General Chat

Seems the democracy of Parliament outweighs the democratic will of the people.

Whatever your view on Brexit is this view seems so wrong.

It will be interesting how this plays out....

Plebiscites demonstrating the "will of the people" have a long history as tools of dictators and would be dictators. It is not very hard to find examples.

England OTOH has a long history of democracy and rule by law. This was forged in the crucible of the Civil War 1640 and the legislative outcome in 1688.

The executive cannot use the royal prerogative to override statutory rights granted through Act of Parliament. Or in a more idiomatic way only Parliament can take away what Parliament has given. That is because Parliament is sovereign not "the will of the people" via a referendum still less the monarch as the shades of Charles 1 will tell.

So news, for some, you are living in a parliamentary democracy.
Get used to it.

Of course the govt will appeal to the Supreme Court. It will lose there too and most likely get some stinging rebukes from the bench as a bonus.

Parliament will now take up its normal rights and duties which is to hold the executive to account on how to implements brexit which will be a long way from the rubber stamp envisaged by the govt. And of course if negotiations fail then Parliament will have the right to end brexit in the current shape and form.

Assuming it goes to a vote in the HoC, the MPs need to remember they represent their constituents. Since data appears to exist for the proportion who voted in or out, their personal vote should reflect that.

Is that a pig flying past the window?

Members of parliament are not delegates a point which is often forgotten by the Labour Party and now it seems by kippers of one sort and another. They are elected to represent their constituency in parliament "according to their best judgement". That may or may not line up with the demands of their constituency party or the government's current program. Winston S Churchill was an excellent example.

Nearly all progress on social matters has been achieved by MPs in parliament being prepared to face down their constituents.

Parliament has held power in this country for over a thousand years. Long may it do so.

A brexit which loosened the political ties between the EU and the UK would pass through parliament albeit far more slowly and with far more caveats than T May would like. OTOH parliament might very well balk at a "hard brexit" wchih threatened to tank the economy.

The £ is up sharply.

Oh well, not to worry, none of us really believed in it anyway. The EU is like a huge octopus, once in its tentacles you'll never escape no matter how hard you try. Let's hope it doesn't completely suck the life out of us!! Mind you, I doubt anyone would care!

Dont panic Brexiteers. Boris has promised. that Brexit will be. a Titanic success.

Kense :-D

Talking of Parliamentary democracy - it would be handy if the Prime Minister had actually been elected by the people!!

Apparently, the Government is appealing :-S

....that's not everyone's view :-D

Scaremongering is a much loved Brexit party game.

The Bill of Rights 1689 says that the royal prerogative may not over ride statute law. If it could then the UK would become a dictatorship which of course it was under Oliver Cromwell. Since 1689 the scope of RP has been much reduced. Most recently this has related to defense where the govt. no longer feels able to wage war without a commons vote in favour. No small matter but the inevtiable result of the judge led Chilcott enquiry..

Generally the High Court has done nothing to weaken the prerogative power for making and unmaking treaties. The Single European Act is an unusual treaty related statute because it confers specific rights to subjects of the Crown. In particular it gives the right to live and work in the whole of the EU and to buy and sell property there. Invoking S50 would nullify those rights. Hence the requirement for Parliament, not the executive using RP, to vote the invocation of S50.

This is as clear as day and has been for months. Unless the Supreme Court wants to effectively revoke the sovereignty of Parliament it will reach the same conclusion.

btw in case nobody noticed the referendum was advisory not mandatory. If it had been mandatory then S50 could have been invoked last July.

Populism is not democracy no matter how much the Daily Express, Farage and co scream and shout and stamp their feet.

I would be amazed if Parliament blocked the invocation of S50. However its approval will come with a raft of conditions exactly what T May did not want.

No British Prime Minister has ever been elected by the voters.

The electorate votes for an MP on the understanding that he/she will support this or that party with the knowledge that a few may jump ship. The leader of the winning party will become Prime Minister but he/she is chosen by arcane processes in which voting by the general population is excluded.

In the recent past we have had James Callaghan, John Major, Gordon Brown and now Theresa May all as PM without their party obtaining a new mandate. My own feeling is that this is quite wrong and the party of replacement PMs should face a GE within 6 months unless a national emergency such as war precluded it.

As the judgement has spelled out, the most fundamental part of the UK's constitution is that prerogative powers can never override legislation previously enacted by Parliament.

As the exiters keep telling us the result was the will of the people, they conveniently failed to mention it has no legal standing whatsoever, a point which has also been clarified in the judgement.

There is also no other currently existing legislation which permits the changes to domestic law which invocation s50 will bring about, hence the need to involve parliament.

An interesting aside to this is the ongoing need for the railway companies to run 'parliamentary' trains were the cessation of a service enshrined in law can not occur without an further Act of Parliament.

Latest press release from Brussels,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyenRCJ_4Ww



;-)

The referendum was a complete waste of time and money. What on earth is the point of asking people to vote on something that will never go through if it doesn't have the approval of Parliament? As its going to any way, why not let Parliament decide in the first place and save all the commotion and bad feelng, family upsets and worry that this wretched exercise has caused.

Because call me Dave thought he'd win it hands down.

'As the UK's Government contemplates how to exit the EU, it is also fighting to retain London as Europe's unofficial financial capital for banks & insurers - a lucrative position that other cities such as Paris & Frankfurt are poised to assume'. (The Real Truth magazine).

No prime minister is DIRECTLY elected by the voters, but the individual must secure a seat in the Parliament. To become a Member of Parliament, the candidate must secure more votes than his rival in their locality.
THAT is where the 'people' have their DIRECT say in the matter.

Who knows if the local electorate would have voted for May as their representative, had there been another local election?

As the member for Maidenhead, TM has one of the most safest Conservative seats in the country. She had a tad under 66% of the vote in 2015.

"the individual must secure a seat in the Parliament. "
i.e. House of Lords or House of Commons, Parliament is not the same thing as the House of Commons. Members of the upper house are appointed they don't "secure" there place and are most def. not elected.

For hundreds of years there were Prime Ministers who sat in the Lords eg Lord Melbourne. Alec Douglas Hume was the last sitting member of the House of Lords to become PM (1963).

Government ministers are often members of the House of Lords rather than the Commons though most have been MPs at some time.

Nevertheless as a PM may serve as such for years without a fresh GE mandate it is a real stretch to say that a British PM is elected by the general electorate. Indeed in Dave Cameron's case he had not even won a general election and was put in power thanks to a decision taken by the third placed party which ended up in govt. Rum sort of democracy some may say.