The back-door court attempt to overturn Brexit is laughably undemocratic

Here's a question for all you political anoraks out there: what's the connection between the bewigged platoons of Britain's most expensive constitutional lawyers, former Labour leader Ed Miliband, former Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg, former Tory Minister Anna Soubry and the Scottish National party?

Even if you don't know the answer, I'll bet your suspicions are already aroused. One look at the people on this depressing little list should be enough to persuade you that if they're ganging up together they must be up to no good. And you'd be absolutely right.

For this is the last stand of the anti-Brexit brigade and here in all its laughable pomposity and self-righteousness is the reaction of a political establishment that simply can't understand how British voters could possibly have decided to leave the EU. Weren't they told not to do any such thing? Weren't they warned and warned and warned again of the plagues, floods and swarms of locusts that would inevitably ensue? How dare they reject the advice of their betters?

And it doesn't matter that the supposedly dire consequences of a Brexit vote simply haven't happened. The worst is yet to come, warn the Remainers, as they scour every snippet of news hoping, yearning and praying for some downturn in the economy – indeed for anything at all – that suggests they might have been right. In the meantime they do all they can to inhibit, frustrate and delay anything that undermines our ties with their beloved EU.

Next week, for example, no fewer than 16 QCs and junior barristers, backed up by dozens of solicitors, will appear before the Lord Chief Justice in an outrageous attempt to overturn the impact of the Brexit referendum. They will argue in all seriousness that the government should not be able to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty – which begins the negotiations to pull out of the EU – without the permission of parliament.

Sound reasonable enough, doesn't it? But in fact it's an attempt to scupper Brexit by the back door, though of course the litigants will never admit what they're really up to. No, they'll give us a load of lawyerly pieties instead: Britain is a representative democracy... the need to protect the parliamentary prerogative... there must be time for sober reflection... yakkety, yakkety, yak.

Irredentist Remainers are so arrogant, so convinced of their own superiority and so contemptuous in their view of Brexiteers as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals that they are quite prepared to flout a democratic mandate through the machinery of the courts.

But the real aim is to frustrate the popular vote. Never mind that parliament authorised the referendum by a majority of six to one. Never mind that the result went indisputably in favour of Leaving . Irredentist Remainers are so arrogant, so convinced of their own superiority and so contemptuous in their view of Brexiteers as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals that they are quite prepared to flout a democratic mandate through the machinery of the courts.

And who knows? They might even get away with it.

Meanwhile politicians are planning a stitch-up of their own. Having lost the general election and been on the losing side in the referendum, former Labour leader Ed Miliband – yesterday's man, if ever there was one – is now trying to form a coalition with other political failures to force parliamentary scrutiny of the Brexit negotiations.

Once again, it sounds quite reasonable. Once again, it's nothing more than an attempt to reverse the referendum result – this time by ensuring the softest of soft Brexits. This isn't about scrutiny. It's about delaying, blocking, frustrating and undermining the negotiations, with the aim of getting the "right" result.

As far as Remainers are concerned, that would mean staying in the single market, while continuing to pay billions to Brussels every year, still having to obey the European Court of Justice in every area of national life and being unable to conclude trade deals of our own. To all intents and purposes we'd still be in the EU, though with even less influence than we have now.

A truly rotten deal? Sure. But consider the kind of politicians who are now openly in the Miliband camp. There's ex Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, a man who thinks every instruction from Brussels has the authority of Holy Writ. There's former Tory Minister Anna Soubry , whose wide-eyed reverence for the European ideal is a wonder to behold. And there's Scottish National MP Mhairi Black who thinks that calls to control immigration are "reminiscent of early 1930s Nazi Germany".

Oh dear.

Well, they're all entitled to their views. But like the lawyers who will be so eloquent in court next week, their motives are self-serving, their case profoundly undemocratic. I wouldn't allow them any influence at all on a negotiation that will determine the future of our country. Would you?

Michael Toner is a former Fleet Street political editor and co-author of a series of Bluffers' Guides on Europe.