Extremists have taken over the two main parties

Both main British parties are now characterised by intolerance of dissent, leader worship and racism. You can take a historical view and see the rise of extremism as a reaction to the great crash of 2008 and the longest period of wage stagnation since the Napoleonic wars – a country that suffers the economics of the 1930s, cannot expect to escape thirties’ politics.

But the peculiar hypocrisies of British public life are as much to blame as great shifts in the world economy. Britain was meant to be immune from the fanaticism that excited foreigners. That famously unwritten constitution, which assumed statesmen were gentlemen, political parties were broad churches, and dictatorial behaviour wasn’t ‘the done thing’ have fallen victim to the simplest of killer questions

‘Why not?’

Why not suspend Parliament for the longest period since 1945 when every British convention says the executive must be accountable to the legislature during a moment of national crisis? Conventions aren’t laws, as far as anyone can tell.