The Brexit debate was a big, empty box-ticking exercise for Britain

The London tabloids were breathless with excitement yesterday as every part of Britain’s archaic political system lurched into action.

“The Queen may have to stay up until the early hours if the debate in the Lords drags on,” gushed one part of the Brexit-supporting press.

Even Hansard was at it, noting that the last time a bill completed every stage in a single day was the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) (No.2) Act 2007. But that ran to just two clauses. By contrast, the bill enacting the Brexit agreement, signed by Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels and then flown by an RAF plane to London, is a whopping 80 pages long with 76 pages of explanatory notes. Wow.

Yesterday the drama, the pomp, the ceremony and the epic historic importance of that final Commons vote were being laid on with several trowels. And yet beneath the pageantry lay utter farce.

The 448-vote majority – the Commons’ final say after four-and-a-half tortuous years – was indeed significant, as one of the biggest, emptiest box-ticking exercises in British history.

In reality, MPs consented to act as a collective rubber stamp, chewing for a few pointless hours over a constitutional decision already taken by more powerful people – the so-called “Star Chamber” of right-wing demagogues in the European Research Group. Accountable to no-one, yet with a clout enjoyed by no other part of Britain’s formal democracy. Historic indeed.

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But that was not the only democratic failure of last night. The counter-balancing mechanism of Her Majesty’s Opposition helps legitimise the so-called Mother of Parliaments. But instead of voting against a Brexit he’s long regarded as disastrous, Keir Starmer decided to throw in the towel and vote with the Tories. Was he ensuring that no glitch in the parliamentary arithmetic would see Labour accidentally deliver a far more damaging No Deal outcome? Of course not. With an 80-seat majority and the ERG in the bag, Boris Johnson was always going to win the day. Principled opposition was entirely possible without leaving Britain on a Hogmanay cliff edge – itself the cynical creation of a Prime Minister determined to delay agreement until it could be served up as a last-minute triumph and then promptly lost in the scrutiny-free turkey and stuffing of Christmas.

No, brave Sir Keir ducked his duty to put the alternative case – all the better to relocate Labour in the empty heart of England’s new isolationism.

The final parliamentary vote on Brexit – what a thoroughly depressing spectacle. A leader of the official opposition who dared not oppose; a parliament in hock to a far-right splinter group and a huge constitutional change pushed through on the back of a 2019 election victory in which 45.3% of all voters (more than the Tories’ winning share) cast votes for losing candidates – disenfranchised by a hopelessly undemocratic first past the post system which no mainstream party at Westminster sees fit to change.

The final vote – the culmination of a long, steady slide towards executive control by a Prime Minister determined to deploy “Henry VIII powers”, break international law and illegally suspend parliament, leading a party that was content to avoid meaningful votes by MPs until Joanna Cherry MP, Andy Wightman MSP and other Scots politicians successfully challenged it in court. And let’s not forget a compliant media prepared to crank out every tired cliche about the triumph of parliamentary sovereignty whilst staring its lifeless remains in the face. Yep, it was a historic day in the Commons right enough – but for all the wrong reasons.

With another 16 festive peers slipped into the world’s second-largest unelected chamber under cover of Brexit, the largest pelters were reserved for the SNP simply because its MPs voted against the deal. How could they not?

How could SNP parliamentarians have deviated one inch from their principled opposition to Brexit after they’d argued the case with clarity and vigour from 2016 to this final day of EU membership?

The huge, synthetic furore whipped up over their “no” vote simply provides more evidence, if it was needed, of a Westminster system that cannot brook difference or accommodate diversity. Whaur’s that much-vaunted shift towards federalism noo?

Indeed, which – in the wake of their respective Brexit performances – is the real “pretendy parliament”?

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Is it Westminster, simply going through the motions of genuine debate these four long years thanks to the winner takes all mentality guaranteed by first past the post voting? Or Holyrood, whose semi-proportional system was designed to prevent domination by a single party but has matured through Brexit to develop cross-party support for a very different path?

Sure, yesterday’s debate in the Scottish Parliament contained less flowery language and fewer gangster politicians, but it was the truly significant one. Every party except the Scottish Conservatives voted with the SNP to withhold the Parliament’s consent from Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. That’s a big moment, even though Holyrood’s vote was dismissed by No 10. It’s an acknowledgement that Scotland’s European identity is a powerful bit of our make-up that cannot be disowned or shuffled aside without great political cost – as the Scottish Conservatives are about to discover.

A lot’s been made of Labour’s awkward stance; voting with the Tories in Westminster but against them in Holyrood. More significant though is the fact that opposition MSPs opted to sink party political differences and detach themselves from British leadership positions to reflect opinion in their own country instead. Non-Tory Unionist politicians chose Scotland – and that’s a bit of a result.

Labour’s sole remaining Scottish MP Ian Murray did not. As a result, he’s been left dangling between a Remain-voting Scottish party and a Brexit-supporting English party – one man unable to bridge the unbridgeable gap. Ian Murray chose wrong. But Scottish Labour MSPs did not. It’s tempting to mock their self-inflicted Brexit nightmare, but yesterday Labour and LibDem MSPs backed the idea of an outward-looking Scotland – the updated 21st-century version of John Smith’s “settled will” – and that may prove significant as indyref2 draws closer.

Yesterday, Boris Johnson claimed that his Brexit deal marked “a new chapter in our national story”.

Overlooking that familiar and irritating misuse of the word “national” – but observing how Brexit has boosted independence while bending the Westminster parties all out of shape – it could be that Boris is not wrong.