LONDON — “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Shakespeare never meant us to take this line from “Henry VI, Part II” literally. Even so, in Britain Tuesday you would have found more than a few Brexiteers with a sneaking sympathy with the sentiment.

The cause of the outrage: the British Supreme Court ruling on the supposed illegality of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “prorogation,” or suspension, of Parliament. It sounds like an ­obscure ­legal issue. It is an obscure issue. But it has left Britain more bitterly divided than perhaps it has ever been in the three years since 2016, when 17.4 million people voted to leave the European Union.

For anti-Brexit activists — or “Remoaners,” as we call the embittered holdouts who refuse to accept the referendum result — the ruling is a noble and principled vindication of parliamentary sovereignty. For Brexiteers — the majority, of which I’m a proud member — it is little more than an anti-democratic coup, conducted by a devious, smug, self-righteous, establishment against the people. Which side you take depends on how strongly you feel about democracy.

In the run-up to that referendum, the Conservative government, then headed by David Cameron, promised that whatever the people’s decision, it would be honored.

The people voted “out” by a 52 to 48 margin. But three years on, like guests at the Hotel California only without the pink champagne on ice, Britons remain prisoners of an institution they will apparently never be allowed to leave.

They are trapped in a corrupt, sclerotic, democratically unaccountable, crumbling EU, because a shadowy establishment — what Donald Trump would call the Swamp — has done everything in its considerable power to delay, water down and sabotage the popular will.

This establishment includes: ex-premiers Theresa May, David Cameron, John Major and Tony Blair; Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England; Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury; the civil service; the financial industry; the universities; much of the mainstream media, especially the BBC.

It also, unfortunately, includes the majority of the current ­Parliament. Helped by the scheming of the Speaker John Bercow, an avowed Remoaner, it has forced through all manner of wrecking legislation designed to keep Brexit postponed indefinitely.

This was the reason Johnson decided to briefly suspend Parliament. As one of the leading Conservative voices during the Brexit campaign, he had been understandably appalled by his government’s failure to deliver it. On becoming prime minister in July — he was the most popular choice among the party grassroots, the majority of which is fanatically pro-Brexit — he made honoring the referendum promise his first priority.

By suspending Parliament for a few days, he figured, he could put an end to its anti-Brexit machinations. Unfortunately, the plan failed: In the four days available, with help from the ever obliging Bercow, the Remoaner parliamentarians managed to jam through yet more wrecking legislation, effectively making it illegal, even imprisonable, for the prime minister to leave the EU without a “deal.”

But the threat of leaving without a deal was Johnson’s best, indeed only bargaining chip in his negotiations with a vindictive EU determined to impose the worst possible exit terms on the United Kingdom — the geopolitical equivalent of shooting one prisoner so that none of the others are tempted to escape.

Under “no deal,” Britain wouldn’t be liable to pay the £39 billion ($49 billion) divorce settlement foolishly promised by May. Nor, for example, would it be able to offer friendly trading terms to the struggling German car manufacturers that export to Britain. With this negotiating option now removed from the table, Britain’s Remoaner Parliament had yet again made it impossible for the leader of a democratically elected government to do his job.

The hijacking of the Supreme Court by activist lawyers is extremely dangerous. Unlike the United States, Britain doesn’t have a written constitution. But it does have a number of traditions and procedures — sanctioned by time and custom, regulated by the parliamentary rule book and by English common law — that have served the British just as well.

Until now. For that fragile unwritten constitution to function, it has relied on the goodwill and decency of public servants. This is no longer the case. Britain is now in thrall to an arrogant, anti-democratic, entrenched Remoaner Establishment. This can’t end well.

James Delingpole writes for Breitbart London. Twitter: @JamesDelingpole