Anand Menon writes:

Dawn, 24 June 2016. College Green. That small patch of grass opposite the Palace of Westminster. A flag-waving group of men – Nigel Farage and co – celebrates raucously. An ashen-faced Jeremy Corbyn arrives to tell the prime minister that article 50 should be triggered immediately. A senior FT reporter runs past, gasping that “the PM’s resigned and it’s only the third story on our website”. And so, the post-referendum odyssey began. In the sun, on the Green, with everyone going bonkers.

It’s been three and a half long years, in which we have learned a number of things about not only Brexit but also ourselves. First, breaking up is hard to do. The problems we have faced in trying to leave the EU stand as a testament to how right the Brexiters were all along: this isn’t a simple trading block, it is far, far, more. And disentangling the relationship has likewise proved far more complicated than many people – including most high-profile Brexiters – ever imagined. Think of Northern Ireland and those endless debates over backstops and borders. Think of the power wielded over Theresa May by a party few in Great Britain had ever heard of, let alone understood.

And at the same time, we’ve come to understand that our most treasured institutions are perhaps more fragile than we’d suspected. From the apolitical civil service, vilified and abused by politicians who should know better, to judges, attacked from parliament and on the front pages of the tabloid press. From the devolution settlement, buttressed by a Sewel convention that, like Jack Sparrow’s pirates’ code, turns out to be more “guidelines than rules”” To the sovereignty of parliament, neatly sidestepped by the government, who closed it down for a while. Much of what we have taken for granted about our country now appears vulnerable.

Which brings us to the politicians. Many of the problems we have faced have stemmed from the dysfunctionality of our politics since that June poll. [Continue reading…]