The 57th parliament of the United Kingdom officially comes to an end tomorrow.

It has seen off a Prime Minister, survived a prorogation that wasn’t, and failed to deliver Brexit. Decried by the attorney general as a “zombie parliament”, it has gone to the country in search of new brains. It will have a curious legacy.

Perhaps the most obvious thing that this parliament has taught us is the weakness of our party system to deal with a dispute that crosses the normal party divides. For much of our recent history, politics has been largely straightforward: labour opposing capital, spending against frugality, central planning versus privatisation and enterprise. In Brexit, we have faced an issue which confounds these divides.

As a result, parliament has become inactive. Divisions over how and if the referendum should be honoured have stretched the whips in both parties to breaking point. Leavers and Remainers have voted together against the government, hoping respectively for no deal and no Brexit.

The Conservatives have purged some of their most esteemed members for breaking party lines, while Labour has twisted and turned into a position not even its frontbenchers can explain in a simple sentence.

This parliament has also highlighted the conflicting duties of MPs like never before. Many have found themselves torn between party, country, and conscience. There has been an almost unprecedented number of defections, with parliamentarians finding their own views at odds with those of their leaders and their constituents. This conflict has also perhaps fuelled unprecedented and unwarranted abuse being hurled at them.

The time since 2017 has also highlighted the problem with a government so preoccupied with one issue. Brexit has taken up significant bandwidth, with important questions forced to the silence. Even measures which enjoy support across the House, such as divorce law reform and increased powers to combat domestic abuse, have struggled to find parliamentary time.

As we head towards the election, it is clear that the parties understand this, with the Conservatives focusing on a desire to “get Brexit done” and a pivot towards increased government spending, and Labour moving to other issues entirely.

And we have seen the importance of the speaker, now a new one has been elected. John Bercow showed that, in difficult times, the chair offers vast and unaccountable powers over the business of the House. Whether those powers are exercised from a spirit of neutrality or with a political mind is a key question of our democracy.

Yet perhaps the biggest lesson of the 57th parliament – worth remembering today as we celebrate Bonfire Night and the anniversary of the failed Gunpowder Plot – is a hopeful one.

In times of political strife and seemingly irreconcilable division, our parliament has continued to function. MPs have put their public duty first, sacrificing ministerial jobs and even their political careers to do what they feel is right. They have shown, on all sides, their commitment to what they believe is best for the country.

Most of all, in order to break the deadlock, we will return to the ballot box, not the streets.

It is wrong to expect democracy to be clinical. If the answers were self-evident, it wouldn’t be needed. That is the central conceit of dictatorships everywhere. The 58th parliament will still be raucous and riven. There will need to be compromises. There will be passion on both sides of every debate.

Our parliamentarians will continue to clash, just as the forbears did in this parliament and before it. And eventually, there will be a resolution of the Brexit conundrum, and this tumult will one day fall into history – just as the Gunpowder Plot, the Irish Question, the Reform Act, and countless other controversies have before it.

England will remain the mother of parliaments, and its child will remain as it ever was – unruly, unwieldy, but ultimately good.



Main image credit: Getty