The 2017-2019 Parliament is seen by many as a chaotic, unruly insubordinate mess but, I will always see that Parliament as a rare chance for the Westminster system to be shaken to its core. The Government lost its ability to dictate the bills that would become law and the topics that the House of Commons would debate. It violated the first rule of British Politics, the Government never loses. At the beginning of the 2017 Parliament there were many who did not understand what powers had been conferred to the Members of the House of Commons and, it would take nearly the entirety of that Parliament for them to understand what they had but, for a brief instant the legislative power of the Commons, which the Government has worked hard to curtail, was restored.

Some may think that the 2017 Parliament was continuously unruly but, it only really learned how to stand up to the Government in middle of 2018. Between 2017 and 2018 the Conservatives spent a large amount of time talking to itself before they even talked to the Commons or, more importantly, the European Union.

The Conservative party and, most of Parliament lives under the impression that the rest of the world will accede to the wishes of British political interests. The picture that signifies this is the picture of the first of three Brexit secretaries sitting across from EU negotiators with NOTHING! Not a single piece of paper. Not even for show. Even Donald Trump had a stack of papers to show how Trump was distancing himself from his financial connections. The UK went into its most serious negotiations in a generation with nothing but a smile.

It takes a long time to learn how to do something different and, there are large parts of the UK political establishment that learned nothing but, as soon as the summer of 2018 passed with rumour that Brexit was not going to be the “easy to understand-total Tory victory” the toothpick pillars of the Westminster system started to fall. Then Foreign secretary, Boris Johnson resigned but forgot to leave his tax-payer flat. Former head of the “European Research Group”/APPG on hating the EU, Jacob Rees-Mogg started the rally call for Theresa May to resign and, Mark François (ugh…) started to come into his own as, well Mark François. By the end of the year, the Government had lost a vote…remember rule one? Dominic Grieve had ensured that Parliament would get a “meaningful vote” on the Withdrawal Agreement which meant, in theory, that the Parliament could reject the Conservative plan for Brexit and force it to come back with one that would be more palatable to the Commons. That was it. The Government losing a vote on its control of the Brexit process was the beginning of the end. Members were no longer just Tory, Labour, SNP or Lib Dem they became Remainers and Leavers. Factions grew across Parliament to ensure the outcome they desired, and the Government were increasingly powerless to stop the Commons from exerting its democratically control. Legislation was passed that suspended the centuries old rule that allowed the Government to control the agenda of the Commons. Someone even had the bright idea to present a bill to have the Commons approve the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers.

2019 represented the total collapse of the old order. Parliament was alive with powers they never knew they had so the Conservatives attempted to correct this problem by forcing out Prime Minister Theresa May who was only doing what she really knew how to do, get a Conservative victory. By the end of her Premiership her party was fractured and the DUP had abandoned her. The grand plan on re-uniting the Conservative party was the inevitable election of Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative party and his appointment as Prime Minister.
Even this act did not bring Parliament back to what it was before 2017. Instead of uniting the party, the dissenters got louder and, in turn, the Government, under Johnson and his main adviser, Dominic Cummings, expelled anyone who voted against Government policy. In a split second, the Government Whips Office were kicking out former Government ministers and Winston Churchill’s grandson. These people weren’t saints but, they believed in Parliament’s role in scrutinising the Government. With that step the Government gave up a substantial amount of its seats and, we all hit a wall. Labour, who in all of this never came up with a serious alternative to the Conservative Brexit dream seemed happy to drift until Judgement Day. An election would have to come at some point because game theory can only get you so far.

Many on the right blame remainers, the former Speaker, John Bercow and just about everyone else for the lack of progress on Brexit and stalling Parliament for two years but, that is simply not the case. There were options that could have received parliamentary majorities. If Labour had backed a second referendum, this could have been avoided, if the Tory hardliners had backed the single market/customs union options, this could have been avoided but, as in the old days, compromise is not the Westminster way. If one cannot win outright, one cannot win at all. It isn't true and most legislatures are built on consensus. The lack of understanding on this crucial point is what broke the Parliament in the end. Not enough people were will not concede on their stances. Even the SNP had a single market/custom union plan but, in 2016 there were not that many people listening.

A legislature is not the tool of the executive. It does not exist to pass the Government’s bills; it exists to debate and pass legislation for a country. The UK Parliament is often considered an extension of the Government but, for a briefest of moments, the Parliament regained its voice. It stopped being, by and large, a platform to repeat party lines over and over again.

Political parties fractured so much that the Conservatives purged almost all of its moderate Members in an effort to appeal to Brexit voters. Labour did not do the same as they never took a real stance on Brexit. The SNP actually amended several pieces of legislation that became the law. These are things that we will likely never see again. The 2019 Tory majority seems set to destroy all of the progress of the past 15 years. The Commons,Broadcasting, even the Supreme Court are all under threat from a Tory Government who will want to turn the clocks back on de-centralisation and advance private interests. I imagine that we may not have seen the end of that spirit but, the dials have been put back to zero.It will take another seismic event, like Brexit to once again shake the Commons.

I will always remember this time as long days and nights. Running down the corridors to table amendments and always telling the doorkeepers that, “everything’s fine”. It wasn’t. I haven’t been home in two years, I have had to fight for people to see what we all eventually dealt with and, it has cost my mental state as well as my physical state while taxing my relationships to the maximum.

It has been a long two years in this place and Parliament is not a good place to maintain one’s mental state. It was a mess but, it was exciting and fun. It was a rejuvenation of what Parliament should be; not the Government’s plaything but, a place were everyone had the chance to change the law for their constituents. I hope I'm wrong but, we may have witnessed the last 'real'parliament.