They government will lose the High Court challenge. Her lawyers will always tell her what she wants to hear.
We are. The referendum is over - a referendum whose act was voted through Parliament and which was subsequently held on the explicit condition laid down by the previous Government that the result would be binding. That result is in. We are going to leave the EU. The Government has pledged to make this happen. There is no legal challenge that can stand up. There are a few Remoaners in denial who can't accept these facts but they will have to find a way to live with it because the world is not going to change to accommodate them. They will simply be left behind. So yes, we are there.
In any kind of litigation, each side's lawyers go into it asserting that they are "confident they will win". How could it be otherwise? They are hardly going to announce that they fear they will lose. What we have here is a Telegraph journalist writing a piece of puffery. The government can instruct its lawyers to argue a case of sorts, but it cannot instruct them to win it. The issue here is whether Prerogative powers can be used to override a piece of primary legislation; and the legal answer is no, obviously not. There is scope for debate about the extent to which Prerogative power can be used for other actions (e.g. going to war) which do not violate primary legislation. But when it comes to contradicting, and essentially repealing, existing Acts of Parliament, there is very little room for debate - Prerogative power does not stretch so far, and has not done so for several centuries. The referendum is not, of course, legally binding (despite ill-informed assertions to the contrary). The result is advisory. It has no legal force, and it does not give anyone power to do anything. Its effects are purely political. The 52%/48% result makes the issue politically problematic, but then again it would be hugely problematic either to implement or not to implement Brexit. Given that there are large majorities against Brexit in both Houses of Parliament*, it is not easy to imagine how any kind of Brexit legislation could be passed, let alone a whole series of complex and controversial measures. It seems to me that the government knows it must lose the High Court case, and is laying the groundwork for a series of appeals to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court all of which it will lose. This will allow Mrs May to complain that this is not her fault but is down to the "unelected judges" etc etc. and the process will have kicked the can down the road for several months. That's the point of it. * And incidentally in the Cabinet too.
That is quite some muddle you have got into there, @Gimlet . For a political pledge to be politically binding is a very different thing from a legislative provision to be legally binding. Political pledges (such as manifesto commitments) can be implemented, if those who made them are in power, or can be abandoned. If they are abandoned or violated, they cannot be enforced at law - the recourse lies in the ballot box at the next election. By contrast, legal provisions incorporated in primary legislation are legally binding, and are enforceable in the courts. No-one, not even the government, can act illegally or violate laws arbitrarily. Laws can be changed, of course, but that requires votes in parliament. So this assertion that "there is no legal challenge that can stand up" is pure nonsense.
Parliament needs to reflect the will of the country. It is not the role of MPs to force the country to reflect the will of Parliament. Politicians show little sign of understanding this and that is why political earth tremors have been taking place recently, and not only in this country, and those will only continue and intensify until the penny drops. If they don't get it they will not remain MPs for very long.
A large majority of MPs in the current parliament have been elected on the basis that they are Remainers. If they violate that commitment by voting for Brexit legislation, they may well be voted out at the next general election. In the coming months, that consideration will surely weigh heavily upon most MPs.
There is I guess a large concern of civil unrest to consider, and that in all probability we will be better off out of the EU as it currently stands anyway
I disagree, a lot of Remain mp's are in areas that voted out and they might not get re-elected if they don't recognise the will of there electorate.
The Prime Minister does not have the authority to make decisions unilaterally. We have just spent millions and millions on an enqury into a previous PM who took this country to war without even discussing it with his Cabinet and the conclusion drawn was that this should never have happened. Any PM who withdrew the country from the EU without even a majority of her Parliamentary MPs having any say is unlikely to be Leader for very long. M The idea that the vast majority of the Country voted out is wrong anyway. Only a third of the Country voted to Leave and a good proportion of those had never bothered to vote at all before.
That is completely misleading. The decision to go to war was endorsed by a large majority in parliament after debate. The possibility of using prerogative powers was briefly considered, but rejected by Tony Blair as being unsustainable. Exactly the same consideration arose at the time of the Falklands war, and the outcome was the same; a vote in parliament was essential, and relying on prerogative was not viable, in Margaret Thatcher's view. It would be extraordinary if Theresa May were now to attempt to expand prerogative power and diminish parliament's role, in the teeth of the trend of history.
Yes you are right, Pete. But Parliament wasn't aware of the full facts and as such was not debated correctly as they didn't know the truth so for a PM to sign Article 50 without discussion and withholding from Parliament what they could entail would be even worse.
Incidentally, before the referendum David Cameron stated that in the event of a Leave vote, Article 50 would be triggered the following day, and that was widely expected. All the predictions about the dire economic consequences which would rapidly follow a Leave vote were predicated on that happening. In the event, to everyone's surprise, Art 50 was not triggered immediately and it has now become clear that it could not have been, cannot now be, and will not be triggered for several months, or years, or maybe ever. This has eased some of the pressure for now. Finding that after all you are not going to be hanged by the neck tomorrow does have rather a cheering effect ... even if you might be hanged in years to come.
A further point is that Article 50(1) reads: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements." It follows that if Mrs May purported to notify the EU of such a withdrawal decision in a way which failed to be in accordance with the UK's constitutional requirements, it would be arguable that such notification was invalid. But at a later date, it might come in handy for such a notification to turn out to have been invalid, might it not?
