Unfortunately, politics in the UK is broken and requires more than a sticking plaster.

A minority Conservative government under Prime Minister Theresa May has been rent asunder by Brexit. The draft withdrawal deal announced yesterday already appears dead in the water. Even as the Cabinet ‘approved’ the draft text at a marathon meeting yesterday, there were reports that as many as nine cabinet members were opposed, although apparently going along with the whole charade.

It’s now just before noon, and already two Cabinet members have resigned, including the second idiot in charge of the Brexit negotiations, Dominic Raab. And several junior ministers have gone as well. More are expected. Theresa May is entering a dark place.

Immediately on release of the draft agreement, the Brexiteer vultures began to circle. Without having read the text (a 580 page document, which was published online later in the evening), they rejected the draft out of hand. It has not found favor with Remainers either. In speaking briefly to the assembled press outside No 10, Theresa May said it was her deal, no deal, or no Brexit. Hope lingers eternal that if Parliament rejects the draft, a sane way out of this chaos might yet be found. One thing is clear. Theresa May is going to struggle to win support for the agreement in the House of Commons. Opinion is too divided.

May lost her overall parliamentary majority in the disastrous 2017 General Election (for the Conservatives anyway), and has since been kept in power by 10 members of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). But even they are preparing to abandon the May Brexit ship, despite having accepted a £1 billion ‘bribe’ after the General Election to provide May with a working majority under a confidence-and-supply agreement. They are even more blinkered than usual. It has not been a pretty sight, especially as the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic became the major sticking point in the withdrawal agreement negotiations with the European Union (EU).

Given the ‘civil war’ within the ranks of the Conservative Party, Labour should have won the 2017 election, hands down. Or perhaps I should say it could have won the election if its stance on Brexit had been unequivocally in favor of Remain. Unfortunately, Jeremy Corbyn, has consistently proved just what a weak and prevaricating leader of the Labour Party he is. Certainly there is now a clear majority of Labour supporters—in every Labour-held constituency—in favor of remaining, as evidenced by a nationwide poll of 20,090 people that Channel 4 commissioned recently. Even regions of the UK that voted heavily in favor of Brexit: the northeast, Wales, and the southwest, now have majorities in favor of remaining members of the EU.

Referendums are, to some extent, a clumsy democratic tool. However, in Switzerland they are used all the time. But, if social mores change, then the Swiss can change their minds, and this shift in opinion can be reflected in another referendum. Referendums are employed in California to guide opportunities to change the law (such as the legalization of cannabis), if I understand that situation correctly.

The Brexit referendum was different. Why? Although it was ‘advisory’, it is now seen (on the Brexiteer side) as immutable, the ‘will of the British people’, cast in stone, never to be challenged or overturned. But clearly public opinion has moved on, now that the actual consequences of Brexit are becoming clearer, already realized in some instances.

On the other hand, referendums have one important aspect that normal elections (at least in the UK) do not have. Every vote counts. For example, with our first-past-the-post electoral system, there’s hardly any chance that my vote ever counts in parliamentary elections in our Bromsgrove constituency, held by the Conservatives with a comfortable majority; Home Secretary Sajid Javid is the sitting MP.

So, the 2016 referendum result, 51.9-48.1% in favor of leaving the EU was an accurate reflection of those who voted. But since only 72.2% of the electorate turned out to vote (actually high by other election standards), those explicitly in favor of leaving were only about 37%. I’ve always maintained that for this referendum that would have such economic, political, constitutional, and social implications, there had to be a minimum agreed voter turnout for the referendum to be valid in the first place (which I think would be the case for 2016), and an overall majority of the electorate (not just those who voted).

Goodness knows what the outcome is going to be. Politics has become so tribal, factional, and disjointed, I have no idea where the country is heading – except down the bowl, perhaps. The extremes of politics, on the right and on the left, are center stage right now. It’s time to claim back the center ground, but that’s increasingly difficult with our first-past-the-post system.

Reluctantly—and I never thought I would ever come to this position—I do believe it’s time to take really hard and serious look at proportional voting and representation. Compromise is denigrated quite often in politics today, but working to reach compromise does focus minds.

Proportional representation in many European countries most often leads to coalition governments that take months to agree a parliamentary agenda. Is that such a bad thing? Is coalition government per se such a bad thing?

After the 2010 election the Liberal Democrats went into coalition with the Conservatives and, based on reaction to at least one key decision in government (student tuition fees), the Liberal Democrats were hammered in the 2015 General Election. But was their participation in the coalition so terrible? I sincerely believe that they did help reduce the impact of the hard right (who hated the Lib-Dems with a vengeance), and the natural orientations of Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne.

I, for one, would be willing to give coalition government a try once again. And if that means introducing proportional representation, then that’s what needs to be done. After all, future governments can always reverse that decision, something that apparently we are unable or powerless (forbidden?) to effect now to steer a course away from the omnishambles that Brexit has become.

Changes to how we elect our politicians would certainly be more than a sticking plaster.