These banana republic plotters should be careful what they wish for

It appears that the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, is conducting a constitutional coup. He intends to remove the government’s power to govern the country and hand it instead to backbench MPs.

That is the explanation for his decision yesterday to deny the third “meaningful vote” on Mrs May’s withdrawal deal. Various commentators assume, undoubtedly correctly, that his aim as a committed Remainer is to force a delay to the Article 50 exit process.

This is intended to be long enough for the other arch-Remainer plotters in parliament to seize control of the Commons agenda to force through either a withdrawal from Article 50 altogether or a series of manoeuvres to press-gang the UK into a customs union or some other kind of outcome which will keep the UK in the EU indefinitely.

It hardly needs saying that this is the behaviour of a junta in a banana republic.

Shocking as this is, it should come as no surprise. As I have repeatedly observed, this is a fight to the political death by fanatical Remainers who will stop at nothing — nothing – to reverse the 2016 referendum result.

While many who voted Remain did so out of reasonable (if unjustified) concerns about leaving the EU, the one thing they have in common with fanatical Remainers is, by definition, an indifference towards or outright contempt for democracy.

For it follows inescapably that those who would choose to remain under the yoke of the EU, and thus sacrifice the sovereign right of the UK to pass its own laws which could not be overturned by any foreign power, do not value or rate the UK’s parliamentary democracy – or perhaps do not understand what that even means.

Remainers may be cock-a-hoop that the plot against democracy is now on course to stuff the people of Britain whom they despise for daring to have a view of the world different from their own.

There is one thing, though, that the Remainers have overlooked because it is the one thing they can never, ever grasp.

And that is the profound attachment of the British people to their unique tradition of political liberty and parliamentary democracy, their deep love of justice and the rule of law, and their visceral loathing of bullying, intimidation and tyranny.

The Remainers don’t get any of that because they hold the people in contempt. That’s why they never saw the referendum result coming. It’s why they have never understood that the more they tried to frighten the public about the terrible things that would result from Brexit in general and no-deal in particular, the firmer the public has got in its view that the UK must leave the EU even with no deal.

If the EU is now asked, as Mrs May has previously threatened she would do, to grant a long extension to the Article 50 exit process, it is assumed the EU will agree (all 27 member states). That’s because it’s assumed that the EU will assume that a long delay will allow the Remainers to grind down the Brexiteers, whether through a process of parliamentary attrition or a second referendum or whatever.

It’s assumed the EU will assume that, under this kind of pressure, the British people will change their minds and decide to stay in the EU after all. And it’s assumed the EU will assume that because Remainer plotters, such as Tony Blair and other Eurofanatic British grandees, have been telling them it’s simply impossible for there to be any other outcome. Brexit was all a terrible mistake. It’s so obvious, isn’t it, and so obviously the people will come to realise this because they will be told this by informed and important people like Us, and this time they will listen because they’re bored silly with Brexit or have been put off already by all the important things that We’ve been telling them. Or so they think.

But because these people are Remainers, insulated from the people they despise, they have absolutely no idea of the anger and outrage and choking fury now being voiced by countless British people – even some who voted Remain – over what they very clearly perceive to be the bullying and intimidation and attempted destruction of parliamentary democracy now under way.

And so if there is a long extension of the Article 50 process, the fury of the people – whether expressed through the European Parliament elections in May, or a second referendum, or a general election – will be directed at all those who have tried to thwart the expressed wish of the people to leave the EU.

A second referendum or a general election might well produce a bigger majority for Brexit or a Brexiteer-majority House of Commons. A long delay would probably finally see the removal of Mrs May and her replacement by a Brexiteer party leader.

More than that, the EU is apparently dimly aware that in the event of such a delay Nigel Farage would likely inspire the election of a slew of Eurosceptic MEPs and would wreak merry havoc with the EU’s internal processes, at a time when the EU is barely able to keep itself from falling apart as it is.

These banana-republic Remainer plotters should be careful what they wish for.