Looking forward

Whether or not we should have had a show trial over the right to invoke Article 50 is not really of interest to me. There is one inescapable truth to this. Parliament voted by a wide margin to pass the decision to the people having failed for decades to resolve the matter themselves. You can call that advisory if you want but politics is politics. You don't mess with it, and increasingly, it looks like they won't. I don't think anyone is in any real doubt now that we are leaving the EU.

I should be more offended by this trial than I am since it's an example of how meek parliament has become - that it takes a private citizen to do their job for them. But that is also why I am not so troubled by any of this. It's exactly what you would expect from an end of the line establishment which has long since forgotten its purpose and who it serves. Look at the Limp Dems and the shell of a Labour party and we can see that this parliamentary democracy of ours really is on its last legs.

And it's not so rosy for the Tories either. Mrs May has a modicum of political competence but her supporting cast in this carnival of the bizarre is distinctly underwhelming. When David Davis looks like the competent one you know they are in serious trouble. This is why I can relax about the whole thing.

One way or another we are leaving the EU and it will either be a long and messy process or they will see sense and go for the EEA. In the bigger picture, that doesn't matter. We will have managed Brexit away into a convenient box. But that will have left a considerable scar on our democracy. We will have seen the unvarnished truth that our parliamentary democracy simply doesn't function anymore. We'll get our Brexit and we'll slowly realise that the EU is no longer the backstop excuse, for either side, when things don't work. The buck stops with parliament. That's the point when politics gets very interesting. Things are not going to be the same - and that's what I actually voted for.