Sky Views: Why I missed this week's political drama in Westminster

Adam Boulton, editor-at-large

The sand is white. The temperature is above 26C (80F). Pelicans fly by on the sea breeze. There's not a lot to complain about on a long-planned midwinter break in Florida.

Except FOMO. Thanks to social media we now have a four-letter word for Fear Of Missing Out. As the Labour and Conservative parties splinter, the professional political journalist part of me certainly wonders if I should have been back in Westminster for the excitement.

We chose our time to be away carefully: half-term is when MPs were also due to take a week's break. I got a little worried when Theresa May cancelled the recess because there are less than six weeks until Brexit on 29 March.

But I breathed a sigh of relief when, true to form, the prime minister kicked the can further down the road and ruled that MPs wouldn't be asked to debate anything important during their period of cancelled leave.

Nothing much was going to happen. I wouldn't miss much if I handed over my All Out Politics show and my Sunday Times column for a week. Even when a friend on the inside told me the splits were coming, he thought they wouldn't begin until the week of 27 February when the Commons is due to debate Brexit again.

How wrong we were.

We had overlooked Mrs May's reverse Midas touch, whereby anything she does only seems to make matters worse. The period of enforced idleness provided the perfect opportunity to make a political splash.

While I've been away, the kaleidoscope of British politics has been shaken (even if Mrs May and Jeremy Corbyn didn't want to talk about it at PMQs).

So far eight Labour MPs and three Conservatives, all pro-Europeans, have quit their parties to join The Independent Group, now known as TIG for short.

TIG has not yet become a new political party but this is still a massive development.

In both cases the quitting MPs have openly expressed no confidence in their former party leadership. They no longer think it is possible that Mr Corbyn or Mrs May can head broad churches on the centre left and centre right. Instead they accuse them of pandering to extremists on the antisemitic far left and the no-deal inclined European Research Group on the far right.

Thanks to Twitter I have been kept in touch with a sample of opinions from the UK.

Having had the usual demands that I resign or be sacked and accusations that I am drunk or stupid, I can guarantee that the previous paragraph's brief summary of what is happening will bring on further abuse. Tough. That that's how it looks from this distance to this experienced reporter and commentator, firmly committed to the impartiality rules governing British broadcasters.

Britain's two main parties are becoming more extreme than they have been for at least half a century.

Both are also becoming increasingly undemocratic in the full sense of the word. Undemocratic in that they are bowing to the dictatorship of a minority of hardliners and driving out moderates both internally within each party and externally in the policies they which they want to impose on the country as a whole.

If I had been in Westminster I would have relished being part of the excellent coverage the Sky News have given to this exciting news. One of the great satisfactions of being a journalist is having a front row seat to watch history unfold. But to tell the truth, I'm not that sorry I've been here on the Gulf of Mexico instead.

The troubling events in the UK are part of an evolving process and it is too early to tell how important TIG is going to be. So far it is fair to say that its members were all on the likely list and still only make up 11 out of 650 MPs. It will depend on what happens with Brexit over the next five weeks.

Britain's two main parties are becoming more extreme than they have been for at least half a century.

Will there be sufficient determination by a majority of MPs to block the no-deal option decisively? If so, will there be a majority for the second referendum which all the TIG group members want?

How will Mrs May react to these developments? Will she acquiesce, almost certainly provoking Conservative Brexiteers to turn on her? Or will she force the 20 or so ministers opposed to no deal to resign from the government?

Will Labour facilitate Brexit under Mrs May's deal, probably driving many more pro-European MPs to quit in disgust? Will they do so anyway sickened by the vicious attacks by Momentum on friends who have joined TIG already?

Is Jean-Claude Juncker right that the likelihood of the UK leaving without a deal is rising? If Mrs May presides over that happening, I can't see how either the Conservative Party or Labour will hold together.

If nothing can get through parliament there will be a general election soon.

All the while the Brexit clock is ticking down. In political terms the stakes could not be higher. There are many big questions to be played out and I'll be back, refreshed, on Monday to dive straight back into All Out Politics.

HTBH - Happy to be home.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Sky News editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Ed Conway - Our love of simple narratives is bad news when it comes to Brexit