My fellow MPs must now take control of parliament – and prepare to take Brexit back to the people

Our country has arrived at a historic crossroads. Following the prime minister’s dramatic defeat tonight, we must make a choice about our future direction. Yet I fear this government and the Conservative Party are too divided to do that.

First, Theresa May must navigate tomorrow’s no-confidence motion, which she should manage with relative ease. But then we must seek a way out of this chaos, I think we need two things to happen. First, parliament needs to take the lead. And second, we must then bring our country together by enabling the people to take the final decision about the next stage of our great country’s journey.

It must be right for parliament to have a greater say now. Not only has this government failed, after two and a half years, to find a way forward, but it’s clear the leader of the opposition also can’t be trusted to lead.

Jeremy Corbyn’s policy on Brexit has failed to unite his own Labour MPs and has been rightly castigated for lacking any clear course. While no one can have confidence in this Conservative government, the idea that an election and Mr Corbyn as prime minister would magically transform the UK’s prospects is risible.

Since we were told Brexit was all about parliamentary sovereignty, surely now is the time for that to happen. We need to find a cross-party way forward, led by parliament. So it is good news that senior MPs from all parties have got together with plans to enable that to happen.

If the House of Commons can take back control from the government, over our own business – over the agenda and timetable for our own debates – that seemingly small step could make a dramatic difference. It would enable parliament to consider all options for the way forward, and not just the prime minister’s ludicrous day-time TV offering of “Deal or No Deal”.

Freed of Theresa May’s “red lines” and her stubborn refusal to engage across the House, let alone with her own party, parliament could reassert itself. I accept this would be a constitutional shift for our country. Yet it is a political reform that some of us have argued for, for years.

For our UK parliament has been too weak and supine for decades – with parliamentary sovereignty really meaning absolute control by the government of the day. Or what Lord Hailsham dubbed “an elective dictatorship”.

Nowhere is this more evident than the budget. Back in 2001, I wrote a pamphlet entitled “Making MPs Work for Our Money” – a manifesto for parliamentary sovereignty, to give back to MPs a role in how taxpayers’ money is spent. So weak has been the power of MPs over how government spends your money, that the last time the Commons stopped a government spending money in the way ministers wanted, was back in 1919 – one hundred years ago.

For me, the most ironic aspect of the Brexit debate has been right-wing Brexiteers speaking loftily about parliamentary sovereignty, when they have never backed MPs having a fuller involvement in how our country is run. When Speaker Bercow dared to allow the House to vote on one amendment to a Business motion, they fumed and seethed at the very notion.

So let us call the Brexit bluff, and get back some meaningful parliamentary sovereignty from the real villain of the piece, the government – not least at this moment of national crisis.

Which direction MPs then choose to take the country in, I can’t predict. Whilst I believe that there is no better deal possible than remaining in the EU, MPs should surely consider and debate the various options the prime minister has refused to countenance.

Two things must therefore happen, led again by parliament.

First, we must seek an extension of Article 50. And it would be so much better if that was an initiative of MPs, rather than a craven request from this embarrassment of a government. The UK could then hold our head high, if we make that request on a cross-party basis.

Second, we should agree that the outcome of this new parliamentary process will be put to the people. MPs should not unilaterally stop Brexit. Nor should MPs unilaterally impose some new deal, or for that matter, the prime minister’s deal.

Liberal Democrats have consistently argued for the people to have the Final Say – between the deal, whatever that eventually is, and remaining on the path of the last 4 decades, within the European family. After tonight, that can now happen.

Ed Davey is MP for Kingston and Surbiton