Professor Anthony King’s book Who Governs Britain? is about as even-handed an assessment of the topic as one might hope to find. King is a distinguished and considered expert in the field, as I experienced in a public debate at which he spoke. The book is well-written and entertaining.

And yet one is still forced to come to the conclusion that the system is broken, or at least cracked. And highly inconsistent and illogical. Published in 2015, the book is prescient in its observations, given what has happened since.

There is some discussion going on regarding Theresa May’s deserving of sympathy. King’s book puts this in an interesting perspective. I doubt the criticism that suggests she has put party survival ahead of country – she is not that much of a team player. But she still represents the worst of the Establishment – inflexible, unfeeling and out-of-touch. The government’s response to criticism from Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on poverty, is just another timely reminder of how unresponsive is the British Establishment to real, urgent needs of ‘ordinary’ people. I wonder if it realises how badly its outright denial of the problem appears in the nation at large.

May’s woodenness and emotional illiteracy are thus just par for the course, team player or not. Whatever she really thinks about Brexit, her chosen approach has just reflected the ability of this country’s executive to do what the hell it likes, in between the occasional need to flatter the nation with false promises at election time. She could have chosen to acknowledge the closeness of the vote, and seek to reconcile Remainers with what she thought needed to be done. But as with them all, it was more important to score points than be right, more important to retain power than admit weakness or error, even where the latter might have brought relief. More important to bang drums than admit the country’s weak position and seek collaboration with our supposed partners.

She – and the whole of her misguided type cannot change. Their commitment to the ‘national interest’ is nothing of the sort: it is (perhaps unwitting) loyalty to a certain kind of establishment interest largely unchanged since the days of Empire, and as such not deserving of any sympathy. Even if one sympathises with the personal price she is paying, a lot of it is self-inflicted.

Whatever happens in the coming months with Brexit, it is easy to argue that the whole British governmental and constitutional system is in urgent need of review and overhaul: Brexit has thrown its limitations and contradictions into stark relief.

Unfortunately, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, so the chances of one happening are virtually nil. The only person whom I suggest might be able to instigate one is err…. the Monarch, through a Royal Commission. There is no other mechanism. Not an appealing admission for a republican – and I suspect she’s actually Queen Turkey herself in any case.