IF SEEING the word “Brexit” in this headline has made you sigh and say “Why can’t they just get on with it?”then you are not alone. This is probably now the commonest reaction to any and all news about our withdrawal from the European Union.

But alas, it is just not that easy.

There’s only one way to “just get on with it” and that’s by walking away and leaving the EU without any agreements about our future relationship with our nearest neighbours and, far and away, our largest trading partner.

No sane person wants to go down that route. The damage, not just to our economy but to almost aspects of our national life, would be immense.

And before you say, forget Europe we’ll make deals with our “friends”, think again.

Our “friends” – Australia, Canada, New Zealand et al – have made crystal clear that their relationship with the EU is far more important to them than their relationship with us and and why wouldn’t they, it’s a market far, far bigger than Britain’s.

As for the “special relationship” with the US which was supposed to ensure that we would be at the front of any queue to sign a new trade deal, it’s not looking so special now that Donald Trump has slapped huge tariffs on British steel and aluminium.

Indeed, at the recent G7 meeting in Canada, Mr Trump pointedly ignored Theresa May when he was lavishing praise on the leaders of France and Germany. Lavishing praise, that is, before he turned round and attacked them both. But being attacked is probably better than being ignored.

On Monday the House of Lords will kick off another crucial week in the Brexit process; and although all the parliamentary debating, voting and abstaining in the week just gone must have seemed confusing, contradictory and a total waste of time, there is, in fact, an important issue at stake, which might just get resolved next week (but probably won’t).

What is at stake is quite simply the fundamental question of who, in our system of parliamentary democracy, has the ultimate power? Most of us thought the answer was quite simple. Surely the phrase “parliamentary sovereignty” means that Parliament is supreme? Wasn’t that what the Leave campaigners meant during the EU referendum campaign when they kept talking about “taking back control”?

Indeed, I cannot be the only one who recalls hearing the words “parliamentary sovereignty” being uttered by Leave campaigners on more than one occasion. But now it appears that “taking back control”, as articulated by Mrs May at least, means giving total power to ministers, unchecked by our MPs. They are calling it the principle of “the sovereignty of government”. This is a new one on me and, having checked my old politics text books, it’s a new one on all of those who have been writing about the British Constitution for the past several hundred years.

Indeed, “the sovereignty of government” sounds like the sort of catchphrase that might sit more comfortably coming from the lips of Mr Putin or any number of totalitarian leaders who, like Louis XIV believed that “L’Etat c’est moi” – “the State is me”!

This is what the debate about giving Parliament a “meaningful” say, a debate that has been raging these past few weeks, has at its heart. The Government, seeking to appease its hardline Brexiteers, is allowing Parliament to simply “note” the final deal whether it be good, bad or disastrous. It is not giving our MPs the chance of sending the negotiators back to Brussels with instructions to come back with a better package.

Even worse, if the Government decides it cannot get a better deal and simply wants to walk away with no deal, Parliament would, if Mrs May gets her way, have no say – like it or lump it.

So how to proceed in what looks like a stand-off between Parliament and Government? Maybe we turn back to the people, either through a General Election, which ministers are now saying would be the result of a Government defeat on the final settlement, or a vote on the final deal.

“Not a second referendum” I hear the cry. No, a different vote, not one saying do you want to remain or leave the EU but one offering three options: accept the deal currently on offer, require the Government to return to the negotiating table or leave the EU with no deal in place.

Such a vote would not be a re-run of the referendum since, you will have noticed. the absence of any option to remain in the EU in my scenario. But it would ensure that whatever happens next, it will be with the consent of the people.

Now that’s what I call democracy.

IVOR Gaber is professor of political journalism at the University of Sussex and a former Westminster correspondent.