Parliament has been jolted back to life by three judges, and the British political landscape is once again one of fury, division and uncertainty

In the Hall of India and Pakistan, on the first floor of the offices of the Royal Over-Seas League members club, a largely male, elderly group of about a hundred drank coffee, ate chocolate chip cookies, and badmouthed the new number one enemies of democracy: British judges.

The occasion was a hastily organised “Brexit conference” near central London’s Green Park. A book sale in the corner of the event, hosted by the Thatcherite Bruges Group, offered a taste of the views held by many in the room. Anthony Scholefield and Gerald Frost’s Too ‘Nice’ to be Tories? How the modernisers damaged the Conservative party competed for attention with David Brown’s End of the English: The European Superstate.

Once upon a time, this gathering would have been dismissed as an irrelevance to modern Britain’s political culture; a get-together of “fruitcakes”, to quote David Cameron’s mocking description of Ukip voters, in the days before the joke was suddenly on him. But such lofty dismissals now belong to another age. The rage felt in this room at the high court’s decision to insist on parliamentary approval for triggering Britain’s exit from the European Union – and give MPs a decisive say in the government’s general goals – is being taken very seriously by the current incumbent of Downing Street.

Article 50 ruling leaves Theresa May facing potential MP revolt Read more

In one corner of the room, Nigel Farage’s former spokesman, Patrick O’Flynn, talking to a TV camera, spoke for many. The judgment had been “a wakeup call” to those who had been “walking around with smiles on their faces” since the referendum, he said. It had become clear during the Conservative party conference that the government was intent on a “hard Brexit”, involving the removal of the UK from the customs union and the single market, and that it believed the referendum gave it a mandate, if not a democratic duty, to deliver.

There had been a period of sniping from the Remainers, but it had been judged of little consequence, Flynn suggested. But now the phoney war was over. Or, as one senior Brexiter, a former government minister not at the event, told the Observer: “The Remainers have won this first battle. Now we have to win the war”.

It was shortly after 10am on Thursday that the high court’s ruling was delivered. Its impact proved to be all the greater due to the assumption that the challenge was a lost cause, a last futile attempt to turn the Brexit tide. There had also been an unusual level of secrecy around the verdict. None of the lawyers involved had been given the normal advance drafts of the judgment to check for mistakes and to prepare their submissions.

The government had argued during a three-day hearing that nothing in the European Communities Act of 1972 restricted the crown’s power to withdraw from EU treaties using the royal prerogative without recourse to parliament.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Daily Telegraph makes its feelings known on the matter of the high court ruling.

But the lord chief justice was having none of it. The government’s arguments had been contrary to “fundamental constitutional principles of the sovereignty of parliament”. The Victorian constitutionalist AV Dicey was quoted: “The judges know nothing about any will of the people except in as far as that will is expressed by an act of parliament.”

The court concluded: “The government does not have power under the crown’s prerogative to give notice pursuant to article 50 for the UK to withdraw from the European Union.”

High court says parliament must vote on triggering article 50 - as it happened Read more

Officials in Downing Street hastily cancelled their lunch plans and scurried back to the prime minister’s side. The pound surged to a four-week high against both dollar and euro – and a vitriolic media backlash began as Brexit-supporting tabloids went for the throats of the judges who had delivered this outrage. “The judges who blocked Brexit: one founded a EUROPEAN law group, another charged the taxpayer millions for advice, and the third is an openly gay ex-Olympic fencer,” screamed MailOnline.

Nigel Farage was soon stoking the fires of resentment and allegations of betrayal, tweeting: “I now fear every attempt will be made to block or delay triggering article 50. They have no idea level of public anger they will provoke.”

The communities and local government secretary, Sajid Javid, a notably reluctant Remain campaigner before the referendum, stepped outside his brief to condemn the decision as “unacceptable”. And next day’s newspapers threw caution to the wind. “Enemies of the People” concluded the Daily Mail. “The judges versus the people” huffed the Daily Telegraph.

Richard Desmond’s rarely understated Daily Express covered its front page with the union flag, over which it printed in bold: “Three judges yesterday blocked Brexit. Now your country really does need you ... WE MUST GET OUT OF THE EU.”

With characteristic insouciance, the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, admitted during a visit to Berlin to some “sturm und drang” back home.

Meanwhile, Theresa May was hitting the phones. A No 10 spokesman said May had explained to European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and German chancellor Angela Merkel that “while the government is disappointed by the judgment, we remain of the firm belief that we have strong legal arguments ahead of the case which will be moving to the supreme court next month”.

“The prime minister also confirmed that the planned timetable for notification of article 50 remains the same,” the spokesman added. Whether that proves to be the case – May has promised to trigger article 50 by the end of March – is very much open to question.

The Brexit secretary, David Davis, has confirmed that a parliamentary bill will most likely be necessary if the high court’s ruling is upheld, and such a bill could be amended with stipulations over everything from a second referendum on the terms of the final deal to mere reassurances on general goals. The proposed legislation may bounce between the Commons and the Lords over weeks and months. “We will make sure that we build into that bill a referendum that will take place before the UK leaves the EU to give us the opportunity to endorse or reject that deal,” Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Theresa May, the prime minister, has told European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and German chancellor Angela Merkel that she believes the government has strong legal arguments to take to the supreme court next month. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

In a sign of the import of the moment, for the first time since the court was established in 2009, all 11 justices of the supreme court will now sit to hear the government’s appeal over four days in early December.

On which way the judges will fall, every politician has a view. Ken Clarke, the former chancellor and justice secretary, said he felt that the verdict was “in line with modern constitutional law”. “Nobody starts a war nowadays without getting parliamentary approval, and nobody should completely break economic and trade links with our closest allies without parliamentary approval”, he told the Observer. “The referendum was always supposed to be advisory.”

The former cabinet minister, John Redwood, one of John Major’s famous Maastricht “bastards”, who made the then prime minister’s attempts to sign that EU treaty such a torture, insisted that the decision would be swiftly seen as a piece of “shoddy work” and rejected. “I assume the government is right and they will reverse the lower court’s decision, because it is such a bad decision,” he said. “The passage on the referendum is just laughable. They just assert that it is advisory when every household was sent a letter making it very clear that we [the people] are making the decision and parliament will implement it for you. It was in the Hansard record and the prime minister repeated it. The supreme court has every reason to say ‘You haven’t understood referenda’.”

On Monday the government will make a statement in parliament on the matter, and a cross-party meeting of MPs who had campaigned for Remain concluded that they would wait until the new ruling to take any decisions on the way forward. But already even those who say they will not block article 50 out of respect to their constituents are citing an array of reassurances that they will require in any upcoming bill. Parliament has been jolted back to life. “Central government is dominated by the London perspective and the London economy,” said Andy Burnham, the MP for Leigh who is standing to be the mayor of Manchester. “We can’t have trade deals that protect the City of London but sacrifice other sectors.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘We can’t have trade deals that protect the City of London but sacrifice other sectors,’ says former shadow home secretary Andy Burnham. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

Clarke added: “I will vote against article 50. That shouldn’t shock anybody. I have believed it is in the national interest to be in the EU for the last 50 years, and big events have proved me overwhelmingly right over that period. The key thing is where we move on from that. To start holding the government to account.

“The referendum decided we would leave but no two ministers are agreed on what steps are and what alternative we are putting in place. Once the government has agreed on a policy on our economic and trading relations with the wider world, it seems to be plain that it is accountable to parliament for that policy.”

The Conservative MP Stephen Phillips, who campaigned to leave the EU, quit his seat on Friday in protest at the government’s attempt to sideline parliament’s role in shaping Brexit.

But as parliament stirs, so have many of the people who voted for leaving the EU but who came to believe last week, with encouragement from some in the media and political classes, that something undemocratic is afoot. It is even believed by some that those who are celebrating last week’s victory may come to reap a whirlwind, especially if the prime minister feels that she needs a general election to change the nature of parliament in favour of her goals. “The Lib Dems think defying the referendum result is an electoral ticket back to the big time,” said former justice minister Dominic Raab. “Their antics just look like irresponsible opportunism, precisely when the country needs to see some unity of purpose behind the government’s Brexit negotiations.”

In the country at large, the mood has become newly toxic. Waiting for his wife outside Gloucester’s historic New Inn on Friday, Ray Marchmont said he was fed up with politicians, politics, the judiciary and probably the media. Gloucester voted Leave by 58.5% to Remain’s 41.5% in June, and Marchmont supported the winning side. “My vote’s gone out of the window,” he said. “They’ve taken it away from us. I didn’t know anything about this court case. It was a shock when I heard about it, I couldn’t get my head around it. They’ve just said, stuff it, we’re going to do what we want.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Former Conservative MP Stephen Phillips quit his seat in protest at the government’s attempt to sideline parliament’s role in shaping Brexit. Photograph: Stephen Phillips

The 66-year-old Ukip supporter, added: “I think a lot of it is sour grapes. They’ve said ‘you have your vote, now we’re going to decide’. If they do vote to turn it over, then I think there could be repercussions.”

Jacqui Robins, who like Marchmont lives in the city and was one of the 37,776 people to vote Leave in Gloucester, also expressed bewilderment. “If it’s the people’s choice, then the politicians shouldn’t go against it,” she said. “Why ask the people if that’s what they’re going to do? It seems like a waste of money and time.”

Robins had been intending to vote Remain but had changed her mind during the campaign. “I was going to vote to stay, but then I thought change is good. But if we’re going to go out, then out means out,” she declared, echoing the prime minister’s Brexit utterance.

Back in Green Park, O’Flynn, who since leaving Farage’s side has become a Ukip MEP for the East of England, said there was no need for the newspapers to apologise for their attacks on the judiciary – in fact, he wants more of it. “Judges have this particular conceit of themselves that they’re so lofty that they’re immune to the vulgarity of public opinion. I don’t think that’s true”, he said, “and that’s why I was delighted by the newspaper coverage. We need to harness the public outrage. What can Ukip do? I’ve come to the rather happy conclusion that it is our solemn duty to be shamelessly populist.”