If Juncker is tired of Brexit now, a poorly timed British general election will really test his patience

Brexit fatigue has crossed the channel. Rabies and mad cow disease may have found La Manche an insuperable barrier, but the near-fatal blend of boredom, frustration and confusion seem at last have infected even the president of the European Commission. For Jean-Claude Juncker, Mr Europe himself, to come down with the disease of Brexit exhaustion while on a trip to Rome is testament to the virulence of the disease:

“With our British friends we have a lot of patience, but even patience is running out,” Juncker said in an interview with Italian public broadcaster RAI. “So far we know what the British parliament says no to, but we don’t know what it might say yes to.”

The treatment? Mr Juncker is happy to write his own prescription: for the British to make a decision about their future relationship with the European Union. Once administered, Brexit fatigue could clear up remarkably swiftly.

Though somewhat last-minute, the House of Commons is attempting to formulate a suitable form of medicine. Various options are debated in deliberative, “indicative” fashion, edging the usually panto atmosphere of the institution a little closer to the kind of deliberative, thoughtful body of men and women the nation might wish them to be.

The cerebral Oliver Letwin is both symbol and progenitor of this intellectualised approach – not exactly government by experts, but certainly one of cooler, calmer heads willing to face reality. It isn’t an Oxford symposium; but it’s more reassuring to watch than prime minister’s questions.

Thus far, some options are being pushed so far to the sidelines that they can be easily dismissed – the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, “embraced” and deliberate or accidental having now been effectively outlawed by parliament, whatever the surviving Brexit legislation might formally state. The United Kingdom will not crash out of Europe unless parliament consciously wills it, and that seems impossible, now or ever.

As has been fairly obvious for some time now, the real compromise proposition is for a “softer” Brexit of some sort – customs union, so-called Common Market 2.0 – to be agreed with the EU, and for that to then be put to be people for a final confirmatory referendum.

Of these two elements, the first is the easier to secure. One way or another the Commons will exert its collective cross-party will. This can be done with or without the support, or at least acquiescence, of the current prime minister and cabinet; or an alternative set of eccentric personalities will see it on to the statute book and the UN register of international treaties (assuming the UK does leave the EU).

Strange to say, the usual Westminster obsession with personalities and even parties is growing irrelevant. Irreversible forces of circumstance and logic, leveraged by the economic and diplomatic clout of the European Union, are pushing the UK towards a resolution that reflects those realities as well as the balanced wishes of its people and parliament.

Yet to engineer a Brexit deal or no Brexit deal at all without consulting the people would be a grave error, one of equal and opposite force to the disastrous decision David Cameron made to hold a referendum in the first place. Sovereignty shifted in June 2016 from the Commons and parliament to the people as a whole. Perhaps that is where it has always resided, subliminally and latently, yet this is a new fact of political life, whether our MPs and peers like it or not. Whatever they and the EU agree now has to be ratified by the electorate.

A general election is now suggested as a way forward. It is no such thing. At best it is another disastrous May misjudgement – a gamble. Perhaps when the pieces fall they will fall her way – but most likely not.

Elections are fought on many issues. The parties’ manifestos would contain the usual mix of undeliverable prose and wishful thinking, entirely remote from what the EU might accept.

Some rebels on both sides will renounce the EU section of the manifesto as soon as it is published. The first-past-the-post system yields perverse results, and even more so in such uncertain times.

An intervention by the new Brexit Party in a Conservative-Liberal Democrat marginal seat might result in a May loyalist leaver losing to a Euro-federalist Lib Dem. Or a Change UK in a Remain-leaning Labour-Conservative marginal seat could send a hard Brexiteer back to Westminster.

In all likelihood, there would be a hung parliament, possibly with Labour as the largest party, but without a clear policy. Same old faces; same old arguments; same old deadlock. The mess might even get messier than it is now: The better way to win clear consent is via a referendum.

It may take time to resolve the EU issue methodically and democratically; but there is no better way of doing it, and indeed no other way of doing it at all.