Failure. A failure of politics, a failure of courage. MPs have failed over Brexit, time and time again. Worse, many MPs fail to realise how badly they’re failing, the harm they are doing. This isn’t true of everyone in the Commons. There are still some heroes. Nick Boles is one.

His cross-party Common Market 2.0 plan – a Norwegian model of Brexit – is not yet dead but has been grievously wounded. It was attacked from both sides. The hard Brexiteers said it wasn’t hard enough, even though it’s what many of them promised or wanted before the referendum. The People’s Vote campaign also helped to destroy it, and for the same reasons: it didn’t meet their purity test – even though they had promised before the referendum to respect and enact a Leave vote.

Well, when you destroy the centre, all you have left are the extremes, and Brexit boils down to a choice between leaving without a deal, or not leaving at all. That will make one of the extremist factions angry, but they will have helped bring it about.

Brexit has, deservedly, lowered the standing of Parliament as an institution, so examples of courage and common sense should be celebrated. Boles’ speech yesterday deserves the widest possible audience.

This is how he began:

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'I want to make the case for compromise, not as something cowardly but as something courageous. In a divided country and a divided Parliament, finding and sustaining a compromise that most people can support is a noble endeavour.'

And this is how he ended:

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'Each of us today is a leader. The Prime Minister has one vote, the Leader of the Opposition has one vote, and so does every other right hon. and hon. Member. In years to come, the question that our children and grandchildren will ask us is this: in that historic week when Parliament took charge of the nation’s destiny, what did you do? Did you stand up and lead? Did you step forward to help reunite our country, or did you hang back in your party trench waiting to be told what to do and where to go? I have already made my choice at the cost of my future career in this House. It is now time for others to choose.'

He was right, absolutely right But in the event MPs chose failure, again.

Nick Boles’ project failed but he tried his utmost for his country, and will pay a high price for that. While others took the easy way, he chose a harder path. History should judge him well. The same cannot be said of many of his colleagues across the Commons.