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Cold Take: The EU Referendum Act should have included implementation provisions

For A Thing, I’ve been reading the court judgments in the controversial Brexit cases brought by Gina Miller.

The first of these was R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2016] EWHC 2768 (Admin) and [2017] UKSC 5.

The outcome of the case is well known. Theresa May wanted to send the Article 50 notification to Brussels, and believed she could do so without recourse to parliament, because the making and breaking of treaties is a prerogative power. The claimants disagreed, saying that parliament had created new domestic rights and a new source of law when it enacted the European Communities Act 1972, which only parliament could undo.

Continue reading “Cold Take: The EU Referendum Act should have included implementation provisions”
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The ‘Whether’ and the ‘How’ of Brexit

Earlier this week, the House of Commons seized control of the parliamentary timetable, and passed its own piece of legislation through the chamber. The House of Lords then passed it without amendments, and the European Union Withdrawl Bill (No. 6) will become law early next week.
The law forces Prime Minister Johnson to ask the European Council for an Article 50 extension, if an exit deal has not been agreed by 19th October (a few days before the scheduled departure on the 31st). It is a way of legally binding the government from proceeding with a No Deal Brexit.
Since then, there has been a constant refrain from supporters of the PM’s policy (call them Leavers, or Brexiteers or whatever) that parliament’s actions are thwarting the will of the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU. The Prime Minister said:

It is a Bill designed to overturn the biggest democratic vote in our history, the 2016 referendum. It is therefore a Bill without precedent in the history of this House, seeking as it does to force the Prime Minister, with a pre-drafted letter, to surrender in international negotiations

The implication here, parroted by people up and down the country, is that ‘leaving the EU’ is synonymous with the May/Johnson vision of ‘hard Brexit.’ That is, a ‘how’ founded on a sheaf of red lines and the threat of No Deal.
Depending on who says this, it may be an uniformed mistake, a ‘category error’ or a deliberately misleading piece of propaganda. Either way, it’s wrong… and it’s another thing that needs to be debunked succinctly, over and over again. Continue reading “The ‘Whether’ and the ‘How’ of Brexit”

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Citizens of Nowhere: A revisionist history

Yesterday, while blogging about the resignation of Theresa May, I mentioned her infamous ‘citizens of nowhere’ speech at the Conservative Party conference in 2016.
At the time, those words were seen as a clear attack on the pro-European, pro-EU, ‘Remain’ cosmopolitanism that many people were expressing after the referendum shock. Mrs May, it was judged, had taken a side in the culture war, and allying herself with a narrow nationalism.
Three years later, that phrase has become a damning shorthand for Theresa May’s hostility to migrants.
While writing my earlier blog post, I read the speech. And actually, the context of her ‘citizens of nowhere’ line is the culmination of an attack on… millionaire tax dodgers. Continue reading “Citizens of Nowhere: A revisionist history”

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Too Little Empathy, Way Too Late

Not much on the blog recently. I disappoint myself. When I started this site nearly fifteen years ago, the narcissist in me expected it would become a chronicle of my times, and any given historical event would have a corresponding blog post in the archives. In reality it’s far more hodge-podge, and I find I’ve written very little about the most turbulent political era of British politics that I can remember.


There were EU elections yesterday, yet I posted not a word about the campaigns or who I would be voting for. I suppose that’s a symptom of the political mess that we are in: that so many people are baffled and dismayed by the state of politics that they become demotivated. I could have been out there campaigning for someone, but instead these past weeks have been a retreat into exercise and Game of Thrones.
I suppose I should make a few notes on the resignation of Theresa May. It just happened, and I have a few thoughts I might as well publish. Continue reading “Too Little Empathy, Way Too Late”

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#Brexit: Democracy begins with a vote, but it doesn’t end there

I was unable to attend the Put It To The People march at the weekend for secret reasons, but I have signed the poorly worded petition to ‘Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU’.1
While the march was taking place, I spotted several snide comments on social media, repeating the mantra that it is essentially a campaign to ignore or overturn democracy. Giles Fraser and Sarah Vine, for example.
This prompts a return to the thoughts and conversations I have been having over the past few weeks about the nature and definition of ‘democracy’ and how a free society makes decisions.
Too often during this crisis the political debate has focused on just one aspect of democracy: The vote. And not just the concept of voting in the abstract, but specifically the referendum vote of 23rd June 2016 that delivered the mandate to leave the European Union. Despite the narrow margin, and despite the fact that the Leave.eu campaign broke electoral law, the result was and remains a powerful political fact.
But there are other aspects to the concept of ‘democracy’ that have, in my view, been underweighted. A fully functioning democracy requires way more than a vote. There are plenty of oppressive countries that allow citizens to vote for the government (Iran, for example) but nevertheless constrain freedom in other ways. The vote is a necessary but not sufficient condition for democracy. Continue reading “#Brexit: Democracy begins with a vote, but it doesn’t end there”