British Government loses Article 50 court fight
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
- Invocation of Article 50 is likely to be delayed from Q1 as the legislation will go through parliament and the (hostile) House of Lords.
- A 'hard' Brexit is less likely due to incoming amendments from remainer MPs and Lords
It also increases the chances of a general election before Article 50 is invoked if the PM feels that MPs will force too many changes to her negotiating stance.
Of course this is all subject to appeal, and ironically, could eventually be decided by a European court!
The majority of them are pro-remain, having concluded that brexit is damaging and dangerous and cannot result in a better deal.
... but they will be whipped into line by government (Tory) and party leadership (Labour) insisting that they follow the settled will of the clear majority of the people
... but the will of the people is neither settled nor a clear majority.
Yes, they could choose to leave the party. Even if they don't feel any duty to said party or to the constituents they're representing (who, realistically, voted on party lines, despite nominally voting for an individual representative), that still means leaving their whole career behind. I would be extremely surprised if we saw more than a handful of MPs do it.
Or do you subscribe to the point of view that we should only have had a single general election and abide by that result for all time?
The number of people who claimed to wish they could change their vote after the result was surprising. How many referendums do we need before people decide they've voted "properly"?
Maybe that's the reasons why direct democracy by means of referendums is [considered to be] not always a good idea.
If we weren't asked whether we wanted to join a post-Lisbon Treaty EU, and once we were in it, we actively said we don't want it, why should we remain in it?
General election results must also be respected, but they revolve around a number of issues, so are not a good indicator of voters' opinion of membership of the EU.
Besides, the Conservatives were elected into government with a manifesto promising an in-out referendum. The government has delivered on that promise and is carrying out the will of the people, as decided in that referendum.
It is being respected. This might be news to you, but we don't live in a fascist dictatorship where dissent is forbidden.
So, in your view, not a single thing any government has done (with the exception of joining the Common Market) has been agreed to by the population. Interesting.
We did agree to be in the EU.
In any case, I trust you'll never vote again or protest against any voting outcomes that you disagree with as you seem to think that once a vote has been held, the outcome can never be disagreed with.
I don't expect everyone to be happy about the outcome of votes, but I do expect outcomes to be respected.
I'm not opposed to decisions being overturned, but I don't think it's right to re-run a vote right after it has been carried out. We haven't even left the EU yet. At some point after we've left the EU, perhaps there will be grounds to take another look at membership of the EU. But not straight away.
I want as many people as possible to participate in elections and referendums (even if I disagree with them), because I want everyone's voice to be heard. That's what it means to live in a democracy. And so I certainly intend to continue voting.
You seem to be trying a reductio ad absurdum argument here and failing.
The UK joined the EEC in 1973, without a referendum but based on an act of Parliament. In 1975 they held an explicitly non-binding referendum that supported staying in the EEC. In other words, that referendum voted to maintain the status quo. You can "disregard" it if you wish, but that would also just mean maintaining the status quo.
The UK has never held a binding referendum on EEC/EU membership. According to the UK's crufty "constitution", this means Parliament gets to decide. If Parliament does nothing, the UK remains in the EU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_rule#Limitations
typically we practice more complex implementations of democracy and as a rule we use majority rule for things like social questions as opposed to key strategic and economic ones.
It's a majority though. If they wanted to have a higher threshold for the vote (say 60%) they should have done as much when writing the referendum.
In a constitutional republic (such as Ireland for instance) a referendum clearly specifies the change to the constitution down to the wording and an open informed debate is had on what the consequences, and possibilities of those unforeseen etc.
There was nothing like this with "Leave". Article 50 as a the mechanism by which leave might be initiated was never even mentioned.
Even since the vote there has been all sorts of inferences based on opinion polls about what the "Leave" constituency desire and it has largely been interpreted as "keep the foreigners out" - and that is an interpretation that clearly has no constitutional footing.
Brexit was at best a plebiscite, dressed up as a referendum. There is a mandate for leaving the EU, but there is no prerogative at all for any of the specifics of how that happens nor has there been a robust discussion over what "Leave" even means.
It will be sad to see the UK go and it will be disruptive for many but if that is her will then so be it, but I wouldn't want it to happen before all that are involved get to have their say on what it means.
It makes for fascinating reading. It covers the data science angle of how the "Leave" campaign operated.
Basically yeah, they just figured out iteratively what a possible "Leave" constituency might want to hear and just fed it to them. Details shmetails.
By far the most illuminating piece I've read on the phenomenon and I think it goes some way towards explaining what's going on in the US right now ...
But that's all he is. Just words and bluster. Hillary like her or loath her has substance.
Firstly it was 'remain' with Cameron's new package of concessions, not remaining as-is, and it's not like the EU is a static entity.
I think I would have preferred a real in-out referendum, with the 'in' option being really diving in and embracing the whole project.
It would have been interesting to see a three-option ballot under runoff voting, but those are completely alien to the UK system.
For some reason we have to stick with these archaic systems that produce perverse results...
What I mean is, there was a whole sales pitch during the campaign about what it might mean (e.g. more money for the NHS) which we all found out subsequently to be tosh.
Now we have: "Free trade but not free travel" or something to that effect. Never was such detail ever discussed prior to the referendum.
But the question on the ballot was "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?" and the option "Leave the European Union" won. It is clear that that means invoking Article 50 and begin exit negotiations with the rest of the EU.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36306681
How right he was, although perhaps not quite in the way he meant.
I'm not even saying Britain should leave or stay, the whole methodology is wrong here. With close calls this is equivalent to flipping a coin, and only because it's a close call we accept the given outcome. Or in this case, many don't because they didn't think it'd come to this, but that's beside the point.
And yet I believe that words to that effect have been used in parliament.
The whole Brexit saga makes me think more than ever that voting on issues of such national importance (including general elections) should be made mandatory.
[1]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/24/how-did-turnout-a...
Regardless, I think this entire line of reasoning makes no sense. You could dismiss pretty much any election by multiplying the "yes" votes with voter turnout to get less than 50%.
That's just how democracies work, if you don't care enough to vote you don't get a say, that doesn't mean the opinions of people who do turn up should be given less weight.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Commun...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_devolution_referendum...
Parliamentary is only British and commonwealth citizens.
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/faq/voting-and-registr...
"Citizens of EU countries other than the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Cyprus and Malta cannot vote in UK Parliamentary general elections, but can vote at local government elections, Scottish Parliamentary elections if they are registered in Scotland, National Assembly for Wales elections if they are registered in Wales and Greater London Authority elections if they are registered in London. They can also vote at European Parliamentary elections if they fill in a form stating that they wish to vote in the UK and not in their home country"
Bonus points to people who can give a rational non-imperialist argument as to why Ireland, Cyprus and Malta nationals get that privilege.
That's not a non-imperialist argument, but it is the reason.
Well . . . the reason is pretty much imperialist in nature. In recent history, citizens of those countries (along with citizens of commonwealth countries) were unequivocally citizens of the United Kingdom. When the countries became independent, the UK government chose not to take away those erstwhile citizens' right to vote.
Not really, no. Especially if it's not clear there's an option to say "idk". Say you care very much but don't know what's best? Does your vote not matter, now? If so, doesn't that make the election wrong? But how do you express that?
There may be an answer to this deep inside some legislature chapter XVI section 16 paragraph b, but if people don't know, does that matter?
Anyway, not saying that was the case for brexit. But "That's just how X works" is typically not the strongest argument. There are a hundred ways to implement a democracy, and they all have their own flaws.
Yes, your vote doesn't matter in that case, because you have no information to convey to the system: you have no preference. Only votes which are conveying a preference about how the situation should be handled are useful. There's no reason to distinguish between "I care, but don't have anything to say about the topic" and "I don't care" if you're not even willing to vote based on which candidate talks about the issues you care about, at least as far as elections go.
Write a letter or something.
Ed: In a slightly less snarky sense, your vote really doesn't matter at that point. The point you should participate in the process, if you feel candidates aren't addressing your issues, is way before that. It just requires actual amounts of time and effort to shift platforms, though, and participation beyond checking a box every year/few years.
There is: you don't go to vote.
Our democracy is a parliamentary democracy in which Parliament is supreme. We elect representatives so that they can make the decisions for us.
Any referendum is really just advisory.
Support for the EU is deeply rooted in a belief that people can't/shouldn't rule themselves: they need to delegate 'complex matters' to elite experts who, of course, only have the people's best interests at heart. The sudden belief that the referendum was only a fancy opinion poll entirely fits with this narrative.
Of course I believe that. Everyone who isn't a rabid libertarian or anarchist believes that, whichever side of political spectrum they come from. I imagine you believe it too to some degree. In representative democracies we don't rule ourselves, we choose the people who will rule us, which isn't the same thing at all.
There's a lot of valid arguments to be had around the process of choosing, the institutions, and what power those chosen should have, but no serious person believes that the best solution for a species that lives in societies is for every member to rule themselves in every particular.
You don't have to be a rabid libertarian or anarchist to think that Direct Democracy has something to offer.
Direct democracy has its place, but that place isn't the UK, which is a parliamentary democracy. It's an arrogation of parliament's responsibility to make decisions based on referenda.
I'm saying that dismissing a popular vote on the basis of voter turnout doesn't make sense. E.g. only 66.4%[1] voted in the last UK general election. Would anyone argue that the entire government of the UK is illegitimate on that basis?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_electio...
Not in Australia. Here we have compulsory voting, and referendums have to have a double majority in order to pass (so there's no question about whether the majority of the people actually wanted the change).
So multiplying by voter turnout would not meaningfully change the results (voter turnout is >95%). Maybe more countries should adopt mandatory voting...
We have many different ways of voting, so it's designed to be as easy as possible for people to vote (in contrast to what I've heard from Americans). The fines are not that bad for first-time offenders but they're large enough that it discourages people from not voting (the fine gets larger for subsequent offenders).
The rules for voting in elections and referendums are also the same (so the same fines apply).
Couldn't you just do the exact same thing with "valid votes" and say the same thing that the parent has said?
[0] - http://www.techly.com.au/2016/06/30/australia-votes-whats-do...
Yes, donkey voting is a problem as well. But there's a stigma around it as well (as that article shows). Invalid voting on the other hand doesn't have a stigma around it.
> Couldn't you just do the exact same thing with "valid votes" and say the same thing that the parent has said?
Maybe. But if someone makes the decision to tick random boxes rather than write "fuck you" then it's clear that they've made a decision to make a vote. It's a grey area, and I despise the issue of donkey voting, but you can't deny that the person has "had their say".
However, the number of invalid votes is counted though. And even considering invalid votes, the percentage of valid votes is better than most countries which don't have mandatory voting. Not to mention that invalid voting is known to be a method of abstaining from voting. I don't know what the stats are for donkey voting, but I doubt that a large enough portion of people do it for it to classify as that large of an issue.
In any case though, if people don't want to show up, then why force them? I'd put the 'blame' on the campaigners for not underlining the importance to get out to vote to constituents.
For instance you say only 37.5% of them voted to leave. That means you'd have to find fewer than 12.5% of the 27.8% who'd agree with them, basically 45% of the non-voters.
So you need some sort of explanation of why a selection of the population, which is a lot of people, came out 52-48, while the non-voters would have come out 45-55.
Without such an explanation, you'd have to think the law of large numbers would suggest that people who didn't vote were pretty much the same as the ones who did.
[] its been nearly 40 years since I read it
Personally I don't think it "disrespects" the original vote, or the democratic process, where margins are absolutely razor-thin to feel an "are you sure?" followup is warranted. 70/30 Leave? Sure: a clear consensus, can't really argue. 52/48? Different matter entirely.
The vast majority of the British voters do not like the EU. Most voted out and of those who voted remain, about half were motivated by simple fear of economic consequences like higher prices rather than any actual support for the project. Given that the EU wants the UK out ASAP without any kind of concessions at all, the people who want a "soft brexit" (whatever that means) are likely to be disappointed as such an option will not be on the table at all.
If MPs attempt to ignore or roll back the referendum in the face of an EU that's already committed to screwing the UK, Farage will return to UKIP and UKIP will absolutely slaughter the other parties. It'll still happen, it'll just take longer.
Would you care to elaborate?
In fact they are acting as if the vote never happened and refusing to talk about anything at all until notification, thus doing their utmost to ensure the 2 years elapse with nothing done.
They're also briefing about "dirty brexit". Google it.
And fuel every little fascist's antieuropean campaign in other EU countries? The EU has to make an example about how leaving the Union is a bad idea, one that even the dumbest of voters understand - and that's exactly what they are going to do.
> In fact they are acting as if the vote never happened
Which is partly due to the fact that the British Referendum vote has no legal standing whatsoever. It is a "Suggestion".
> and refusing to talk about anything at all
Thus avoiding to making concessions and letting the UK test the waters before they actually decide to jump in.
> thus doing their utmost to ensure the 2 years elapse with nothing done
You do understand that the two years are a maximum length, and that the EU could simply decide not to Play, declaring negotiations over within seconds of May pulling the trigger, thus creating the hardest of Brexits with the UK without the EU and without any newly-set up trade agreements with third parties?
I absolutely understand that the EU can simply "refuse to play" and that's what I expect them to do. See my comments elsewhere. The EU is held together by fear and needs to make itself a sworn enemy of any country that wants to get out. It's an unstable strategy and it will eventually cause serious chaos, especially when the Euro falls apart. If the EU was willing to undergo massive reform and change itself, the transition could be orderly and yield minimal or even positive economic impact. It never will, so Europe is gonna have a very troubled next few decades.
I'm sorry, time to wake up from fantasyland of sovereignity. Decisions have consequences and it was rather obvious that the incentives become rather misaligned when UK decides to tell EU to go fuck itself.
UK did enough damage already, the latest and most glorious example is blocking finance reform so you could protect your criminal banker city (which, ironically will probably pack up and leave after brexit)
EU has no obligation to make special concessions, quite the contrary - it is obvious you cannot get a better deal than for example Norway, nor can you continue to benefit from common market without agreeing to it's most core terms
Sure, the Euro is in dire need of remaking, maybe explosive collapse of UK will be glorious enough to force some changes in that regard, so...thanks!
It's the EU that sees the world as a zero sum game: that for the EU to "win" out of this the UK must "lose". As Hollande has so memorably summed up.
It's something we have come to expect from the British: They get cranky once they find themselves on a Level playing field.
33.5 million voted 44.7 million could vote 64.1 million people total
That's a wild overstatement - 52% of the people who voted (which was about 40% of the eligible voters) voted to leave the EU, sure, but that's not nearly "the vast majority of British voters" by a long margin.
> Farage will return to UKIP and UKIP will absolutely slaughter the other parties
I would put money on this never happening.
That is not "liking" the EU anymore than paying the Mafia to make them go away instead of fighting them makes you a fan of the Mafia. If the EU had committed before the referendum to striking a good trade deal with an out UK, continuing cooperation in areas where it was possible etc, then most likely leave would have won by around 80%. Which is why the EU didn't do that.
The polls are quite clear on this point. The EU has very little real support in Britain, defined as people who actually like the idea and want it to be extended further. It seems only about 20-25% of the population can be called real federalists. But basically all the EU leaders are.
The vast majority of voters in any country do not like the government. That's not the benchmark for democracy.
> about half were motivated by simple fear of economic consequences like higher prices rather than any actual support for the project.
Economic consequences are just as real as "sovereignty" and similar concerns, if anything more so.
Although your comment is clearly articulated, and concludes with a very real and accurate statement, I feel I must redress the opening of your second paragraph.
If the vast majority of 'voters' did not like the EU, and 'most voted out' then the result would have been the same, but with much larger majority. This was not the case. The economic fallout of Brexit has yet to be experienced as it will not really kick in until after the UK leaves the EU. The fallout size also depends on the 'deal' (if any) the UK gets when it leaves. Merkel has been very clear that there is no deal on the table and there never will be. Whether the threat of higher prices were a scare tactic or not, many remainers simply did not want a financial hit on their wallet, which is totally understandable. Meanwhile, a large swathe of Leavers simply voted that way because Farage told them it was the only way to keep the migrants out.
At the end of the day, both sides were lied to, more or less, by parties whose political agendas and parliamentary jockyings were more important than the well-being of the country.
I'm not pro the EU in it's current form, but I do believe that the UK will be worse off as a non-member. This is my view, and I voted accordingly.
I also voted in an well-informed away, and I just wish the rest of the country had done so also. The outcome might have still been the same, but at least it would have been for the right reasons.
The Queen becoming a dictator is completely different from the Parliament doing what it should do.
To keep it simple: This is a democracy, which means every citizen is giving away his/her power to a selected few.
The Parliament - the people you voted, more or less directly - has to act.
An ADVISORY referendum is going to be used as an ADVICE. The Parliament has to act - considering the people's will AND what makes sense for the country.
This mechanism is in place to protect you from direct democracy - which doesn't make sense because: A. People are easily manipulated - especially in a world where TV and internet make spreading information really easy B. People can choose to vote randomly, erratically C. People can have a different level of understanding on delicate matters - depending on their education and background
Look at topics like the death penalty where opinion polls often suggest that a clear majority of people would like the capital punishment but very few in parliament do.
The rules for the referendum have been set by the government therefore it has committed to follow these rules regardless of outcome. And the outcome has been clear for anyone who understands basic arithmetic.
This whole debate about how to best screw the voters reminds me of Stalin's attitude towards democratic elections.
The right wing in Europe is calling the EU the EUSSR for a very good reason!
Referendums are usually a mandate to the parliament to implement something.If the referendum idea turns out to be impossible (like eating and having your cake) then the parliament will dismiss or water down this mandate.
And its the government itself that initiated this on its terms so it should follow through on it. Not a fringe party but the ruling government parties.
I never did say this. I did say keeping the promises of the Leave campaigners is impossible.
> the government itself that initiated this on its terms.
The terms were that this referendum is not binding.
There's nothing impossible about jumping off a cliff either, it's just inadvisable.
But of course, and more to the point of what the grandparent post was saying, if the promise was that you will happily land on a soft bed of £350 million in delicately crumpled £10 notes, then meeting that promise may be impossible.
The Leave supporters are mostly over 50, have no coherent organization, and no history of street protests. All they're going to do is write angry comments on Daily Mail articles and vote in elections. They're not going to get hold of semtex and Armalites and start an insurgency.
It'll depend what sort of deal the rest of the EU is willing to strike, and unless either the UK is willing to compromise on allowing free movement of people, or the EU is willing to compromise on the indivisibility of the "four freedoms" - neither of which seems likely - then the Brexit is, in fact, going to be quite hard.
Whether this is consistent with the referendum result is arguable either way I think. The majority of pro-exit campaigners, and most likely of Leave voters, were against free movement, with regaining exclusive UK control over immigration being one of the foremost demands. So a soft Brexit that retains free movement could be seen as not following the spirit of the outcome, even if it follows the letter of it (by formally leaving the EU). On the other hand, the Leave majority was quite slim, and a subset of the Leave voters, probably at least 10%, in fact did think they were voting for a soft exit to more of a Switzerland-style status. So it is probably the case that while Brexit, when asked about in general terms, had 52% support, if you explicitly specify "hard Brexit" including exit from the common market, support would drop. But none of this was made precise in the referendum question, so what the referendum outcome gave a mandate for is what's now being debated.
No such offers are on the table anymore, not even to Switzerland, which has been told by the EU that there will never be any more negotiations unless they agree to replacing their current arrangements with a new one that's basically EU membership by another name. Additionally the Swiss also voted to impose immigration quotas years ago and the deadline for that referendum (a legally binding one) is February. The EU have told them to vote again. The Swiss Parliament is now desperately pretending that a law change that doesn't involve quotas is sufficient to satisfy a referendum that specifically asked the population about implementing quotas.
Even Switzerland is no longer able to get a Switzerland style agreement. The chances of the UK getting one are zero.
The UK has to accept that the EU is now an enemy of the country and is fully committed to the impoverishment and exclusion of the British people. There won't be any cooperation on anything with the EU ever again, and not because the UK doesn't want it but because the EU is held together by fear.
Switzerland is heading for what could be a potentially nasty constitutional crisis, if things go wrong. Parliament is legally bound to implement referendums because they work by adjusting the constitution. Swiss MPs are apparently more scared of the EU than they are of their own courts. This is not a sustainable situation for a democracy. Even if it doesn't blow up now, eventually it will. Switzerland will eventually go through its own "Swexit", due to a referendum that involves wishing to withdraw from one part of one agreement and the EU insisting that it withdraws from all of them simultaneously.
I'm sorry, what?
You sign a bilateral agreement bringing you massive wealth and advantages then you try to avoid doing your part of the deal
So EU is now evil because it will not take shit from a tiny country?
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/10/uk-choice-h...
The key thing comes down to what "block Article 50" means. If the Government decide to not give ground during the Parliamentary process and refuse to be bound on their negotiating strategy an election is pretty likely as I doubt they would get that through Parliament at the moment. That election would potentially enable May to purge some of the wetter Tories as well.
If you think this ruling is going to stop Brexit or is a victory against the Government I suspect you're going to be disappointed.
Although the betting wasn't a great guide to the original brexit outcome, so you have to wonder about trusting it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Convention
Note that this appears to be a "constitutional convention" rather than a hard and fast bit of law.
However, it is specifically about the house of lords not blocking government manifesto promises. I was more thinking about the opposite, i.e. a government not going ahead with their manifesto promises.
(If she does, I'll be standing in it by the way, because my party has already allocated candidates to seats for any snap election).
My suspicion is that the Lords (where the government has no in-built majority) would vote down the new Act on the basis that it was an abuse of process.
The backup option is a German-style 'technical' declaration of no-confidence, where the Prime Minister whips their MPs to vote no-confidence in the government for the express purpose of triggering the Fixed Term Parliament Act's clause. This would be effective, but would have a (relatively small) political cost in public perception.
The Fixed-term Parliament Act means that the only ways to call an early general election are if parliament passes a motion of no confidence in her majesty's government or a two thirds majority of MPs passes a motion to bring an early general election.
(A third alternative would be to repeal the act.)
1) an early election would require 75% majority vote in the commons. Unlikely as labour would be wiped out (they'd have to vote for it).
2) The Tories are utterly scared of UKIP, an early vote if the economy is in less than great health, or the effects of post brexit globalisation become clear, then UKIP will hold the balance of power.
3) The real power in the tory party it's self is not with May and the government its with the 1922 comittee, who are an odd mix of libertarians and ultra nationalistic types. It would be them driving the purge not May. That scares May.
By deferring the decision to a parliamentary majority, the High court has ensured that Brexit will not happen. That's a sound result for the politicians and chiefs of industry based in London, but what will it mean for the wider UK?
Both the courts and parliament demonstrating they are ready to meddle and overrule the majority will of the people, I have a feeling we are going to see many, many more votes for UKIP and BNP in any subsequent election. It's a ratchet effect along the lines of "if they didn't get the message with this vote, perhaps they'll get the message with this one."
For the Americans out there, this is akin to Trump receiving a 52% majority by US voters (yes, 52% is still a majority, no matter how thin), and then the Electoral College deciding to vote amongst themselves instead about who becomes President: of course it would be Clinton.
By what logic?? Most reports says otherwise.
That's hugely uncertain.
A number of voters opting for Leave did so based on information provided by the Leave campaign, a lot of which turned out to be very misleading or just plain false.
Edit: And so it's not unreasonable to think that a portion of Leave voters may have already changed their minds in the wake of what has transpired.
There's nothing sure about this. In general most MPs are against Brexit but they are expected to roughly follow the will of the people, so there's a good change they'll still vote in favour of article 50. I mean the whole government right now is working hard to make Brexit happen, while at the same time being against it.
It's more like Americans voting in a referendum that a trade agreement with Canada should be scrapped in favour of something new, and then the Supreme Court ruling that the date of departure and negotiation objectives are set by Congress debating and voting and not by the House Majority Leader exercising prerogative powers.
Um, not really. It means that we are applying the law, not meddling... The prime minister doesn't get to decide what she wants to do regardless of whether it can pass in the commons, and an advisory referendum is certainly not legally binding.
(George W. Bush: 50,456,002. Al Gore: 50,999,897. Yes, I do know how the electoral college works, but if the same election had been counted under referendum rules the result would have been different)
As I understand things, there was a vote on leaving the EU, and the UK voted to leave. And as I understand things, there's only one way to leave the EU, and that's by invoking Article 50.
Seems to me that means there was a referendum on whether to invoke Article 50, and people voted to invoke it. Why should MPs get to block the referendum result?
People also gave Tories majority in the Parliament and Tories' manifesto committed to stay in the single market.
>As I understand things, there was a vote on leaving the EU, and the UK voted to leave. And as I understand things, there's only one way to leave the EU, and that's by invoking Article 50.
You are interpreting people's reasoning here, as Article 50 was not mentioned in the referendum (another option to leave the EU is to declare war to it, is that what they voted for, then?) and as I understand things, in UK, that is the Parliament's job.
Triggering Article 50 is one of the simplest ways of leaving the EU, and it was almost universally agreed across both sides of the referendum campaign that Brexit (if that was to be the outcome) would be achieved through the triggering of Article 50.
I don't think those who want to leave the EU are especially hung up on Article 50 -- it's just a means to an end. How the UK leaves the EU isn't vital. What's important is that the UK does leave. Those who oppose the triggering of Article 50 aren't doing so because they want another method of leaving the EU -- they don't want to leave at all!
The question is ultimately about whether the UK should leave the EU or not. And the decision was already made on 23rd June.
The effect comes from what the government does with that poll, and the high court has ruled that the government cannot act without parliament's consent. To be absolutely clear: The referendum had no legal effect beyond being an opinion poll.
If the EU was just a group of people holding hands, and after deciding to leave you were informed that instead of just letting go, the only way out was to cut off both of your arms, I imagine you might want to re-think your decision?
You understand incorrectly. A referendum has no legal binding in the UK, it is essentially the government asking the population what to do - it might decide to ignore the results altogether.
It's not about voting, it's about the law on the statute books.
However, the British people have voted to leave the EU, and it would be an affront to democracy if the will of the people were denied by Parliament. It would be unacceptable for Parliament to vote against triggering Article 50, so why even vote if there is only one valid outcome?
If the only plan for Brexit out there is the one the government has, then of course that's the one that is going to be implemented. Parliament does have the opportunity to influence that plan, though.
Have they? I'd really like to see this.
Okay, they haven't quite spelt it out in the level of detail some would have liked, but they've provided more detail than other parties have, and I'm sure further details will emerge in due course.
It was the tories who called the referendum, and the tories who are currently dealing with Brexit. It's not Labour's job to come up with a plan (which would not get used anyway). All Labour have been trying to do is get details of the Tory (currently non-existent) plan, in order to be able to start a discussion on it. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-170-que...
I don't want the Conservative government to have a monopoly over deciding how Brexit is implemented. But if other parties want to have a say, then they do need to say what they want from Brexit! They need to take a more pro-active stance. Problem is that Labour is still rather divided, UKIP is literally beating itself up, and the Lib Dems (whilst united in opposing Brexit) are still rather weak. What we really need is a strong opposition, and unfortunately we don't have one right now.
the whole point is that the government does not get to decide. Even if, as it is likely, the parliament ends up voting for brexit, in the same bill it might constraint how the government is to conduct the negotiations.
That's not on the table, so far. Parliament wants to be involved, not necessarily kill Brexit.
You can come back with that argument if and when Parliament actually tries to stop Brexit.
Parliament can be (and are) involved in the Brexit process, but there are plenty of other ways to do that than with this vote.
I feel pretty conflicted about this, given that I strongly prefer the 'not leave' option but also think the result of an (even advisory) referendum should be respected. That's the nature of a polity with Parliamentary sovereignty, though :-/
The UK has never been through a "year zero" forcible reconstitution, so its constitutional and administrative arrangements are full of little adhoc anomalies (the various islands like Sark and Man, the City, "County" Durham, chancel repair liability, and so on). Mostly these are a fine and picturesque addition to the texture of the nation. There's certainly no real appetite to "fix" things, although Scotland managed to abolish the feudal system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_Feudal_Tenure_etc...)
However, this means that the sort of internal tensions which in the US get nailed to the mast of the constitution instead float around, un-crystallized. Until now, when the "brexit" vote has triggered a cascade of constitutional crises: is parliamentary consent required to leave the EU? How does this affect the Good Friday Agreement? What about Scotland? What exactly is the constitutional status of the Human Rights Act and why do the conservatives keep trying to abolish it? And so on.
Right now the fight is about "sovereignty", but everyone seems to be operating with a sixteenth-century Henry VIII view where sovereignty must be absolute and means getting to do whatever you want. People keep talking about trade deals without realising that they also involve a compromise in arbitrariness, especially when things like ISDS are involved. Pretty much any international agreement involves the governments binding their hands and refraining from doing certain things (e.g. preferential subsidies) in exchange for the counterparty also accepting the same restriction.
There seem to be a lot of people who simply cannot handle the idea that other countries are free to not go along with what Britain wants if it's not also in their interests. Compromise lacks the stirring power of "sovereignty", but it's necessary if you want to get on in the global economy.
Ugh.
Overall I can't see Parliament voting to remain, the ruling has only really delayed he process. It may result in a "softer" Brexit, maybe this is why the GBP has risen?
May's position is that the PM can wake up one day and decide to irrevocably and unilaterally leave the EU. That's a ridiculous position. You can argue there was a referendum but it was non-binding.
MPs from Scotland and Northern Ireland will oppose leaving as their constituents vote overwhelmingly to remain so much so that many in Scotland want to revisit the question of independence.
The leave vote was a proxy for two issues: first and foremost was immigration. The second is control of territorial waters and the resulting overfishing.
On immigration, there is no access to the single market without freedom of EU has made that clear. That will mean paying into the EU coffers too but without any voting rights. So the alternatives are both terrible (for the U.K.).
The U.K. while in the EU can and has extracted concessions on the threat of leaving. This is the best position for them. After pulling the trigger the UK has far less leverage. The EU does want access to the U.K. market but I think the U.K. needs the EU more than the EU needs the U.K.
Hopefully this decision is upheld but even the delay is good. Maybe cooler heads will prevail. An uninformed 52% fueled by a Leave campaign making a bunch of promises they cannot keep and had no intention of delivering upon (since they expected to lose) is hardly a clear mandate.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/06/swiss-eu-stand...
They should have drafted the Leave plan first, with very specific dates, and have people vote on that. "Do you want Britain to invoke Article 50 by 31 Dec 2016?"
That would have been the responsible thing to do. (If anyone argues that you can't have a referendum on such a specifically worded question -- well, if the electorate doesn't understand even the basics, is it a good idea to have a referendum in the first place?)
Cameron must be one of the least competent political leaders of our time. Maybe the Venezuelan ruling party could hire him as a consultant.
Given that both governments refused to contemplate the possibility, how much of a plan did you expect there to be? Planning for the outcome of referendums is the governments job!
The referendum was a matter between the UK electorate and their government. Other EU states played no part in that.
The Treaty of Lisbon specifically offers a way for a member state to withdraw in the timespan of two years. Not sure how you read that as "irreversible".
Article 50 was only put there because the British insisted on it. Read what the guy who wrote it thinks:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-refe...
Cameron did negotiate with EU leaders and tried to get concessions (on top of the existing special treatment that Thatcher and others negotiated over the years). Isn't that "talking"? Why didn't the UK government make a plan for the Leave option after those negotiations were concluded?
The lack of clarity around Leave is really not the fault of anyone except the UK government. Blaming it on other states is just avoiding responsibility.
Blame David Cameron for that, the referendum was supposed to be an intra-party political play in which he expected "remain" to prevail to quell the extreme wing of his party. It's like a US president, without any form of planning, calling for a referendum on federal minimum income(D) or banning Muslims(R) with the intention that they turn to the further-from-center wings of their respective party and say "See, Americans don't really want that", and then things don't go as planned, but the country will have to lay in the bed that was made while the prime minister literally[1] whistles his away from the public stage...
Not even Farage had a plan, despite having been the face and voice of the anti-EU sentiment. As soon as Brexit won, he resigned and went underground. You would expect he would roll his sleeves and dive in to implement the plan he has honed over the years.
1. Cameron hummed/whistled a tune as he walked away from the podium at the end of his last address to the nation.
And the MPs will be under pressure to do as people had voted in the referendum.
At the same time public opinion may well have moved.
The ruling makes available a sabateurs toolbox and could potentially delay Brexit for some time.
My bet is that the government don't appeal and then go onto put serious media pressure on parliament to pull the trigger quickly. Having said that I was definitely betting that the high court would pass this ...
In the event that they overturn the High Court judgment, you're right that Parliament could in principle pass an Act reserving to itself the right to activate Article 50. In practice, though, the government would use its majority in the Commons to stop that happening. Or alternatively send in the Article 50 notification while Parliament is debating the bill. In either case, the Supreme Court's judgment would be effectively final.
The technical question about whether the European Communities Act enshrined a particular set of rights as guaranteed in the treaties, or enshrined whatever rights happened to be a consequence of those treaties from time-to-time seems a much closer question in my view. I think the judgment is convincing on the point, but it wouldn't surprise me if another bench took a different view. In fact, the High Court in Northern Ireland did, when they recently ruled (though the present judgment does address and explain the differences).
I think the other thing worth mentioning is that this was a very high powered High Court panel - it featured both the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls - so it's not exactly akin to a handful of random junior judges giving an opinion in expectation of being overturned. The Supreme Court may take a different view of the merits, of course.
My father was born in Birmingham, a city in which people of english-descent will be a minority by 2020. When a city is only 40% english-descent, it is no longer an English city.
Karachi is still a pakistani city. Lagos is still a nigerian city. Birmingham is not an english city.
Most brexiters aren't particularly fussed with the finer points of the common market, or EU centralised decision making. They just want border control and feel completely powerless as things stand to change anything. There is no neat referendum question regarding immigration, and there seems to be no way other than a referendum for real democratic hearing of people's views on this issue.
That, and it's a bit cheeky to pray-in-aid Karachi as some kind of purely Pakistani city given how much influence we Brits have had over the place as a result of conquering it.
http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-resources/brexit-bri...
We have such a high pound because we are a country driven by financial industry, people keep their wealth in pounds because of this. Ultimately it screws over other industries resulting in the south/north divide.
We saw this play out in Greece. The situation there was far worse, both at government and private level, but there still wasn't enough support for jumping out back to the Drachma and devaluting. And meanwhile the shortage of hard currency caused medical shortages.
Edit: The study linked above [0] showed the following for voter regret (specifically "do you have doubts about the way you voted?"):
Remain
Yes / No / Don't Know
98% / 1% / 1%
Leave
Yes / No / Don't Know
90% / 6% / 4%
[0]: http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-resources/brexit-bri...
The treatment of leavers by remainers has been frankly disgusting. Accusing them of being racists, stupid, and various other things. Brexit has made them lose their minds. They simply refuse to believe their are people who would vote brexit for reasons other racism. I know many people who voted for brexit on informed reasons, that have nothing to do with racism.
What do you mean exactly?
> The treatment of leavers by remainers has been frankly disgusting
Completely agree. The whole thing of people taking sides, rather than discussing a political issue, has been absurd and awful.
> voted for brexit on informed reasons
Unfortunately this was badly communicated, the media's fault no doubt. It was genuinely quite difficult to find a reasoned, balanced view (especially on the leave side I have to say).
http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/696760/british-no-reg...
Much of the remain support is concentrated in a handful of London consistences meaning that almost all english MPs have a significant majority of leave supporters.
They have to vote for that or they won't be selected in a future election.
In any case. If the government doesn't follow the will of the people, then the 18 million people who votes leave will ensure that we have a new government one way or another.
Just curious as an outsider, what lies are those?
o there are no down sides to leaving
o Leaving would give us 350 million pounds extra a week to improve healthcare
o We would have a strong currency
o The world would fall over it's self to give "free trade deals" to the UK
o UK tourists would be able to go to the EU without a visa
o No businesses would leave the UK to avoid trade tarrifs/customs hops
o The UK wouldn't loose service "passport rights" that allow banks, IT companies and service providers to provide services to the continent without extra taxes or hurdles
o that more good and secure jobs would be created, and globalisation would be rolled back
The Remain camp had "project fear" which basically translated the top end of the economic consensus into tabloid.
However the 350million is almost certainly not going to happen. Mainly because even if we managed to not pay a single pound more to the EU (thats a big if) that budget would be needed for farming subsidies, science, grants and weird legislature functions currently provided by the EU
I'd also wager that globalisation is not going to be rolled back, especially looking at the three pricks "running" the negotiations
There were also an awful lot of predictions of total, immediate economic armageddon. Up to and including telling us that the very fact we were having a vote was harming the economy massively.
Cameron said he was on the fence and he'd choose how to campaign based on the results of his renegotiation. During campaigning he told the nation it'd be morally wrong to leave the EU, so obviously that was a lie.
Even 4 days before the vote, Cameron was saying the UK could stay in a reformed EU, despite Juncker saying simultaneously that there were no further concessions on offer and despite the Remain campaign choosing not to mention Cameron's "renegotiation" because it had achieved so little.
Osborne: Brexit will make every household exactly £4300 worse off. This figure was quickly dropped by the campaign because it was based on garbage calculations and focus groups showed nobody believed it (too high, too specific, inability to explain where it came from). Moreover it came from the Treasury which Osborne himself had slated as being unfixably politically biased when he first came to government.
Osborne: punishment budget, despite that he must have known that his best mate and political protector Cameron would quit rather than "do the hard shit", as he put it.
Turkey will never join the EU, despite the government's official position being that Turkey should join the EU.
The business uncertainty caused by an out vote will wreck the economy. Reality: all economic indicators not directly controlled by Mark Carney (i.e. devaluation of the currency) are doing fine.
There is no chance of an EU army. In reality an EU army was the very first thing the EU discussed after the Brexit vote.
etc etc etc. There were just tons of statements already proven to be lies thrown around by the pro EU camp, mostly coming from top politicians like the PM and Chancellor. The absolute blindness of EU supporters to this fact is remarkable.
I would argue that the opposite is true.
Source? Not being facetious, genuinely interested if there's evidence of this.
http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-resources/brexit-bri...
The problem is that the leave campaign won by lying and playing on people's fears, and when UK voters had a chance to reflect it turns out that was a stupid choice.
A lot can happen before the next general election, and the next local elections aren't until May, after the government intends to trigger Article 50. And the Lib Dems still only have eight MPs. So whilst I'm sure the Lib Dems will be doing a lot of campaigning, they remain in a rather weak position.
In fact, democracy seems to be reserved only for use by western NATO powers, even when not respecting a democratic vote, while imposing democracy "with dire consequences" on the rest of the world.
The "Brexit" vote was nothing more than an opinion poll. There is no direct democracy in the UK.
Direct democracy for export to some (exclude Saudi), power for others.
All this Brexit event just highlights the hypocrisy when calling Russian political system names and criticizing it for lack of democracy and other positive terms-on-paper.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jul/12/uk-scienti...
I wonder if it is possible however for either Tories or Labours to go with a believable pro-brexit stance in the polls. Ideally one would take the "in" stance and the other the "out", the point is who is with what?
"Well, time to move to another European country... oh wait, they're all economically f* and have no jobs for me.
Well, gonna stay in the UK for a bit longer, see how it goes."
If you're a software engineer, London has many [good] jobs for you. Your home country may not.
edit: to take a not controversial example - Boris is part of the Government. Cameron was the government too.
The advisory referendum told Parliament and Government "we want out".
The idea that all the hundreds or thousands of details that this referendum leads to were also implicitly voted on as "Government alone shall decide" is preposterous.
I would guess it also depends on how detailed and clear the referendum is.
Just imagine the following situation: There is a referendum on a carbon tax that wins a majority. The referendum itself doesn’t give any further details beyond the question “Do you want a carbon tax?”
Does this hypothetical vote give the executive the complete authority to create a carbon tax, including all the myriad (unanswered by the referendum) policy decisions that would have to be answered when implementing such a tax?
One sentence obviously does not make a tax and with a carbon tax you would probably have to write a book to arrive at something useful and implementable.
Why does the executive get all this power and the legislative gets none of that power?
In fact, creating (not really creating, but I wanted to avoid writing “legislating”, which would, however, be the more appropriate word here) a carbon tax (including all the detail questions concerning its exact implementation you have to answer when doing that) is more of a legislative task, anyway! The executive isn’t even supposed to do things like that.
So what gives the executive that kind of power and the legislative none of that power? Why should that be the case after a referendum?
I know that invoking Article 50 is not the same as a carbon tax and I know that’s a more complex process (without a referendum I would expect both the legislative and the executive to be heavily involved in such a process), but I just wanted to give a clear-cut example illustrating the problem.
All this, by the way, comes back to a fundamental issue with all referenda. The executive could just as well ignore the referendum. That’s undisputed. So you can’t really use the argument that parliament could vote against leaving. The executive could just as well decide against leaving.
The issue here is more about who gets what power when making decisions – and why the executive or the legislative should get what kind of power and when.
You have two camps that are pretty much self contained - paper magazines, TV, radio, YouTube channels, Facebook groups, even fucking meme sites are now springing up to spew propaganda
And the worst thing is that on the left you have SJW terrorists attacking anything and everything just to feel better about themselves, while the right has no fucking idea how to make anything work good and the only slightly reedeeming point is their pushback against extremism from the left
And the bubbles just push most of the people off to either side
Brexit done by cretins currently in power will just wreck UK. The tremors we are seeing now are just the beginning - my welsh friend tells me that power, water, gas, etc. prices are adjusted yearly, so next wave of pain is approaching already
Staying in would be the best, IMO, but, it hardly matters - either way you are going to have ~30% population extremely unhappy