Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters seem to have forgotten how our democracy works, along with the sorry Brexiteers

It seems that the British public has forgotten how our democracy works. There are those living with ‘Bregret’, thinking their Leave vote counted for nothing only to discover that their one in the eye for the Establishment is driving their country into recession. And there are those in the Labour party who think that, for the princely sum of £3, they have bought the right to control how the Parliamentary Labour Party – which represents millions of ordinary voters – organises itself. There are wake up calls all round this week.

The problem at the core of this is, I think, a national lack of political literacy. The extent of this gap of understanding has become quite clear this week, as ordinary citizens grasped to understand what they had voted for when confronted with an unexpected – though, for many, long hoped for – vote to leave the European Union.

On social media one woman reported a conversation with a neighbour, a saddened Leave voter who, at the time of the ballot believing they were really sticking it to ‘the elite’, later reflected, “My Camden council ward has a clear majority, so my vote didn’t mean anything, surely?”

Others said they were keen to demonstrate opposition to the government, but did not expect that they would be listened to.

Clearly, many voters did not understand that the referendum was being held on the basis of one man one vote, not first past the post. That’s a disappointing failure of politics to communicate with the people at a critical democratic moment.

But that’s not all that’s happening here. There’s a wider sense in which political thought and activism, and political views in general, have become more divorced from the reality of what goes in Westminster. The idea of using a vote to “give the establishment a kicking” derives, in the very first place, from a total misunderstanding of where democratic power lies and what our elected representatives do with it. Most people don’t know what their MP does all day, and nor do they appear to care or believe they have any control over it – but they should, and they do.

Distasteful political scandals such as the abuse of expenses accounts helped to lead us here, but they are not entirely to blame. Our schools do not teach our young people to become engaged, political citizens and our local government is too often a prop for central government – even where the two are of differing political hue – for many people to see what their vote means at a local level.

The result is that people feel ignored, or they feel disengaged. When either emotion surfaces, it so easily leads to ridicule; we’ve stopped taking politics seriously and, in that shift, we’ve forgotten the power of democracy too.

We’re now seeing that force at work in the perilous state of the Labour party (I write as Jeremy Corbyn anticipates a vote of no confidence, and yet farcically clings on to his leadership citing the “democratic mandate” granted to him by Labour’s grassroots).

The Labour Party has long thought itself above the cut and thrust of lobby politics. It has been, over the generations, a sort of cooperative. Its leader has been elected by its membership, the unions and their affiliates. Since last year, registered supporters have also been able to cast their vote.

This is a form of democracy, of course, and the party’s willingness to listen to its supporters is welcome. But it is irrelevant to the bigger picture of how our parliamentary democracy functions. Labour party members may have some control over its structure and leadership but, ultimately, each MP is answerable only to their constituents – to the tens of thousands of ordinary citizens who elected them and who rely upon them to form a credible opposition. The party can change its organising rules whenever it sees fit; the MPs cannot walk away from their responsibility to the electorate – that comes first above all.

Right now, with Corbyn in leadership, MPs cannot fully exercise their responsibilities as an opposition, as a government-in-waiting. Without that, our entire democracy is poorer. Yes, the membership of the Labour party backs Corbyn (at least, they did at the last vote), but in Parliament his MPs are bound to do their best to represent the far bigger mandate – and one that should take priority.

It was the spreading sense among the people that the people were powerless, that politics is nothing more than a game, that prompted David Cameron to open up the question of Europe to the people. He did so at a time when our political system found itself unable to sufficiently educate the country to understand how that ballot would work, and how significant each vote would be – and it turned out to be a grave mistake for his party.

Ed Miliband made a similar miscalculation in seeking to re-engage the grassroots of his party in the election of its leader and deputy leader. Whether there were 1,000 or 10,000 people protesting in Parliament Square last night – as they have every right to do in our democracy – they won’t be able to protect Corbyn from his own demise. He, like everyone else this week, seems to have forgotten how our Parliamentary democracy functions.