RUTHFULLY YOURS

Two things are striking about this period of national agony and debate. The first is how sensible and peaceful the British people have remained. The Brexit referendum carried by 52% to 48% (a margin of roughly 1.3 million out of more than 33.5 million votes cast) and the consequences are unpredictable and large. Will the United Kingdom even stay united as Scotland and Northern Ireland react to Brexit? Will Britain’s economy flourish as it opens to the world or wither without privileged access to European markets? From the City of London’s financial sector to the Sunderland Nissan factory, hundreds of thousands, even millions of jobs may be at stake.

Faced with all that, the British kept calm and carried on. Across a country of 66 million, Brexit has generated less political violence than a modestly sized Antifa march can gin up on a good afternoon in Portland, Ore. Scotland may be looking for an exit from the U.K. even as the U.K. looks to exit the European Union, but there are no Barcelona-style separatist riots in Edinburgh or anywhere else. This is an extraordinary testimony to the depth of Britain’s democratic culture.

But if Britain’s political culture is still working, its institutions have been less successful. The genius of the old British system was that even under minority governments, a sitting prime minister was a powerful force. If he lost control of the Commons, the sovereign either called for a new prime minister who could command a majority or dissolved Parliament for a general election. Britain’s Westminster system of parliamentary rule was admired and envied around the world.

That is no longer the case. Poorly designed changes to the party leadership selection process in the major parties opened the door to fringe figures like Jeremy Corbyn and weakened the power of leaders of the opposition and prime ministers alike. Thanks to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which Mr. Cameron’s coalition government passed in 2011, it takes a two-thirds majority or a vote of no confidence for a prime minister to call a general election. The result is an ungovernable mess. Boris Johnson’s minority government has lost one major parliamentary vote after another, but his opponents refuse to let him take the one step that could resolve the British impasse: calling a general election.

In a better world, the moment the House of Commons passed the Benn Act (requiring Mr. Johnson to request another extension of the Brexit deadline from the EU) in September, Mr. Johnson would have called for an election—as prime ministers have done for the past 300 years when faced with a mutinous House. That election would have been the equivalent of a second referendum, leading to a Parliament that would have the democratic legitimacy to Leave, to Remain or, if public sentiment remained hopelessly divided, to Dither. The leader of the party with the largest number of seats would form a government in the time-honored British way—a one-party government if possible, a coalition if no single party had a majority.

As it is, we have the absurd spectacle of a hostile majority in Parliament forcing Mr. Johnson to seek permission from the EU to delay Brexit beyond Oct. 31. He complied with the mandate, grudgingly, and sent his letter unsigned—with an accompanying, signed letter urging the EU to hold fast to the deadline. While it is, barely, possible that Parliament will agree on a coherent Brexit policy during the intense debates and votes scheduled this week, no business in Britain knows where things will stand in 10 days’ time.

Today’s British constitution is a mix of radically new and venerably old institutions and laws, like an enormous development of Brutalist office blocks in the midst of an old Cotswolds village. The village infrastructure and roads can’t accommodate the heavy traffic in and out of the office blocks; the blocks despoil the old beauty of the village without adding anything meaningful of their own. In this respect the new British political system is reminiscent of John F. Kennedy’s description of Washington as a town with “Northern charm and Southern efficiency.”

To be sure, this isn’t only a British problem. In the U.S. the 20th-century structures of the progressive state rest uneasily on an 18th-century constitutional order. Britain has Queen Elizabeth to symbolize continuity and legitimacy in a world of rapid change; the U.S. has— Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi.

As it is, this ungoverned and ungovernable Parliament cannot fulfill the essential responsibilities of a real legislature, won’t let Mr. Johnson fulfill them, and won’t stand down. One thinks of Oliver Cromwell’s alleged tirade as he closed down the Rump Parliament in 1653: “Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. . . . In the name of God, go!”

Britain needs an election, and it needs one right away. What we need here in the U.S. is harder to identify.