It did not take much to see Parliament being fetishised, the sacred cow., the bulwark against an evil European bureaucracy

Many of the members who voted against the Article 50 bill did so along constituency lines. Where the referendum vote was overwhelmingly in favour of remaining, the member complied with those wishes. They pointed out that not all had spoken with focused indignation in June; and not all had actually directed their venom at the EU per se. A mere 27 percent had voted to leave. Thirteen million did not vote. Only two of the nations making up the UK wished for an exit.

British Labour, another party in a deep psychic crisis over Europe, was visibly fracturing before attempts by leader Jeremy Corbyn to keep on the Brexit message. A three line whip had been gathered to ensure compliance, but former culture secretary Ben Bradshaw, along with others, promised an angry defiance.

A gaggle of party members, even at this point in time, were circulating ideas for a second referendum. The Liberal Democrats were also hoping to change the tide. But the resistance seemed to die in the chamber. Clarke was the only Tory to defy his party; Corbyn faced a more challenging number of 47 who voted against the line.

A funeral, a revolution of peace, an act of implosion, but most certainly, and above all, an act of assertive sovereignty. Parliament, in Burke's words, as "a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole".

But what was being witnessed on the last day of January, and first day of February was not one nation but several. Whether this does spell folly for the UK, doom the EU, or signal a revolution beyond borders that breeds order from chaos remains the stuff of dreams or nightmares. With a historian's goggles we watch to see how this movement evolves, with its steps into a new world darkly.