Two years of negotiations with the EU came crashing down around the Prime Minister this week as Parliament overwhelmingly rejected her version of Brexit. It is a mess of the Prime Minister’s own making and it could have been avoided.

Instead of trotting out platitudes (“Brexit means Brexit” – remember that one?) and promising the undeliverable to the insatiable on her own right wing and the DUP (we shall leave the Customs Union AND have no hard border between the North and the South AND we shall have no border in the Irish Sea) she could have built a consensus in the House of Commons. She didn’t and therefore the inevitable happened as the Commons defeated her deal by a record margin of 230 votes. Humiliation does not even come close.

Jeremy Corbyn then last night finally lodged a no confidence motion, after weeks of dithering. He played his hand but failed to take Parliament with him So, what happens next?

The Prime Minister has ruled out a renegotiation, a General Election and a people’s vote. Her tone-deaf response has shown that she remains in denial and is now the biggest single block to our country resolving this issue. The second biggest block, of course, is Jeremy Corbyn.

Challenged in yesterday’s confidence debate the self-styled Leader of The Opposition was unable to say whether, in the event of winning his general election he would press ahead with Brexit or not. That apparently would be up to his party.

When I asked him then if he would follow the policy endorsed by his party members at their conference in September and back a people’s vote after the confidence motion had failed his answer was also less than unequivocal.

As they might have said aboard the Starship Enterprise, “It’s leadership, Jim, but not as we know it”.

Theresa May is the roadblock to progress in the national interest and it suits Jeremy Corbyn’s purposes to sit in the road blowing his horn when he could quite easily go around her.

Two years ago it was obvious to the Liberal Democrats that the country asked to deliver a verdict on an uncomplete and uncertain proposition had delivered verdict equally lacking in clarity. Accepting that the people had voted for a departure without specifying a destination a further people’s vote on the deal seemed to us to be the only way through this.

It was not a popular idea at the time. A population weary from frequent and difficult visits to the polls did not much fancy the prospect of another one. I understand the sentiment, but it was then, and is still now, the only way ahead.

By bringing his MPs in behind the campaign for a People’s Vote Jeremy Corbyn could make it happen. Instead he continues to vacillate. It is a vacillation for which he may pay a heavy political price. Those who lent him their votes in 2017, believing him to be an opponent of Brexit are now increasingly seeing him as the Brexit-loving charlatan than many in Westminster (especially in his own party) have long since known him to be.

Let me be clear. I believe that a People’s Vote is the only way for our country now to go forward. In itself it is not an answer to all the problems that caused Brexit and which come with it. Would it heal the divide within our country? No but it would at least allow the healing to start. If Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are to continue to block it then they make themselves part of the problem so one way or another they must be removed.