Brexit mishandling proves that British and European politicians are all demented – Bernard Ingham

If it does succumb – and most people seem to be braced for the worst – we political pathologists will testify we have never seen a more mutilated corpse.

The cause will be staring us in the face. And the coroner’s jury – the British public – will have no difficulty 
in pronouncing their verdict: progressive strangulation by politicians of unsound mind.

Bernard Ingham: Given the Brexit mess, referenda, I trust, are like Monty Python’s parrot – deceased

In short, our Parliamentarians have gone completely off their rockers – and contagiously so. Thousands seem to be saying, even before Brexit’s death has been confirmed, that they won’t vote Tory again.

Faced with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his Momentum mob, that is eminently suicidal.

In the inevitable search for a scapegoat, Mrs May is a stronger favourite than Tiger Roll in last Saturday’s Grand National. This is not entirely fair. British politics has suffered a collective breakdown and it will take a genius to restore it.

In all humility, we voters need to recognise that, whatever may be said about Westminster’s lost souls, they do at least represent a divided nation.

Unfortunately, they split too far the wrong way – for Remain – at odds with the electorate.

It follows that if history is objective it will note that Mrs May was dealt an impossible hand and finally went bonkers, too, by seeking salvation from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who lost his marbles to Moscow decades ago.

Regardless of his long-standing hatred of the European Union, Corbyn has foolishly passed up the opportunity for statesmanship by ignoring his electoral base and demanding, for supposed political advantage, that we remain more in than out of Brussels without, of course, any say in its machinations.

History will argue that, as one who voted Remain, Mrs May’s heart was not in it. Again I think this is to misread her. To have any chance of carrying out the voters’ wishes she had to find a way of reconciling two main elements in her fractious party. Hence the imperfect draft agreement with the EU she has stuck with, even after Parliament has rejected it thrice.

The current inclination is to heap most of the blame – after Mrs May – on her ultra-Brexiteers who passed up three chances to get us out of the EU as planned on March 29. But for their purity we would now be facing an exciting future largely freed of the EU yoke.

But it is at least possible to understand why they were so resistant to compromise when Parliament was – and remains – tilted against Brexit and therefore the people’s will.

It is, frankly, impossible to fathom the warped minds of Remainers, including the Liberal Democrats, to a man and woman. They are incapable still of articulating why we should remain in an undemocratic, bureaucratic, protectionist, corrupt, expensive and failing institution that undermines their role and authority as legislators.

As if this was not enough, Mr Speaker, the Bilious Bercow, postures, prates and perverts his role as a neutral chairman to the benefit of Remainers.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party, if such a revolutionary body may now be described, cares nought for its big Brexit following and swivells every which way to try to force an election. It cares neither for our democracy nor nation; only political advantage.

The Democratic Unionist Party 
of Northern Ireland, supposedly Mrs May’s allies, run away over some 
curious thing called the Irish backstop which, given modern technology, must qualify as the biggest red herring in living memory.

And all the while the secessionists from Britain – the Scots and Welsh Nats and Sinn Fein – comically seek independence from Britain but subservience to Brussels.

The senior Civil Service, least of all the retired lot in the House of Lords, has not distinguished itself either by its reluctance to implement the will of the people.

This is not to mention the EU’s punitive approach to Brexit because it fears it will imperil its entirely undemocratic project: the construction of a federal United States of Europe. It will serve it right if, Brexit or not, the whole thing blows up in its face because of the pernicious effect of a single currency.

Clearly British and European politicians are demented. Is there anyone sane left amid the shambles to restore some sort of orderly representative democracy? May hope eventually conquer despair.