I’m not going to join the divorce movement in its lamentations about the possibility there won’t be a referendum on divorce. Right from the word go, I was against having a referendum on divorce.

I think it’s reprehensible that the moral majority should get to decide on something that affects a minority of people, or that the religious right can get to veto the dissolution of a civil marriage which concerns neither them nor religion, nor even society given that the marriage will have broken up already by that stage.

Those who were in favour of divorce and who now form the kernel of the divorce movement were as cross as angry beavers when the referendum idea was first put forward. And I didn’t blame them because I felt exactly the same. But they appear to have been talked round to it on the basis that the government does not have an electoral mandate to legislate for divorce and so must first consult the people.

I agree that the government does not have a mandate to legislate for divorce. It’s a cast-iron fact. Divorce was not in the electoral programme nor was it ever mentioned. But unlike the government and the divorce movement, I don’t see this as grounds for a referendum. I see it as grounds for both parties to stick divorce into their electoral programmes in 2013 and get with the world programme.

Let’s face it: the only way this country is going to get itself some divorce legislation is if both political parties adopt a position of bilateral armament. If they both have it in their electoral manifesto, then electors lose that leverage they’re so keen on: if you do/don’t, I will/won’t vote for you.

Those who don’t want to vote for a pro-divorce party will have no choice but to vote all the same or to stay at home and be a prat, choosing not to have a say in electing a government at all on the basis of what is, in the grand scheme of things, ultimately a marginal issue.

But that’s not going to happen, is it, because neither the Labour Party nor the Nationalist Party is able to put divorce legislation in its electoral programme. I spelled out the reasons why Labour can’t do this, when Joseph Muscat made a great meal of his free vote and his private member’s bill as head of government (what an idiot – the only thing for which I’m grateful to Pullicino Orlando is the way he tugged that particular rug out from beneath Muscat’s feet). Now I have to apply that same set of reasons to the Nationalist Party, though thank heavens we are spared the spectacle of Lawrence Gonzi talking about presenting private member’s bill as prime minister.

So, for the benefit of those who have forgotten, and for the benefit of those who think that voting Labour or not voting at all will somehow get them divorce legislation, here are those reasons again. When a political party puts something in its electoral programme, it commits to it and enters a form of contractual obligation with electors. If elected to government, it may find that it cannot do some of the things to which it has committed, because of a wide variety of economic or other variables, but it can only postpone the commitment. It cannot go back on its word and do the opposite.

If a pledge is made in the electoral programme – for example, divorce legislation – this means that the party’s MPs must vote with the whip. They cannot be given a free vote. The reason for this is simple and obvious. Anyone who stands on the party ticket does so on the understanding that he or she agrees with everything in that party’s electoral programme. If he or she doesn’t agree with even one of the pledges made in the programme, then he or she can’t stand on the party ticket because this would be breaking faith with electors, who vote for a candidate in relation to a political party and the party’s electoral programme.

This means that neither Labour nor the Nationalists are going to have divorce in their electoral programme unless they rip out half or possibly more of their candidates, who are against divorce, and in the Nationalist Party’s case the leader and deputy leader as well. People seem to think that MPs on both sides of the house are sitting on the fence and refusing to tell us what they think about divorce because they are waiting to see which way the wind blows. The real reason, I think you will find, is because they are against it. Those who are in favour of divorce have come out already, so to speak, and there are precious few of them.

Now to the current state of affairs. The prime minister is correct when he says that a referendum cannot be held before a decision is taken by parliament. The EU membership referendum is not a comparable situation. We had decisions by parliament and the electorate (a few times over) on that one already. It had been in the Nationalist Party’s programme since – what, 1976?

I am glad that a decision is going to be taken by parliament before or instead of a referendum (depending on the result of the vote in parliament). This, too, is consistent with my position from day one. I was much aggrieved when a referendum was posited instead of a decision by parliament. I saw it as an abdication of their responsibilities by our MPs. We put them there to take decisions on our behalf. We did not put them there to pass the buck back to us.

For the first time in longer than I care to remember, we shall see parliament functioning as it sometimes should for a healthy democracy: MPs forced to think, to assess their own position and that of their electors, and then to vote without the comfort and bland anonymity of the party whip. In the absence of the party whip on either side of the house – which is what a free vote means – we shall watch parliament function not as Government and Opposition, but as parliament.

If the house votes against divorce, it will be the house voting against divorce, and not the government, or the opposition. If the house votes No, then you can’t blame the government for blocking divorce. You can only blame that mass of MPs, on both sides of the house, who voted against it.

Equally, in the unlikely scenario that the house votes Yes, you cannot thank the government or the opposition for divorce. You can only thank those MPs on both sides of the house who voted Yes.

I cannot emphasise enough, but feel I must because there is so much that is misunderstood about the functions of parliament, that the way things stand divorce is no longer a matter of government or opposition. It is now a matter of ‘parliament’, with no whips and no block votes and no ‘sides’ or party factions. You already have Marie Louise Coleiro making it clear that she will vote like Tonio Borg, and Labour’s Carmelo Abela saying that he will vote with the prime minister. Meanwhile, Joseph Muscat will vote with Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Jesmond Mugliett. Marlene Pullicino will wait for the latest dispatches from her consultant priests, and Jean Pierre Farrugia will let us know by means of a round-robin email with lots of exclamation marks.

This is when you should remember what your MP is for: there to be lobbied by you, the constituent. At this point in the game, those who are lobbying the government, or the opposition, for a change in position on divorce are wasting their time. It is no longer in the government’s hands or the opposition’s. It is in your MP’s hands, so lobby him or her. If you want divorce, let him/her know, and if you don’t want divorce, make that clear to him/her too.

I don’t need to make anything clear to my MP, because he’s the one who went and caused all this hassle by presenting that private member’s bill in the first place. There’s another reason I won’t be lobbying any MPs: it wouldn’t be consistent with my position, which is that divorce legislation, unlike divorce, is not a matter of personal opinion. The sooner we understand that we can’t run away from the bogeyman forever, the sooner we will grow up. It’s called biting the bullet and moving on..