Brexit frustration — Realignment of Parliament to break the deadlock?

The public seems to be full of people who appear to be enraged and astonished by Parliament's inability to do anything positive over Brexit. Frustration seems to be the dominant theme. My question to all of you. Why are you surprised? Nothing that has happened so far has surprised me in the slightest. Everything is working out in pretty much the way I expected (to sound a bit like the Emperor - I just hope I don't suffer the fate of being flung down a hole).

I think the reason why people are enraged and frustrated is because they see Brexit as an issue within the existing party system and can't understand why it can't deliver. The fundamental point however, is that we are in the middle of a political realignment. For Brexit that means the divisions between parties do not map onto the divisions in the country. That in turn means you can't sort this out in Parliament with the existing parties on the basis of one party doing it, because of the divisions within the parties (which reflect the actual divisions in the country). You could only handle this effectively in Parliament if there were two parties, one of which (a) supported Brexit and (b) had a settled view of what that meant and another that (a) opposed Brexit and (b) had a clear view of what to do about the referendum result such as a rerun referendum or a straight refusal to apply the result. We don't of course — so the result is entirely predictable.

It has been clear from soon after the referendum result and in particular after the 2017 election that there is a majority in Parliament for a soft Brexit of some kind. (This would be one that accepted the three freedoms and involved staying in the single market either de jure or de facto and probably staying in the customs union). However that majority comes from a combination of Labour and Conservative. It is opposed by a Hard Brexit faction and a Hard Remain one (the first primarily Conservative, the second primarily Labour plus Nationalists).

Theresa May's goal has been to have a Tory Brexit, carried primarily by Tory votes. This is for two reasons. She personally won't go for the kind of soft Brexit that commands a majority because of her views on migration, and she knows that reaching out to Labour to assemble a majority for a soft Brexit would split her party down the middle. Her problem is that any deal she can get will be opposed by the Hard Brexit group in her party plus the opposition so won't pass. She is trying to grind them down by saying 'it's my deal or no Brexit' but a really hard core would rather no Brexit than her deal and there's also another group of Tory MPs who are strongly committed to either soft Brexit or Remain. So there still won't be a majority (I believe).

In a counterfactual where Jeremy Corbyn was PM he would face exactly the same problem but in reverse. The only way he could get a majority for the kind of Brexit he wants (a soft one) would be to get support from Tory MPs because he would have a significant bloc of MPs who were hard Remain and wanted a second referendum - a lot of them people who hate him for other reasons. He has the additional challenge that while the Remain MPs are from the Blairite faction his radical left members are also vehemently remain. However I think he could finesse that.

So there is no way that either of the existing parties can get a deal through Parliament and give effect to the referendum result without reaching out to the other side and causing a split on their own side in the process. There is a majority in Parliament for a certain kind of exit but that majority is divided between the two main parties. Given all this, what has happened is entirely as you would expect. Eventually either we will leave without a deal because of the paralysis (in which case the government will collapse and I would expect the Labour Party to win handily at the subsequent election) or there will be a realignment in Parliament and there will be four pretty coherent groups - the voting patterns over the last two months mean you can say with good accuracy which MPs would be in which group and also which constituencies would vote which way in a two way fight (in practice given our electoral system it would be hugely messy).

Basically you would have a No Deal group, a People's Vote Group, a Soft Brexit Labour group and a Soft Brexit Tory group. What you could then well end up with is something like the 1918 Coupon Election, with candidates from both parties who supported the deal getting the coupon. I think the result would be a landslide victory for soft Brexit in terms of seats.