Tuesday 02 April 2019 8:06 am | Updated: Monday 03 June 2019 12:42 am

DEBATE: Is John Major correct that we need a cross-party government to steer the UK through Brexit?

Is John Major correct that we need a cross-party government to steer the UK through Brexit?

YES, says Ben Kelly, a commentator for Reaction.

In the best-case scenario, a “strong and stable” government with a majority, clear priorities, and an overarching strategy would be leading the way on delivering Brexit.

Instead, we have a shambolic government on the brink of collapse, unable to pass an agreement that many in the party hate and plan to change later. Brexit may yet tear the Conservative Party apart.

The last resort may be a General Election, but with the polls currently indicating that no party can win a clear majority, even that may not alleviate the crisis.

If we are to avoid a no-deal Brexit – and there is no appetite for the revocation of Article 50 – then a government of national unity may be the only way of rising above party politics and delivering Brexit in a sustainable and economically secure way.

John Major is right. We haven’t even left the EU yet, and when we do there are many more years of negotiations and difficult decisions ahead.

NO, says James A Smith, who teaches at Royal Holloway and is author of Other People's Politics: Populism to Corbynism.

If a “cross-party government” is your answer, then you have not understood the question. The meaning of the 2016 referendum result (and Trump’s victory, and Corbyn’s success in 2017) was that “ideology has returned”.

Since the early 1990s, it was assumed that all political parties agreed on the fundamentals, and that politics was a matter of finding technocratic “solutions” to isolated problems.

The result was a collapse in party membership, voter turnout, and trust in the political class. Brexit broke this pattern, and we now see very high (and polarised) political engagement.

A cross-party government would be an attempt to deal with Brexit in the old way. But Brexit is not an isolated problem and has no “quick fix”.

Tory and Labour visions of Brexit are bound up in the completely different visions that the two parties have for the country. We need a General Election to allow the parties to put Brexit in the context of these different visions.