A People’s Vote is still very much on the cards

British politics is on a roller coaster more turbulent and precipitous than ever. Current negotiations with Brussels may or may not deliver the beginnings of an outcome following eighteen months of phoney war, shadow-boxing, and staged histrionics. Nevertheless, there is not, as of now, a majority on the floor of the House of Commons for any proposition that can be defined in detail.

Assuming Mrs May can fashion a plan acceptable to Brussels, situated somewhere, in the jargon, between Chequers, Norway and Canada, there is first the question of her own Cabinet. And then of her own party. And in face of probable resistance from Brexiteers, inveterate Remainers and/or the DUP, there is the question of how many Labour members would defy their own party whip. Betting on a deal now would be, as a French writer once observed of dying for one’s ideals, placing a pretty high price on conjecture.

But those of us who believe Brexit the most ill-advised conscious policy choice made in recent times by a supposedly sophisticated nation also have a problem. There is an admirable British sense of fair play – or maybe rough justice – conceding that once an apparently democratic choice has been made, it is our duty to stick by it. Whatever the discredited claims made by the Brexiteers (and there were some overblown projections in Project Fear), the calamitous timing of the Mediterranean influx into Europe, and the nasty xenophobic underside of one if not both of the Brexit campaigns, we have made our collective bed and we must lie in it.

There is a counter-argument, well-expressed by David Davis who remarked that a mature democracy should be capable of changing its mind. This is possibly all the more relevant given the demographics – an overwhelmingly older electorate accused by the young of disinheriting them not only of their future economic prospects, but of their very identity in a continent they have come to regard as home.

But the jump to a second referendum from the current gridlock is not on the cards. Apart from the offence it seems to represent against natural justice – ‘they think we gave them the wrong answer so they will keep asking the question until we give them the right one’ – the practical obstacles to parliament accepting the principle, agreeing the wording, and choreographing the campaigns before Article 50 takes effect are surely prohibitive. That bird is unlikely to fly.

However, those of us who still hanker after that ‘People’s Vote’ need not despair. Deliverance could come from that old Macmillan trope ‘events’. Let’s consider where the current gridlock is likely to lead in raw political terms. Granting the Prime Minister an evens chance of pulling a rabbit from the hat, because European negotiations always end that way and the prospect of a hard Brexit actually terrifies everyone, there is still plenty to play for.

We are assured that a failed proposal to the House, whether undermined by immoveable Democratic Unionists, brittle Brexiteers or suicidal Tory Remainers, would not lead to a General Election. Not many MPs in either party would want that in the first instance, and party discipline would ensure the survival of a Tory government, though possibly not of Mrs May, after a confidence vote. Yet what is the proposition, harder or softer, that would subsequently carry a majority that Brussels would find attractive? Loose talk of a ‘more Canadian’ outcome still begs awkward questions of how to assemble that parliamentary majority – never mind how it could be negotiated in the time.

It is more likely that extending the period of Article 50 – whether through the unilateral withdrawal favoured by its drafter, Lord Kerr, or by agreement with Brussels – would become a serious prospect. That may or may not precipitate the Brexiteer revolt that could undermine any Tory negotiating strategy. But the premature and rather contrived deadline self-imposed by Mrs May would come under severe pressure.

Assume another attempt to formulate a policy, another attempt to rally a majority. Assume another failure. However unappealing the prospect, a general election becomes inevitable when a government cannot implement the central plank of its existing policy platform. The pressures for a dissolution, even in a supposedly fixed-term parliament, would become irresistible.

And what would another election bring? With fascinating regional and sociological variations for the cognoscenti, and no doubt strange goings-on within each of the major parties, the likelihood would be a House of Commons remarkably like the one we have now.

A similar election result, bringing to power a weak minority Labour Prime Minister, or a properly Brexiteer Tory leader, would make a coherent strategy for negotiation no more likely than before. Whichever government we had would be duty bound to go round the same track, aiming to negotiate an outcome acceptable to a still divided House of Commons.

It is from this second gridlock that the Europhiles might take heart. Brexit was a strange and novel phenomenon, undermining traditional loyalties and disrupting old structures of authority. These might never settle in the pattern they had before.

But the political class would have failed to deliver Brexit. It would be justified in asking the people, whether in a mood of exhaustion or despair, to reconsider. And the outcome would be by no means sure. The People’s Vote lobby would hail it as a golden chance to reconsider. Its adversaries would take up the cause, once a second vote became inevitable, of making Brexit irreversible.

This is no Polyanna-ish fantasy with a necessarily Happy Ending for those of us who dislike Brexit. Campaigns bring unpleasant surprises. A small majority either way might take us back into yet another dark tunnel. Our domestic obsessions might do permanent damage not just to Britain’s relations with its neighbours but with the wider world.

The road to a second referendum would be long, circuitous and ill-tempered. It might still deliver a result no lovelier than the first. But the possibility that we shall have to embark on that road is growing with every weary mis-step along the present, dispiriting track.