Mr Hannan, who has been a member of the European Parliament since 1999, wrote in The Telegraph: “It’s not about Brexit any more, at least not primarily. It’s about whether we remain a democracy in the fullest sense. Our system depends on unwritten conventions and precedents. We expect winners to show restraint and losers to show consent."

“We expect our officials - including judges, civil servants and, not least, the Commons Speaker – to be impartial. We expect the electorate to be the final umpire.” All such accepted norms were under threat as the battle to reverse Brexit intensified, Mr Hannan said. He added: “The EU, as well as being undemocratic in itself, tends to degrade the internal democracy of its member nations. I think of it as the EU’s Hideous Strength – the title of CS Lewis’s adult novel about a diabolical plot to take over Britain through a seemingly bland bureaucracy."

He added: “We have seen repeated attempts to overturn the referendum result in the courts. We have seen a Speaker brazenly promising to thwart the government even ‘if that demands additional procedural creativity’. How much more of this can we take? Now those MPs are simultaneously paralysing Parliament and preventing a general election. Do they truly not realise what is at stake? It is not just their careers that are in jeopardy; it is the authority of our entire parliamentary system. Marvel at the EU’s hideous strength.”