Parliamentary coupe(er) and EC democracy*

So the bill sponsored by Y Cooper and her strange political bedfellow O Letwin is now law. Three days of discussion has trumped months of Parliamentary debate. The bill means 'historic legislation to delay article 50, forcing the government to set out its timetable for the length of the Brexit delay in order to prevent the UK exiting the EU with no deal.'

Couper is, as usual, in no doubt about her commitment only to the national interest in this unfortunate move:

Cooper said the bill would “prevent a chaotic no deal in four days’ time, hitting jobs, manufacturing, medicine supplies, policing and security.” She said parliament had “responded to the gravity and urgency of the situation by passing the legislation in time”...She said the swift passage of the bill had been made possible by unprecedented circumstances. “That is why colleagues from all sides have worked so quickly together, including with government ministers to ensure a workable, common-sense safeguard could be put in place.

Meanwhile, the Government 'opposed the legislation, fearing the precedent it would set for backbenchers to be able to pass bills.'. Next up --denying Scottish independence?

Meanwhile,it all has a portentous world significance for T Garton-Ash . How does he know?

At the Munich security conference this year, I moderated a discussion with the European commission’s Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier.

Dinner table talk then? Anyway he is sure that:

Britain has never been more dependent on its EU partners than it is now, when it proposes to abandon them. In a kind of sadomasochistic self-fulfilling prophecy, the Brexiteers have reduced Britain to the very condition of vassalage from which they claim to be freeing it. [he's right about that]

However:

If Britain does not participate in the European elections, the socialist grouping in the European parliament will lose a large group of Labour MEPs – boosting the chances of both the European People’s party, whose lead candidate Manfred Weber wants to be the next commission president, and of the liberal grouping, whose leader, Guy Verhofstadt, happens to be the parliament’s point man on Brexit....Emmanuel Macron, – a cross between Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Delors, with a dash of Napoleon added in – feels this year may be his last big chance to push through the reforms needed to make a Europe fit for the 21st century.... I am shocked and saddened to see how many continental Europeans, including long-term friends and admirers of Britain, have given up on us. We British Europeans should be under no illusions: the cupboard of goodwill is almost bare. Sickness metaphors abound. Brexit Britain is now seen as a poison, a gangrenous limb, a cancer to be cut out...[Buth then,somewhat contradictorily] Many well understand that having Britain out will damage the prospects of building a Europe strong enough to face an increasingly assertive China, Donald Trump’s US and the existential challenge of climate change.

And triumphantly displaying his deep international knowledge:

our British struggle with the Rees-Moggs, Johnsons and Nigel Farages is not separate from the Germans’ struggle with the AfD, the Italians’ with the far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, the Poles’ with their nationalist PiS party, and Macron’s with the hardliner Marine le Pen. It is one and the same struggle. It is the battle for Europe.

This battle must not let anything inconvenient like the choice of a replacement for May to interfere. Parroting what Barnier has demanded, Garton-Ash wants

a kind of self-denying ordinance [in exchange for a longer extension] in which the UK commits, for this extension period, not to mess up the EU in the way Rees-Mogg threatens, and recuses itself from the battle over the top jobs in the EU. Ideally, this should come as a British offer, rather than a set of imposed conditions. With the help of a cross-party majority in the UK parliament, this should, then, so far as possible, be domestically “Boris-proofed” – ringfenced against a possible Brexiteer successor to May such as Boris Johnson. 

However, bizarrely: 'Britain must commit to participating in the European elections.' Become an MEP but have your hands tied so you can't criticise any EU policy, including the budget and further integration. The very model of compliant plebiscitary democracy EC bureaucrats want. How thin is the commitment of our liberal intellectuals to all they apparently once held so dear.