The sequence of events following the EU referendum has revealed the callous amorality that lurks at the dark heart of British politics.
Brexit has shown itself to be a ravenous beast of an idea.
Part of the destructive power of Brexit is its ability to be both an idea that is a chameleon (that it means different things to different people), and also has a seemingly-unique ability to bring out the innate divisions in British society, from top to bottom. It is a poison and a cancer on the body politic and society overall, its only ability to corrupt and destroy.
In this sense, Brexit is a political creature of chaos, as seductive and divisive as any ideology from the fork-tongued mouth of "the serpent".
Biblical hyperbole aside, the singular crisis that Britain finds itself in is a result of a series of decisions. It could be argued that some of these decisions were ones that could have been predicted long ago, if a solid analysis had been done of the nature of British politics. In other words, the singular crisis that the body politic finds itself in was entirely predictable before the referendum, once the terms of the referendum itself were decided.
One of the decisions that made a difference was the nature of the referendum question that was originally posed. The battle over the wording of the question itself was explained in great detail in one chapter of Tim Shipman's book "All Out War".
In the end, having the question about the issue with one option or another ("remain" or "leave") effectively gave the "leave" side a sort of ideological"free pass". While Cameron thought the referendum would be simple to win from an establishment point of view, the very chameleon-like nature of the "leave" option was the problem that the "remain" side could never tackle.
With "leave" being an essentially emotive vote, it meant almost whatever the "leave" voter wanted it to mean. From a philosophical and even semantic point of view, the referendum question was meaningless in any practical sense.
The referendum question really was a choice of "stay as we are" or "do something else". But what "else" were the 17 million people voting for? In this sense, "leave" could only ever be a negative vote i.e. "not remain", because there were a plethora of reasons and paths that voters may have all voted "leave" for. For the referendum vote to "leave" to make any rational sense (and for the government to know what on earth its legitimate course of action should be), a follow-up vote to choose from the most likely "leave" options would have been the only rational and democratic path to take. It was not taken (because David Cameron never thought he would "lose"), and the result of that is the chaos Britain finds itself in.
It thus gave fertile ground for opportunistic ideologues to take advantage of the chaos.
With there being three different major campaigns for "leave", and all having their own distinct agendas, how was it even philosophically possible to explain that 17 million people voted for the exact same idea when they voted to "do something else"? How can anyone know what "else" they all wanted? It is impossible.
How many of those 17 million voted for a WTO option, or an EFTA option, or any one of dozens of possible alternatives? No-one knows, and no-one can know. Because not one of those options were ever clearly shown as the "people's will", the end result was always going to be a semantic nonsense without a further democratic clarification.
This explains how, once "leave" won and the Article 50 process was triggered, the chaotic situation that parliament finds itself it was almost inevitable. With no one option having a majority in parliament, the resulting stalemate (arguing while Britain slides ever closer to the abyss) only means that Britain is doomed to leave without a deal.
This is how we got into a situation where Brexit became the ultimate death of British democracy in Westminster, and the beginning of a reign of Whitehall autocracy in Theresa May.
Theresa May's strategy has been to act as a virtual dictator on the terms of Brexit, somehow seeing herself as the extraordinary arbiter of the (still unclear) "people's will".
Brexit itself seems to have poisonous effects on anyone that wields its unusual power, giving Theresa May a hard-faced sense of mission, dismiss any advice that contradicts her own perception, while also confusing her enemies and sowing discord at the same time.
Meanwhile, Brexit seems to have taken a very obvious physical and mental toll on the Prime Minister, making her appear even more gaunt and preoccupied; a troubled soul that is immovable and yet feeble, her empathy seemingly leeched away by the poison of Brexit; sustaining her political survival but at the cost of her humanity and judgement.
Apart from May herself, Brexit's power seems only to create and exacerbate division. Her party are split down the middle, seemingly more united in their dislike of her "deal" than in their own vision of the alternative. It is a party that seems to be waiting for Brexit to finally tear it asunder when the time comes.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn seems to be using Brexit for its own self-centred reasons, some hoping secretly that a "no deal" Brexit might lead to a kind of new "socialist revolution".
The DUP see Brexit as an opportunity to have control of the government by their own form of political extortion.
As the chaos in parliament continues, the country hurtles headlong towards the cliff because no-one in charge can decide in which other direction to go. The house is burning down, but those in charge can't decide which exit to use.
If this isn't an absolute indictment of the rotten state of Britain's body politic, then what else is?
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