.

The official Opposition, in the shape of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, was presented with the challenge and opportunity created by a Conservative Government which is incapable of governing.

This is a Government which just a few days ago lost three crucial votes in a single day and which became the first British Government ever to be found in contempt of Parliament. That would be the Parliament whose absolute sovereignty that same Government is supposedly pledged to restoring with Brexit. This Government is in total disarray, its own backbenchers in open revolt, its Cabinet split, and without any plan or vision about how to get out of this mess of its own creation. If ever there was a time for an Opposition party to move a motion of no-confidence in the Government, this would be it. If ever there was a time for an Opposition to demonstrate that it was capable of the leadership that is so woefully lacking in the Government, this would be it.

And what did Labour do? Absolutely nothing. After spending the day booing and hissing at Theresa May for not holding a vote until she thinks she’s assured to win it, Labour are refusing to hold a vote until they think they’re assured to win it. Labour has said that it won’t present a no-confidence motion.

Instead the party has called for a debate about not debating. Then Labour can keep on avoiding coming down on one side of the Brexit fence. The problem with that strategy is that if you keep doing it too long, you end up with a fencepost up your backside. Fencepost entry commenced for Labour some weeks ago.

There are sessile lifeforms without a central nervous system growing around volcanic vents in the bottom of the ocean which are more capable of intentional movement than the Labour Party. And in fact some of those sessile lifeforms have been elected as Labour MPs. It was Robert Kennedy who once said that only those who dare to fail can ever achieve greatness. Labour consistently fails to dare. It’s the only thing that they’re great at.

If the British establishment had been this useless at negotiating back in 1922 when it was in talks over the whole Irish issue that now threatens to derail Brexit and which has reduced the UK to the laughing stock of Europe, there would have been no Irish border and they’d probably have given Scotland to the new Irish state. If only.

Throughout this entire sorry mess, Scotland has been sidelined, ignored, and treated with even greater contempt than this Government has treated what passes for a British constitution. But then this is a Government which treats democracy itself with contempt, so it was always going to be a big ask to expect it to listen to Scotland when it won’t listen to anyone else and goes out of its way to silence dissenting voices.

Support for independence is rising. This latest episode in the farcical sitcom that passes for British governance will only make it rise even more. We won’t be guaranteed relief from incompetent politicians with independence, but at least we’ll be able to vote them out of office. There are only 63 working days left to go before Brexit day. The clock is ticking on Brexit, but it’s also ticking on the United Kingdom.