How can the Brexit impasse be broken and the country move forward together? During the Conservative leadership campaign, Rory Stewart proposed one possible solution: lock parliamentarians in a room with mediators until they agreed on a deal.

This may seem an odd notion. Isn’t mediation needed for actual wars? There was a referendum with a clear result—can’t it just be implemented?

Parliament, however, is in a stalemate. The government is concerned that violence may break out if the referendum is not honoured. The police and ministers have warned of the likelihood of civil unrest in the case of No Deal. Meanwhile, Remain have mobilised the biggest demonstrations since the Iraq war.

Mediation may be associated with violent conflict, but it also has a long tradition in resolving community disputes and can play a role when there are no workable alternatives. Parliament has shown itself, as yet, unable to resolve Brexit.

Finding something to agree on

Amidst uncertainty over Brexit a resounding question bellows: is there something upon which we can all agree—or at least agree enough to enable the country to move on?

In one of her final interviews as Prime Minister, Theresa May acknowledged that she had underestimated the entrenched views of her fellow parliamentarians on Brexit. Negotiating with her own party had proved harder than negotiating with the EU. Recounting their experiences of negotiating the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, leaders in Northern Ireland later confessed that the hardest part of ending thirty years of conflict was convincing their own constituencies to come along. To a mediator, these are fundamental insights.

Part of the crisis is that national consensus has broken. Whether or not everyone agreed, over the past 40 years Britain’s membership of the EU was part of a national consensus.

The challenge of reconstituting national consensus, once broken, can be complex. But there are experiences of political transformation from which Britain could draw lessons—including Tunisia since its uprising in late 2010.

What Westminster can learn from Tunisia

Tunisia has been praised for its inclusive approach to overcoming political upheaval. After the Ennahda party won elections in 2011, its supporters worried the old regime could not be trusted. If Ennahda relinquished any power, they feared, forces would find a way to put them back in jail.

Rached Ghannoushi, the party’s president, had spent 22 years in exile in Britain. A leading thinker in political and democratic Islam, he had suggested that Britain was the most Islamic country he had experienced because he was free to live and practice his religion. To convince his constituents Sheikh Ghannoushi used the image of the nation as a boat, aboard which everyone could sink or swim together.

With this mindset, Ghannoushi was able to come to an agreement with Beiji Caid Essebsi, a politician viewed as representative of the old regime who would go on to become president. The coalition these two men built between secular and religious world views, bringing together Tunisia’s major constituencies, has been at the heart of Tunisia’s political transition and has helped it avoid the chaos that others in the region have suffered since the 2011 uprisings.

Why sufficient consensus is key

Tunisia’s success, like many countries which overcome conflict, lays in part to its leaders being open to learning from the experience of others. In a June 2012 meeting in Tunisia, senior leaders and representatives from across the political spectrum—left, right religious, secular, former political prisoners and political exiles, workers unions, lawyers and business people—sat together for the first time.

During the meeting, a DUP parliamentarian shared his experience from Northern Ireland. The key objective, he said, had been to focus on getting to a sufficient consensus to enable effective government. The idea of seeking enough consensus—rather than complete agreement—was a practical rubric to approach the enormous issues they faced.

Respect for difference

The role of mediation is not to bring a solution and convince everyone to adopt it. Rather, it is to help parties find a solution they devise and own.

Currently, both Leave and Remain believe they can win the argument. That is one of the reasons why there is no serious negotiation. Even parties that used to be strong on consensus, like the Liberal Democrats and the Alliance Party, find themselves on the extreme ends of a polarisation of British politics.

Mediation, conversely, would focus on identifying the shared needs and common ground between constituencies. It would outline where they differ and promote respect for difference. And it would bring into relief the shared interests of the country.

Such a process is very different to debating or the zero-sum game promoted by Britain’s first-past-the-post system. This is an insight familiar to those working in mediation. In an argument, individuals can quickly become absorbed in a dynamic of spiralling contention in which they jump to defend their position and attack others. (Research has uncovered that is how are brains are; when beliefs we hold are attacked, our brain reacts as if our body has been threatened.)

Perhaps some people will never be happy, whatever consensus is found, and will keep uncompromisingly striving for their vision.

But right now, the majority of the country is unsatisfied and uncompromising. The risk for Britain is that she’s aimlessly drifting while all aboard squabble, losing sight of land, not realising that they share the same fate.