They say there are seven stages of grief. The question is how many stages of Tory Brexit there are, and why they are all the same.
Labour have moved through a number of stages ourselves – anger, denial (and an accompanying leadership challenge), then acceptance and planning. We were the first to recognise an implementation period would be required. We then went on to say a customs union was the only way to protect jobs and the Good Friday Agreement. The motion we passed at conference last September was a plan, a blueprint, for moving to a Brexit a majority of Brits could accept, or else a public vote.
But the Tories are dancing round unicorns ad infinitum. After two years of bluff and bluster, rotating Brexit secretaries and carved in stone red lines, we have a Brexit deal that even the Tory party – the party who are putting it forward – cannot stomach.
There is no majority for Theresa May’s Brexit. Not even close. And barring an act of epic and collective self-destruction from this government, there is no majority for a no-deal Brexit either.
The government will not accept Labour’s proposals. There are no more options, apart from delay. But delay for what?
Certainly not for another Tory deal. Today, next week, in May or December, sometime, never – the government cannot pass any Brexit proposal it is willing to offer itself. That is not a Project Fear assertion, as were made in the wake of the Brexit vote. We now know the political realities.
To cite one – the backstop is a wound Conservatives cannot heal, because the Party is ideologically opposed to any Brexit that leaves Northern Ireland and Ireland in the same trading arrangements. The European Union has made it clear it will not be forced to agree hard borders on the island of Ireland – and what is more, we shouldn’t be asking for them!
The fact that the government cannot make a decision on Brexit means, well, that the government can’t govern. And that is why it has to go back to the people.
To be clear, this is different from where we were six months ago. I’ve written repeatedly about the arrogance and condescension of those who claimed the referendum result was wrong in principle, or that people had no right to vote for it. And I have also said that if Labour had won the 2017 General Election we would right now be on the verge of an orderly exit.
But that did not happen. I and many others who voted to remain have spent the last two years desperately working for a viable option. And now we have run out of road, run out of options.
Even three months ago, we didn’t know that. The Tories had kept the negotiations so close to their chest, we didn’t know what choices we would be offered, what we could vote on. We do now.
But the government don’t agree with themselves. And when the question is what the people want, and the government can’t agree, then it has to be for the people to make that decision. And the only way for the people to decide is through a General Election or a referendum.
I am not a fan of referendums. In fact I’m opposed to them. They have no place in our unwritten constitution, we don’t have rules for when to hold them or what their legal consequences should be. It was only David Cameron’s supreme arrogance that made him choose a referendum as the answer to the little local difficulty he was having in his party.
But if Theresa May will not go to the country again, then a referendum is the only way to legitimately decide where to go from here. And remain has to be on the ballot. Remain is the choice of millions, and the reluctance of leavers to entertain the idea of another referendum suggests they know that it may now be the choice of the majority.
But if the majority of our country really wants Brexit we still need to decide what kind of Brexit. At this point it is clear this Government cannot make this decision. Delaying Article 50 will not magically change this reality. So the only reason to delay Article 50 is for a public vote.
Or we will continue with Parliament as the laughing stock of the world, in a continual magical realist fairy tale with Brexit, the never-ending story.
Chi Onwurah is the Labour MP for Newcastle-upon-Tyne Central and shadow minister for industrial strategy, science and innovation