The United Kingdom is in the throes of an intense political crisis. It is a crisis of liberal democracy itself, and Britain is by no means the only nation whose political institutions are under attack from similar threats. These attacks are both internal and external, particular to each case but with common underlying themes.

The collision at the heart of Brexit this September is between two claims to sovereignty: of Parliament, and of the people. It has not been resolved; it may be irresolvable. The June 2016 referendum gave a narrow but clear majority in favour of leaving the European Union, quickly described as “the will of the people”, and elevated – it has to be said, by both sides – almost to the status of the will of God. At first both the Labour and Conservative Parties accepted that the preference of a majority of Members of Parliament to stay in the EU had been overruled. But there was no unanimity about exactly how Britain should leave the EU. Dangerously, as events turned out, it was left to Parliamentarians to decide.

Meanwhile many of those who had voted to stay in the EU remained unreconciled with that outcome. And this is one fundamental test that Britain’s liberal democracy failed. The defeated did not consent to their defeat, not before and not after. And this is not only because the referendum itself is a crude and unfamiliar method for determining key questions of national policy, but it is also fundamentally incompatible with Parliamentary government. After a normal Parliamentary election in Britain, the major minority party forms the Loyal Opposition.