London Banter - View Single Post

Recliner[_3_] · November 18th 16, 09:29 PM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london

Optimist wrote:
On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 07:26:03 +0800, "Clive D.W. Feather" wrote:

On 08/11/2016 23:46, Optimist wrote:
The legal action currently in play is exactly that: does it require a
successor Parliament (such as we have) to repeal the various European
Union Acts, or can bit be done under the skirts of the Royal Prerogative
apparently held by the PM-du-jour.

Not quite.

But triggering Article 50 would NOT repeal the European Communities Act
- that requires legislation.

True. However, triggering Article 50 would mean that we *will* leave the
EU and that will take away rights that Parliament granted when it passed
the European Communities Act.

The Crown (including the Crown's ministers) does not have the right to
overrule Parliament's wishes or take away what Parliament has given.
This has been a *written* part of the Constitution at least since the
Bill of Rights, with plenty of case law to support it, and part of the
Constitution for longer than that - ask Charles I.

There's another aspect here though - the referendum. Legislation for
this had been passed by
Parliament last year. The people were told that the decision was theirs,
and that the government
would implement that decision. So effectively Article 50 was de facto
triggered by the referendum
itself.

Of course there are those desperate to block the decision playing the
"advisory" card, but that
really will not do as no MP mentioned during the campaign "Oh, by the
way, peasants, if you vote the
wrong way we'll ignore your decision anyway" (indeed Cameron said that in
the event of a Leave vote
he would begin the process to leave) so in that case MPs would just be
exposed as utterly cynical
liars and not fit to represent the people.

From an FT reader's comment, via Twitter:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxX-B-2U...jpg&name=large