In 1933, Joseph Goebbels stated that, “The modern structure of the German State is a higher form of democracy in which, by virtue of the people’s mandate, the government is exercised authoritatively while there is no possibility for parliamentary interference, to obliterate and render ineffective the execution of the nation’s will.” It is a measure of how far the UK has fallen that Boris Johnson, the prime minister, often sounds rather like this.

Mr Johnson sought to prevent “parliamentary interference” in Brexit negotiations, by proroguing (or suspending) it for five crucial weeks. He dissented from the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that this was unlawful. He has suggested he could ignore the Benn Act requiring him to seek an extension to the Article 50 deadline, should he not achieve a deal. He condemned this legislation as the “surrender act”. Worst of all, he plans to frame the next election as a battle of “ people versus parliament”.

How did the UK reach a position in which its prime minister regards parliament as an obstacle to be ignored? The simple answer is that it decided to insert a particularly ill-considered referendum on an exceptionally contentious subject into a parliamentary system. This created conflicting sources of legitimacy. Worse, the meaning of the option that won a small majority in that referendum was ill-defined. “Brexit means Brexit” is perhaps the silliest sentence ever uttered by a British prime minister. But it was also all that could be said.