And he claimed such was the severity of what he termed the “un-Brexit crisis” that authority of the entire parliamentary system of Government was in jeopardy. Mr Hannan, who has been a member of the European Parliament since 1999, wrote in The Telegraph: “It’s not about Brexit any more, at least not primarily. It’s about whether we remain a democracy in the fullest sense.
“Our system depends on unwritten conventions and precedents.
“We expect winners to show restraint and losers to show consent.
“We expect our officials – including judges, civil servants and, not least, the Commons Speaker – to be impartial. We expect the electorate to be the final umpire.”
All such accepted norms were under threat as the battle to reverse Brexit intensified, Mr Hannan said.
He added: “The EU, as well as being undemocratic in itself, tends to degrade the internal democracy of its member nations.
“I think of it as the EU’s Hideous Strength – the title of CS Lewis’s adult novel about a diabolical plot to take over Britain through a seemingly bland bureaucracy.
“Until now, the most shocking examples were the civilian juntas imposed on Italy and Greece in 2011 to keep them in the euro.
“But ponder the past three years here. Look at the way our most basic understandings and conventions have been torn up.
“Labour is proposing to get a better deal from Brussels and then campaign against its own deal in a referendum.
“The Lib Dems, less entertainingly but more shockingly, want to annul the outcome of the referendum that they were the first party to propose.”
Politicians were making ”hysterical claims of Russian interference” and demanding the views of people who did not vote three years ago were taken into account, Mr Hannan said.
He added: “We have seen repeated attempts to overturn the referendum result in the courts.
“We have seen a Speaker brazenly promising to thwart the government even ‘if that demands additional procedural creativity’.
“How much more of this can we take?
“Our political discourse is angrier and more violent than I can remember.
“The legitimacy of our governing institutions is in the balance.
“What we are seeing is not a “Brexit crisis” but the precise opposite: an un-Brexit crisis, a crisis caused by the refusal of our MPs to do what they repeatedly promised.
“Now those MPs are simultaneously paralysing Parliament and preventing a general election.
“Do they truly not realise what is at stake?
“It is not just their careers that are in jeopardy; it is the authority of our entire parliamentary system.
“Marvel at the EU’s hideous strength.”
