Brexit is poisoning our politics – it needs to be resolved before we can move on

Brexit has paralysed our nation’s political life; we have been governed by successive, increasingly isolated Tory governments, each pursuing to some degree a policy – austerity – that has been definitively rejected by the British people

As a child my favourite pantomime was the local legend of the Lambton Worm, in which an arrogant aristocrat throws an underweight fishing catch down a well and comes back years later to find it has become a giant worm holding the entire region captive.

Now that Boris Johnson is making the transition from pantomime buffoon to political despot, the extent to which David Cameron’s Brexit worm has poisoned our political well becomes distressingly clear. Arrogant Old Etonian Cameron called the referendum to sort out the internal party politics of the Conservative Party. He didn’t take it seriously, he didn’t put in place basic checks and balances, such as defining what “Leave” meant or ensuring a viable majority had to vote for such an overwhelming change to our economic and social landscape.

The narrow victory for an undefined Leave was followed by Theresa May choosing to pander to her right rather than bringing the country together. As a result, the country is more deeply and passionately divided on Brexit than on any issue since the reformation – when people felt their very souls were at stake.

Johnson’s attempt to prorogue parliament is an acknowledgement of that – an avowal that he and his Brexiteer A team cannot win the argument on Brexit. They cannot win the argument in parliament so they have to close it down. They cannot win the argument in the country so they won’t give the people a Final Say. They cannot win the argument politically so they won’t hold a general election. All they can do is change the facts on the parliamentary ground, reduce sitting days, introduce a Queen’s Speech, and keep MPs from carrying out our constitutional duty, because once they have got across the 31 October deadline, opposition to their Brexit becomes obsolete.

The northeast’s economy is integrated with that of our European partners. A no-deal Brexit will be devastating for us. I know therefore that I have to use the brief time available to me in parliament to do everything I can to prevent a no-deal Brexit. People across the country have demonstrated their opposition to Johnson’s smash-and-grab on democracy and Jeremy Corbyn is bringing together members of parliament from all sides to oppose the coup and stop a no-deal Brexit.

But our ambition must be to end this national game of no-deal brinkmanship definitively, once and for all. Brexit has paralysed our nation’s political life; we have been governed by successive, increasingly isolated Tory governments, each pursuing to some degree a policy – austerity – that has been definitively rejected by the British people.

Climate change, social care, economic equality – we have big, big issues to deal with. Every day, fires burn more of our natural carbon storage – the rainforests – but our international attention is on pursuing replacement trade deals, not combatting climate change.

Every day, I hear from constituents, friends and families faced with heartbreaking and unbearable decisions to provide social care for loved ones – but our health service is having to concentrate on stockpiling medicines, not social care.

Every day, the gap between rich and poor grows, with starting salaries for graduate lawyers up to £150k while others queue for food banks, and yet the focus of our economic policies is on reorganising our supply changes and research and development networks away from the EU. Our country and the planet cannot afford to allow this to continue. We need to resolve Brexit in a way that makes sense for Britain, and then move on to rebuild our country to meet a shared vision of our future. We need a government that is actually chosen by the British people, with a programme British people have debated and a majority have actually decided is what they want.

Labour has a plan for rebuilding our economy and making it net zero, for investing in our NHS, our police, our transport system, and our regional and national cohesion – and that works for us all.

But if we don’t resolve what we are going to do as a country about Brexit, the next election will not be about any of the grand challenges we face, it will be about Brexit, and will be dominated by voices and parties that either have no real agenda for our nation’s future, or are hiding their true agenda behind a singular focus on Brexit.

We need a general election desperately. But the path to that election may still have to pass by another referendum so our political well is no longer poisoned by Brexit.

Chi Onwurah is the Labour MP for Newcastle Upon Tyne Central